Then he summed up his opinion.
"Imperialism will have to be crushed for the sake of the tranquillity of the world; the great war machine which menaces the peace of nations will have to be suppressed. Since 1870, we have all been living in dread of it. For forty years, the war has been averted, but in all that time, what apprehension!" ...
What was most irritating Tchernoff was the moral lesson born of this situation which had ended by overwhelming the world--the glorification of power, the sanctification of success, the triumph of materialism, the respect for the accomplished fact, the mockery of the n.o.blest sentiments as though they were merely sonorous and absurd phrases, the reversal of moral values ... a philosophy of bandits which pretended to be the last word of progress, and was no more than a return to despotism, violence, and the barbarity of the most primitive epochs of history.
While he was longing for the suppression of the representatives of this tendency, he would not, therefore, demand the extermination of the German people.
"This nation has great merits jumbled with bad conditions inherited from a not far-distant, barbarous past. It possesses the genius of organization and work, and is able to lend great service to humanity.
... But first it is necessary to give it a douche--the douche of downfall. The Germans are mad with pride and their madness threatens the security of the world. When those who have poisoned them with the illusion of universal hegemony have disappeared, when misfortune has freshened their imagination and transformed them into a community of humans, neither superior nor inferior to the rest of mankind, they will become a tolerant people, useful ... and who knows but they may even prove sympathetic!"
According to Tchernoff, there was not in existence to-day a more dangerous nation. Its political organization was converting it into a warrior horde, educated by kicks and submitted to continual humiliations in order that the willpower which always resists discipline might be completely nullified.
"It is a nation where all receive blows and desire to give them to those lower down. The kick that the Kaiser gives is transmitted from back to back down to the lowest rung of the social ladder. The blows begin in the school and are continued in the barracks, forming part of the education. The apprenticeship of the Prussian Crown Princes has always consisted in receiving fisticuffs and cowhidings from their progenitor, the king. The Kaiser beats his children, the officer his soldiers, the father his wife and children, the schoolmaster his pupils, and when the superior is not able to give blows, he subjects those under him to the torment of moral insult."
On this account, when they abandoned their ordinary avocations, taking up arms in order to fall upon another human group, they did so with implacable ferocity.
"Each one of them," continued the Russian, "carries on his back the marks of kicks, and when his turn comes, he seeks consolation in pa.s.sing them on to the unhappy creatures whom war puts into his power. This nation of war-lords, as they love to call themselves, aspires to lordship, but outside of the country. Within it, are the ones who least appreciate human dignity and, therefore, long vehemently to spread their dominant will over the face of the earth, pa.s.sing from lackeys to lords."
Suddenly Don Marcelo stopped going with such frequency to the studio. He was now haunting the home and office of the senator, because this friend had upset his tranquillity. Lacour had been much depressed since the heir to the family glory had broken through the protecting paternal net in order to go to war.
One night, while dining with the Desnoyers family, an idea popped into his head which filled him with delight. "Would you like to see your son?" He needed to see Rene and had begun negotiating for a permit from headquarters which would allow him to visit the front. His son belonged to the same army division as Julio; perhaps their camps were rather far apart, but an automobile makes many revolutions before it reaches the end of its journey.
It was not necessary to say more. Desnoyers instantly felt the most overmastering desire to see his boy, since, for so many months, he had had to content himself with reading his letters and studying the snap shot which one of his comrades had made of his soldier son.
From that time on, he besieged the senator as though he were a political supporter desiring an office. He visited him in the mornings in his home, invited him to dinner every evening, and hunted him down in the salons of the Luxembourg. Before the first word of greeting could be exchanged, his eyes were formulating the same interrogation... . "When will you get that permit?"
The great man could only reply by lamenting the indifference of the military department toward the civilian element; it always had been inimical toward parliamentarism.
"Besides, Joffre is showing himself most unapproachable; he does not encourage the curious... . To-morrow I will see the President."
A few days later, he arrived at the house in the avenue Victor Hugo, with an expression of radiant satisfaction that filled Don Marcelo with joy.
"It has come?"
"It has come... . We start the day after to-morrow."
Desnoyers went the following afternoon to the studio in the rue de la Pompe.
"I am going to-morrow!"
The artist was very eager to accompany him. Would it not be possible for him to go, too, as secretary to the senator? ... Don Marcelo smiled benevolently. The authorization was only for Lacour and one companion.
He was the one who was going to pose as secretary, valet or utility man to his future relative-in-law.
At the end of the afternoon, he left the studio, accompanied to the elevator by the lamentations of Argensola. To think that he could not join that expedition! ... He believed that he had lost the opportunity to paint his masterpiece.
Just outside of his home, he met Tchernoff. Don Marcelo was in high good humor. The certainty that he was soon going to see his son filled him with boyish good spirits. He almost embraced the Russian in spite of his slovenly aspect, his tragic beard and his enormous hat which made every one turn to look after him.
At the end of the avenue, the Arc de Triomphe stood forth against a sky crimsoned by the sunset. A red cloud was floating around the monument, reflected on its whiteness with purpling palpitations.
Desnoyers recalled the four hors.e.m.e.n, and all that Argensola had told him before presenting him to the Russian.
"Blood!" shouted jubilantly. "All the sky seems to be blood-red... .
It is the apocalyptic beast who has received his death-wound. Soon we shall see him die."
Tchernoff smiled, too, but his was a melancholy smile.
"No; the beast does not die. It is the eternal companion of man. It hides, spouting blood, forty ... sixty ... a hundred years, but eventually it reappears. All that we can hope is that its wound may be long and deep, that it may remain hidden so long that the generation that now remembers it may never see it again."
CHAPTER III
WAR
Don Marcelo was climbing up a mountain covered with woods.
The forest presented a tragic desolation. A silent tempest had installed itself therein, placing everything in violent unnatural positions. Not a single tree still preserved its upright form and abundant foliage as in the days of peace. The groups of pines recalled the columns of ruined temples. Some were still standing erect, but without their crowns, like shafts that might have lost their capitals; others were pierced like the mouthpiece of a flute, or like pillars struck by a thunderbolt. Some had splintery threads hanging around their cuts like used toothpicks.
A sinister force of destruction had been raging among these beeches, spruce and oaks. Great tangles of their cut boughs were cluttering the ground, as though a band of gigantic woodcutters had just pa.s.sed by. The trunks had been severed a little distance from the ground with a clean and glistening stroke, as though with a single blow of the axe. Around the disinterred roots were quant.i.ties of stones mixed with sod, stones that had been sleeping in the recesses of the earth and had been brought to the surface by explosions.
At intervals--gleaming among the trees or blocking the roadway with an importunity which required some zigzagging--was a series of pools, all alike, of regular geometrical circles. To Desnoyers, they seemed like sunken basins for the use of the invisible t.i.tans who had been hewing the forest. Their great depth extended to their very edges. A swimmer might dive into these lagoons without ever touching bottom. Their water was greenish, still water--rain water with a sc.u.m of vegetation perforated by the respiratory bubbles of the little organisms coming to life in its vitals.
Bordering the hilly pathway through the pines, were many mounds with crosses of wood--tombs of French soldiers topped with little tricolored flags. Upon these moss-covered graves were the old kepis of the gunners.
The ferocious wood-chopper, in destroying this woods, had also blindly demolished many of the ants swarming around the trunks.
Don Marcelo was wearing leggings, a broad hat, and on his shoulders, a fine poncho arranged like a shawl--garments which recalled his far-distant life on the ranch. Behind him came Lacour trying to preserve his senatorial dignity in spite of his gasps and puffs of fatigue.
He also was wearing high boots and a soft hat, but he had kept to his solemn frock-coat in order not to abandon entirely his parliamentary uniform. Before them marched two captains as guides.
They were on a mountain occupied by the French artillery, and were climbing to the top where were hidden cannons and cannons, forming a line some miles in length. The German artillery had caused the woodland ruin around the visitors, in their return of the French fire. The circular pools were the hollows dug by the German sh.e.l.ls in the limy, non-porous soil which preserved all the runnels of rain.
The visiting party had left their automobile at the foot of the mountain. One of the officers, a former artilleryman, explained this precaution to them. It was necessary to climb this roadway very cautiously. They were within reach of the enemy, and an automobile might attract the attention of their gunners.
"A little fatiguing, this climb," he continued. "Courage, Senator Lacour! ... We are almost there."
They began to meet artillerymen, many of them not in uniform but wearing the military kepis. They looked like workmen from a metal factory, foundrymen with jackets and pantaloons of corduroy. Their arms were bare, and some had put on wooden shoes in order to get over the mud with greater security. They were former iron laborers, mobilized into the artillery reserves. Their sergeants had been factory overseers, and many of them officials, engineers and proprietors of big workshops.
Suddenly the excursionists stumbled upon the iron inmates of the woods.
When these spoke, the earth trembled, the air shuddered, and the native inhabitants of the forest, the crows, rabbits, b.u.t.terflies and ants, fled in terrified flight, trying to hide themselves from the fearful convulsion which seemed to be bringing the world to an end. Just at present, the bellowing monsters were silent, so that they came upon them unexpectedly. Something was sticking up out of the greenery like a gray beam; at other times, this apparition would emerge from a conglomeration of dry trunks. Around this obstacle was cleared ground occupied by men who lived, slept and worked about this huge manufactory on wheels.
The senator, who had written verse in his youth and composed oratorical poetry when dedicating various monuments in his district, saw in these solitary men on the mountain side, blackened by the sun and smoke, with naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s and bare arms, a species of priests dedicated to the service of a fatal divinity that was receiving from their hands offerings of enormous explosive capsules, hurling them forth in thunderclaps.
Hidden under the branches, in order to escape the observation of the enemy"s birdmen, the French cannon were scattered among the hills and hollows of the highland range. In this herd of steel, there were enormous pieces with wheels reinforced by metal plates, somewhat like the farming engines which Desnoyers had used on his ranch for plowing.
Like smaller beasts, more agile and playful in their incessant yelping, the groups of "75 were mingled with the terrific monsters.
The two captains had received from the general of their division orders to show Senator Lacour minutely the workings of the artillery, and Lacour was accepting their observations with corresponding gravity while his eyes roved from side to side in the hope of recognizing his son.
The interesting thing for him was to see Rene ... but recollecting the official pretext of his journey, he followed submissively from cannon to cannon, listening patiently to all explanations.