ns Desnoyers
recognized one of the dying. It was the secretary to His Excellency, the
Socialist professor who had shut him in the cellar vaults.

At the sight of the owner of the castle he smiled as though he had met a
comrade. His was the only familiar face among all those people who were
speaking his language. He was ghastly in hue, with sunken features and
an impalpable glaze spreading over his eyes. He had no visible wounds,
but from under the cloak spread over his abdomen his torn intestines
exhaled a fatal warning. The presence of Don Marcelo made him guess
where they had brought him, and little by little he co-ordinated his
recollections. As though the old gentleman might be interested in the
whereabouts of his comrades, he told him all he knew in a weak and
strained voice. . . . Bad luck for their brigade! They had reached the
front at a critical moment for the reserve troops. Commandant Blumhardt
had died at the very first, a shell of '75 taking off his head. Dead,
too, were all the officers who had lodged in the castle. His Excellency
had had his jaw bone torn off by a fragment of shell. He had seen him
on the ground, howling with pain, drawing a portrait from his breast and
trying to kiss it with his broken mouth. He had himself been hit in
the stomach by the same shell. He had lain forty-two hours on the field
before he was picked up by the ambulance corps. . . .

And with the mania of the University man, whose hobby is to see
everything reasoned out and logically explained, he added in that
supreme moment, with the tenacity of those who die talking:

"Sad war, sir. . . . Many premises are lacking in order to decide who is
the culpable party. . . . When the war is ended they will have to . . .
will have to . . ." And he closed his eyes overcome by the effort.
Desnoyers left the dead man, thinking to himself. Poor fellow! He was
placing the hour of justice at the termination of the war, and meanwhile
hundreds like him were dying, disappearing with all their scruples of
ponderous and disciplined reasoning.

That night there was no sleep on the place. The walls of the lodge
were creaking, the glass crashing and breaking, the two women in the
adjoining room crying out nervously. The noise of the German fire was
beginning to mingle with that of other explosives close at hand. He
surmised that this was the smashing of the French projectiles which were
coming in search of the enemy's artillery above the Marne.