d 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 appetites, for beating somebody and
ordering them about after having passed 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,