precedent, had won for him the goal of his ambition. He had passed over
the heads of older men, whom many thought his betters, rather
ruthlessly. Those who would serve loyally he drew around him; those who
were bitter he crowded out of his way.

The immortals would have been still more lonely, or at least confused,
in the adjoining room occupied by Westerling. There the walls were hung
with the silhouettes of infantrymen, such as you see at manoeuvres, in
different positions of firing, crouching in shallow trenches, standing
in deep trenches, or lying flat on the stomach on level earth. Another
silhouette, that of an infantryman running, was peppered with white
points in arms and legs and parts of the body that were not vital, to
show in how many places a man may be hit with a small-calibre bullet and
still survive.

The immortals had small armies. Even the mustache and imperial had only
three hundred thousand in the great battle of the last war. In this day
of universal European conscription, if Westerling were to win it would
be with five millions--five hundred thousand more than when he faced a
young Brown officer over the wreck of an aeroplane--including the
reserves; each man running, firing, crouching, as was the figure on the
wall, and trying to give more of the white points that peppered the
silhouette than he received.

Now Turcas, the assistant vice-chief of staff, and Bouchard, chief of
the division of intelligence, standing on either side of Westerling's
desk, awaited his decisions on certain matters which they had brought to
his attention. Both were older than Westerling, Turcas by ten and
Bouchard by fifteen years.

Turcas had been strongly urged in inner army circles for the place that
Westerling had won, but his manner and his inability to court influence
were against him A lath of a man and stiff as a lath, pale, with thin,
tightly-drawn lips, quiet, steel-gray eyes, a tracery of blue veins
showing on his full temples, he suggested the ascetic no less than the
soldier, while his incisive brevity of speech, flavored now and then
with pungent humor, without any inflection in his dry voice, was in
keeping with his appearance. He arrived with the clerks in the morning
and frequently remained after they were gone. His life was an affair of
calculated units of time; his habits of diet and exercise all regulated
for the end of service. His subordinates, whose respect he held by the
power of his intellect,