roughness and celerity. Those who
died under it simply left one more cot free for the others that kept
on coming. Desnoyers saw bloody baskets filled with shapeless masses of
flesh, strips of skin, broken bones, entire limbs. The orderlies were
carrying these terrible remnants to the foot of the park in order to
bury them in a little plot which had been Chichi's favorite reading
nook.

Pairs of soldiers were carrying out objects wrapped in sheets which
the owner recognized as his. These were the dead, and the park was soon
converted into a cemetery. No longer was the little retreat large enough
to hold the corpses and the severed remains from the operations. New
grave trenches were being opened near by. The Germans armed with shovels
were pressing into service a dozen of the farmer-prisoners to aid in
unloading the dead. Now they were bringing them down by the cartload,
dumping them in like the rubbish from some demolished building. Don
Marcelo felt an abnormal delight in contemplating this increasing
number of vanquished enemies, yet he grieved at the same time that this
precipitation of intruders should be deposited forever on his property.

At nightfall, overwhelmed by so many emotions, he again suffered the
torments of hunger. All day long he had eaten nothing but the crust of
bread found in the kitchen by the Warden's wife. The rest he had left
for her and her daughter. A distress as harrowing to him as his hunger
was the sight of poor Georgette's shocked despondency. She was always
trying to escape from his presence in an agony of shame.

"Don't let the Master see me!" she would cry, hiding her face. Since
his presence seemed to recall more vividly the memory of her assaults,
Desnoyers tried, while in the lodge, to avoid going near her.

Desperate with the gnawings of his empty stomach, he accosted several
doctors who were speaking French, but all in vain. They would not listen
to him, and when he repeated his petitions they pushed him roughly out
of their way. . . . He was not going to perish with hunger in the midst
of his riches! Those people were eating; the indifferent nurses had
established themselves in his kitchen. . . . But the time passed
on without encountering anybody who would take pity on this old man
dragging himself weakly from one place to another, in the misery of an
old age intensified by despair, and suffering in every part of the body,
the results of the blows of the night before. He now k