of varying irregularity. At
times, the twinkling radiance of a heavenly body appeared to broaden the
rays of light, almost hypnotizing them.

The Russian, without coming out of his revery, availed himself of
another glass. Then he smiled with cruel irony, his bearded face taking
on the semblance of a tragic mask peeping between the curtains of the
night.

"I wonder what those men up there are thinking!" he muttered. "I wonder
if any star knows that Bismarck ever existed! . . . I wonder if the
planets are aware of the divine mission of the German nation!"

And he continued laughing.

Some far-away and uncertain noise disturbed the stillness of the night,
slipping through some of the chinks that cut the immense plain of roofs.
The three turned their heads so as to hear better. . . . The sound
of voices cut through the thick silence of night--a masculine chorus
chanting a hymn, simple, monotonous and solemn. They guessed at what it
must be, although they could not hear very well. Various single notes
floating with greater intensity on the night wind, enabled Argensola to
piece together the short song, ending in a melodious, triumphant yell--a
true war song:

C'est l'Alsace et la Lorraine,
C'est l'Alsace qu'il nous faut,
Oh, oh, oh, oh.

A new band of men was going away through the streets below, toward the
railway station, the gateway of the war. They must be from the outlying
districts, perhaps from the country, and passing through silence-wrapped
Paris, they felt like singing of the great national hope, that those who
were watching behind the dark facades might feel comforted, knowing that
they were not alone.

"Just as it is in the opera," said Julio listening to the last notes of
the invisible chorus dying away into the night.

Tchernoff continued drinking, but with a distracted air, his eyes fixed
on the red cloud that floated over the roofs.

The two friends conjectured his mental labor from his concentrated look,
and the low exclamations which were escaping him like the echoes of an
interior monologue. Suddenly he leaped from thought to word without any
forewarning, continuing aloud the course of his reasoning.

"And when the sun arises in a few hours, the world will see coursing
through its fields the four horsemen, enemies of mankind. . . . Already
their wild steeds are pawing the ground with impatience; already the
ill-omened riders have come together and are exchanging the last words