of privacy when he whined and threatened suicide?
She wondered if Lanny, too, were like that--if it were not the nature of
all conquerors who could not have their way. It seemed to her that
Westerling was beneath the humblest private in his army--beneath even
that fellow with the liver patch on his cheek who had broken the
chandelier in the sport of brutal passion. All sense of her own part was
submerged in the sight of a chief of staff exhibiting no more stoicism
than a petulant, spoiled schoolboy.

While his head was still bent the artillery began its crashing thunders
and the sky became light with flashes. His hands stretched out toward
the range, clenched and pulsing with defiance and command.

"Go in! Go in, as I told you!" he cried. "Stay in, alive or dead! Stay
till I tell you to come out! Stay! I can't do any more! You must do it
now!"

"Then this may be truly the end," thought Marta, "if the assault fails."

And silently she prayed that it would fail; while the flashes lighted
Westerling's set features, imploring success.

No commander was a more prodigal employer of spies than Napoleon. Did he
or any other conqueror ever acknowledge a success due to the despised
outcasts who brought him information? No. The brilliance of
combinations, the stroke of genius of the swift march and the decisive
blow in flank, the splendid charges--these always win in the historian's
narrative and public imagination. Think of any place in the frieze of
the statue of the great leader for that hypocrite, that poor devil in
disguise, whose news made the victory possible!

"Good generalship is easy if you know what the enemy is going to do,"
Lanstron remarked to a member of the staff council who said something
complimentary to him. Compliments from subordinates to superiors had not
received Partow's favor and, therefore, not Lanstron's. Eccentric old
Partow had once disparaged the Napoleonic idea as a fetich which had
nothing to do with modern military efficiency, and he had added that if
Napoleon were alive to-day nobody would be so prompt to see it as
Napoleon himself. If he did not, and tried to incarnate the idea of the
time by making himself the supreme genius of war, he would fail, because
ability was too nearly universal and the age too big for another
Colossus.

Through Marta's information every detail of Westerling's plan outlined
itself to the trained minds of the Brown staff. Amazement at their
dependence on an under