Some of them, the most prominent and terrifying, probably still showed on their faces the theatrical cicatrices of their university duels. They were the soldiers who carried books in their knapsacks, and after the fusillade of a lot of country folk, or the sacking and burning of a hamlet, devoted themselves to reading the poets and philosophers by the glare of the blaze which they had kindled. They were bloated with science as with the puffiness of a toad, proud of their pedantic and all-sufficient intellectuality. Sons of sophistry and grandsons of cant, they had considered themselves capable of proving the greatest absurdities by the mental capers to which they had accustomed their acrobatic intellects.

They had employed the favorite method of the thesis, ant.i.thesis and synthesis in order to demonstrate that Germany ought to be the Mistress of the World; that Belgium was guilty of her own ruin because she had defended herself; that true happiness consisted in having all humanity dominated by Prussia; that the supreme idea of existence consisted in a clean stable and a full manger; that Liberty and Justice were nothing more than illusions of the romanticism of the French; that every deed accomplished became virtuous from the moment it triumphed, and that Right was simply a derivative of Might. These metaphysical athletes with guns and sabres were accustomed to consider themselves the paladins of a crusade of civilization. They wished the blond type to triumph definitely over the brunette; they wished to enslave the worthless man of the South, consigning him forever to a world regulated by "the salt of the earth," "the aristocracy of humanity." Everything on the page of history that had amounted to anything was German. The ancient Greeks had been of Germanic origin; German, too, the great artists of the Italian Renaissance. The men of the Mediterranean countries, with the inherent badness of their extraction, had falsified history... .

"That's the best place for you... You are better where you are buried, you pitiless pedants!" thought Desnoyers, recalling his conversations with his friend, the Russian.

What a shame that there were not here, too, all the Herr Professors of the German universities--those wise men so unquestionably skilful in altering the trademarks of intellectual products and changing the terminology of things! Those men with flowing beards and gold-rimmed spectacles, pacific rabbits of the laboratory and the professor's chair that had been preparing the ground for the present war with their sophistries and their unblushing effrontery! Their guilt was far greater than that of the Herr Lieutenant of the tight corset and the gleaming monocle, who in his thirst for strife and slaughter was simply and logically working out the professional charts.

While the German soldier of the lower cla.s.ses was plundering what he could and drunkenly shooting whatever crossed his path, the warrior student was reading by the camp glow, Hegel and Nietzsche. He was too enlightened to execute with his own hands these acts of "historical justice," but he, with the professors, was rousing all the bad instincts of the Teutonic beast and giving them a varnish of scientific justification.

"Lie there, in your sepulchre, you intellectual scourge!" continued Desnoyers mentally.

The fierce Moors, the negroes of infantile intelligence, the sullen Hindus, appeared to him more deserving of respect than all the ermine-bordered togas parading haughtily and aggressively through the cloisters of the German universities. What peacefulness for the world if their wearers should disappear forever! He preferred the simple and primitive barbarity of the savage to the refined, deliberate and merciless barbarity of the greedy sage;--it did less harm and was not so hypocritical.

For this reason, the only ones in the enemy's ranks who awakened his commiseration were the lowly and unlettered dead interred beneath the sod. They had been peasants, factory hands, business clerks, German gluttons of measureless (intestinal) capacity, who had seen in the war an opportunity for satisfying their appet.i.tes, for beating somebody and ordering them about after having pa.s.sed their lives in their country, obeying and receiving kicks.

The history of their country was nothing more than a series of raids--like the Indian forays, in order to plunder the property of those who lived in the mild Mediterranean climes. The Herr Professors had proved to their countrymen that such sacking incursions were indispensable to the highest civilization, and that the German was marching onward with the enthusiasm of a good father sacrificing himself in order to secure bread for his family.

Hundreds of thousands of letters, written by their relatives with tremulous hands, were following the great Germanic horde across the invaded countries. Desnoyers had overheard the reading of some of these, at nightfall before his ruined castle. These were some of the messages found in the pockets of the imprisoned or dead:--"Don't show any pity for the red pantaloons. Kill WHOMEVER YOU CAN, and show no mercy even to the little ones." ... "We would thank you for the shoes, but the girl cannot get them on. Those French have such ridiculously small feet!"

... "Try to get hold of a piano."... "I would very much like a good watch." ... "Our neighbor, the Captain, has sent his wife a necklace of pearls... . And you send only such insignificant things!"

The virtuous German had been advancing heroically with the double desire of enlarging his country and of making valuable gifts to his offspring.

"Deutschland uber alles!" But their most cherished illusions had fallen into the burial ditch in company with thousands of comrades-at-arms fed on the same dreams.

Desnoyers could imagine the impatience on the other side of the Rhine, the pitiful women who were waiting and waiting. The lists of the dead had, perhaps, overlooked the missing ones; and the letters kept coming and coming to the German lines, many of them never reaching their destination. "Why don't you answer! Perhaps you are not writing so as to give us a great surprise. Don't forget the necklace! Send us a piano.

A carved china cabinet for the dining room would please us greatly. The French have so many beautiful things!" ...

The bare cross rose stark and motionless above the lime-blanched land.

Near it the little flags were fluttering their wings, moving from side to side like a head shaking out a smiling, ironical protest--No! ...

No!

The automobile continued on its painful way. The guide was now pointing to a distant group of graves. That was undoubtedly the place where the regiment had been fighting. So the vehicle left the main road, sinking its wheels in the soft earth, having to make wide detours in order to avoid the mounds scattered about so capriciously by the casualties of the combat.

Almost all of the fields were ploughed. The work of the farmer extended from tomb to tomb, making them more prominent as the morning sun forced its way through the enshrouding mists.

Nature, blind, unfeeling and silent, ignoring individual existence and taking to her bosom with equal indifference, a poor little animal or a million corpses, was beginning to smile under the late winter suns.

The fountains were still crusted with their beards of ice; the earth snapped as the feet weighed down its hidden crystals; the trees, black and sleeping, were still retaining the coat of metallic green in which the winter had clothed them; from the depths of the earth still issued an acute, deadly chill, like that of burned-out planets... . But Spring had already girded herself with flowers in her palace in the tropics, and was saddling with green her trusty steed, neighing with impatience. Soon they would race through the fields, driving before them in disordered flight the black goblins of winter, and leaving in their wake green growing things and tender, subtle perfumes. The wayside greenery, robing itself in tiny buds, was already heralding their arrival. The birds were venturing forth from their retreats in order to wing their way among the crows croaking wrathfully above the closed tombs. The landscape was beginning to smile in the sunlight with the artless, deceptive smile of a child who looks candidly around while his pockets are stuffed with stolen goodies.

The husbandmen had ploughed the fields and filled the furrows with seed.

Men might go on killing each other as much as they liked; the soil had no concern with their hatreds, and on that account, did not propose to alter its course. As every year, the metal cutter had opened its usual lines, obliterating with its ridges the traces of man and beast, undismayed and with stubborn diligence filling up the tunnels which the bombs had made.

Sometimes the ploughshare had struck against an obstacle underground ... an unknown, unburied man; but the cultivator had continued on its way without pity. Every now and then, it was stopped by less yielding obstructions, projectiles which had sunk into the ground intact. The rustic had dug up these instruments of death which occasionally had exploded their delayed charge in his hands.

But the man of the soil knows no fear when in search of sustenance, and so was doggedly continuing his rectilinear advance, swerving only before the visible tombs; there the furrows had curved mercifully, making little islands of the mounds surmounted by crosses and flags. The seeds of future bread were preparing to extend their tentacles like devil fish among those who, but a short time before, were animated by such monstrous ambition. Life was about to renew itself once more.

The automobile came to a standstill. The guide was running about among the crosses, stooping over in order to examine their weather-stained inscriptions.

"Here we are!"

He had found above one grave the number of the regiment.

Chichi and her husband promptly dismounted again. Then Dona Luisa, with sad resolution, biting her lips to keep the tears back. Then the three devoted themselves to a.s.sisting the father who had thrown off his fur lap-robe. Poor Desnoyers! On touching the ground, he swayed back and forth, moving forward with the greatest effort, lifting his feet with difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.

"Lean on me, my poor dear," said the old wife, offering her arm.

The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step without their aid.

Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.

The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering. Rene was doing the same on the other side of the road. Chichi went on alone, the wind whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a name. Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably--revealing thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty, of consummated love following her course through this land of death and desolation.

In the distance sounded feebly her father's voice:

"Not yet?"

The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son's resting place as soon as possible.

A half hour thus dragged by without any result--always unfamiliar names, anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments. Don Marcelo was no longer able to stand. Their pa.s.sage across the irregularities of the soft earth had been torment for him. He was beginning to despair... .

Ay, they would never find Julio's remains! The parents, too, had been scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name.

... No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.

It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, "Here... . Here it is!"

The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier, and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of his comrades-at-arms--"DESNOYERS." ... Then in military abbreviations, the rank, regiment and company.

A long silence. Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on the cross--those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep. Till then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing itself in the usual ways.

The father was staring at the rustic grave in dumb amazement. His son was there, there forever! ... and he would never see him again! He imagined him sleeping unshrouded below, in direct contact with the earth, just as Death had surprised him in his miserable and heroic old uniform. He recalled the exquisite care which the lad had always given his body--the long bath, the ma.s.sage, the invigorating exercise of boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume ... all that he might come to this! ... that he might be interred just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden!

The bereaved father wished to transfer his son immediately from the official burial fields, but he could not do it yet. As soon as possible it should be done, and he would erect for him a mausoleum fit for a king... . And what good would that do? He would merely be changing the location of a ma.s.s of bones, but his body, his physical semblance--all that had contributed to the charm of his personality would be mixed with the earth. The son of the rich Desnoyers would have become an inseparable part of a poor field in Champagne. Ah, the pity of it all! And for this, had he worked so hard and so long to acc.u.mulate his millions? ...

He could never know how Julio's death had happened. n.o.body could tell him his last words. He was ignorant as to whether his end had been instantaneous, overwhelming--his idol going out of the world with his usual gay smile on his lips, or whether he had endured long hours of agony abandoned in the field, writhing like a reptile or pa.s.sing through phases of h.e.l.lish torment before collapsing in merciful oblivion. He was also ignorant of just how much was beneath this mound--whether an entire body discreetly touched by the hand of Death, or an a.s.semblage of shapeless remnants from the devastating hurricane of steel! ... And he would never see him again! And that Julio who had been filling his thoughts would become simply a memory, a name that would live while his parents lived, fading away, little by little, after they had disappeared! ...

He was startled to hear a moan, a sob... . Then he recognized dully that they were his own, that he had been accompanying his reflections with groans of grief.

His wife was still at his feet, kneeling, alone with her heartbreak, fixing her dry eyes on the cross with a gaze of hypnotic tenacity.

... There was her son near her knees, lying stretched out as she had so often watched him when sleeping in his cradle! ... The father's sobs were wringing her heart, too, but with an unbearable depression, without his wrathful exasperation. And she would never see him again!

... Could it be possible! ...

Chichi's presence interrupted the despairing thoughts of her parents.

She had run to the automobile, and was returning with an armful of flowers. She hung a wreath on the cross and placed a great spray of blossoms at the foot. Then she scattered a shower of petals over the entire surface of the grave, sadly, intensely, as though performing a religious rite, accompanying the offering with her outspoken thoughts--"For you who so loved life for its beauties and pleasures!

... for you who knew so well how to make yourself beloved!" ... And as her tears fell, her affectionate memories were as full of admiration as of grief. Had she not been his sister, she would have liked to have been his beloved.

And having exhausted the rain of flower-petals, she wandered away so as not to disturb the lamentations of her parents.

Before the uselessness of his bitter plaints, Don Marcelo's former dominant character had come to life, raging against destiny.

He looked at the horizon where so often he had imagined the adversary to be, and clenched his fists in a paroxysm of fury. His disordered mind believed that it saw the Beast, the Nemesis of humanity. And how much longer would the evil be allowed to go unpunished? ...