re slowly falling. The women remained
in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated or astride on
garden-chairs, were smoking in front of the door, forming a circle
round a table laden with cups and wineglasses.

Their cigars shone like eyes in the darkness which, minute by minute,
was growing thicker. They had been talking about a frightful accident
which had occurred the night before--two men and three women drowned
before the eyes of the guests in the river opposite.

General de G---- remarked:

"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.

"The horrible, that well-known word, means much more than the
terrible. A frightful accident like this moves, upsets, scares; it
does not horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something
more is needed than the excitation of the soul, something more than
the spectacle of the dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense
of mystery or a sensation of abnormal terror beyond the limits of
nature. A man who dies, even in the most dramatic conditions, does not
excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible, blood is not
horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.

"Hold on! here are two personal examples, which have shown me what is
the meaning of horror:

"It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating towards
Pont-Audemer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting
of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand men in disorder,
disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to re-form at Havre.

"The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
eaten anything since the day before. They were flying rapidly, the
Prussians not being far off.

"All the Norman country, livid, dotted with the shadows of the trees
surrounding the farms, extended under a black sky, heavy and sinister.

"Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight save the confused
sound, soft and undefined, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,
mingled with the vague clink of pottingers or sabers. The men, bent,
round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged
themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed
stride.

"The skin of their hands stuck to the steel of their muskets'
butt-ends, for it was freezing dreadfully that night. I frequently saw
a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefooted, so
much did his foot-gear bruise him; and with every step he left a
little track of b