he through
confusion as through mud, the worker who measures his strength against
toil which is greater than he, and who never escapes from hardships,
the serf of these days--I see him as if he were here. He is coming out
of his shop at the bottom of the court. He wears a square cap. One
makes out the shining dust of old age strewn in his stubbly beard. He
chews and smokes his foul and noisy pipe. He nods his head; with a
fine and sterling smile he says, "There's always been war, so there'll
always be."

And all around him people nod their heads and think the same, in the
poor lonely well of their heart. They hold the conviction anchored to
the bottom of their brains that things can never change any more. They
are like posts and paving stones, distinct but cemented together; they
believe that the life of the world is a sort of great stone monument,
and they obey, obscurely and indistinctly, everything which commands;
and they do not look afar, in spite of the little children. And I
remember the readiness there was to yield themselves, body and soul, to
serried resignation. Then, too, there is alcohol which murders; wine,
which drowns.

One does not see the kings; one only sees the reflection of them on the
multitude.

There are bemusings and spells of fascination, of which we are the
object. I think, fascinated.

My lips religiously recite a passage in a book which a young man has
just read to me, while I, quite a child, lean drowsily on the kitchen
table--"Roland is not dead. Through long centuries our splendid
ancestor, the warrior of warriors, has been seen riding over the
mountains and hills across the France of Charlemagne and Hugh the
Great. At all times of great national disaster he has risen before the
people's eyes, like an omen of victory and glory, with his lustrous
helmet and his sword. He has appeared and has halted like a
soldier-archangel over the flaming horizon of conflagrations or the
dark mounds of battle and pestilence, leaning over his horse's winged
mane, fantastically swaying as though the earth itself were inebriate
with pride. Everywhere he has been seen, reviving the ideals and the
prowess of the Past. He was seen in Austria, at the time of the
eternal quarrel between Pope and Emperor; he was seen above the strange
stirrings of Scythians and Arabs, and the glowing civilizations which
arose and fell like waves around the Mediterranean. Great Roland can
never die."

And af