see not,
ears but they hear not; arms which they do not use; and they are
thoughtless because they let others do their thinking! And the other
half of this same multitude is yonder, looking for Man and looked for
by Man, in the big black furrows where blood is scattered and the human
race is disappearing. And still farther away, in another part of the
world, the same throne-like platforms are crushing into the same
immense areas of men; and the same gilded servants of royalty are
scattering broadcast words which are only a translation of those which
fell on us here.

Some women in mourning are hardly stains on this gloomy unity. They
wander and turn round in the open spaces, and are the same as they were
in ancient times. They are not of any age or any century, these
murdered souls, covered with black veils; they are you and I.

My vision was true from top to bottom. The evil dream has become a
concrete tragi-comedy which is worse. It is inextricable, heavy,
crushing. I flounder from detail to detail of it; it drags me along.
Behold what is. Behold, therefore, what will be--exploitation to the
last breath, to the limit of wearing out, to death perfected!

I have overtaken Marie. By her side I feel more defenseless than when
I am alone. While we watch the festival, the shining hurly-burly,
murmuring and eulogistic, the Baroness espies me, smiles and signs to
me to go to her. So I go, and in the presence of all she pays me some
compliment or other on my service at the front. She is dressed in
black velvet and wears her white hair like a diadem. Twenty-five years
of vassalage bow me before her and fill me with silence. And I salute
the Gozlans also, in a way which I feel is humble in spite of myself,
for they are all-powerful over me, and they make Marie an allowance
without which we could not live properly. I am no more than a man.

I see Tudor, whose eyes were damaged in Artois, hesitating and groping.
The Baroness has found a little job for him in the castle kitchens.

"Isn't she good to the wounded soldiers?" they are saying around me.
"She's a real benefactor!"

This time I say aloud, "_There_ is the real benefactor," and I point to
the ruin which the young man has become whom we used to know, to the
miserable, darkened biped whose eyelids flutter in the daylight, who
leans weakly against a tree in face of the festive crowd, as if it were
an execution post.

"Yes--after all--yes, yes," the peop