Tchernoff described the Apocalyptic beast rising from the depths of the sea. He was like a leopard, his feet like those of a bear, his mouth like the snout of a lion. He had seven heads and ten horns. And upon the horns were ten crowns, and upon each of his heads the name of a blasphemy. The evangelist did not say just what these blasphemies were, perhaps they differed according to the epochs, modified every thousand years when the beast made a new apparition. The Russian seemed to be reading those that were flaming on the heads of the monster--blasphemies against humanity, against justice, against all that makes life sweet and bearable. "Might is superior to Right!" ... "The weak should not exist." ... "Be harsh in order to be great." ... And the Beast in all its hideousness was attempting to govern the world and make mankind render him homage!
"But the four hors.e.m.e.n?" persisted Desnoyers.
The four hors.e.m.e.n were preceding the appearance of the monster in John"s vision.
The seven seals of the book of mystery were broken by the Lamb in the presence of the great throne where was seated one who shone like jasper.
The rainbow round about the throne was in sight like unto an emerald.
Twenty-four thrones were in a semicircle around the great throne, and upon them twenty-four elders with white robes and crowns of gold. Four enormous animals, covered with eyes and each having six wings, seemed to be guarding the throne. The sounding of trumpets was greeting the breaking of the first seal.
"Come and see," cried one of the beasts in a stentorian tone to the vision-seeing poet... . And the first horseman appeared on a white horse. In his hand he carried a bow, and a crown was given unto him.
He was Conquest, according to some, the Plague according to others. He might be both things at the same time. He wore a crown, and that was enough for Tchernoff.
"Come forth," shouted the second animal, removing his thousand eyes. And from the broken seal leaped a flame-colored steed. His rider brandished over his head an enormous sword. He was War. Peace fled from the world before his furious gallop; humanity was going to be exterminated.
And when the third seal was broken, another of the winged animals bellowed like a thunder clap, "Come and see!" And John saw a black horse. He who mounted it held in his hand a scale in order to weigh the maintenance of mankind. He was Famine.
The fourth animal saluted the breaking of the fourth seal with a great roaring--"Come and see!" And there appeared a pale-colored horse. His rider was called Death, and power was given him to destroy with the sword and with hunger and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
The four hors.e.m.e.n were beginning their mad, desolating course over the heads of terrified humanity.
Tchernoff was describing the four scourges of the earth exactly as though he were seeing them. The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire. His Oriental countenance was contracted with hatred as if smelling out his victims. While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the bra.s.s quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases--those of private life as well as those which envenom the wounded soldier on the battlefield.
The second horseman on the red steed was waving the enormous, two-edged sword over his hair bristling with the swiftness of his course. He was young, but the fierce scowl and the scornful mouth gave him a look of implacable ferocity. His garments, blown open by the motion of his wild race, disclosed the form of a muscular athlete.
Bald, old and horribly skinny was the third horseman bouncing up and down on the rawboned back of his black steed. His shrunken legs clanked against the thin flanks of the lean beast. In one withered hand he was holding the scales, symbol of the scarcity of food that was going to become as valuable as gold.
The knees of the fourth horseman, sharp as spurs, were p.r.i.c.king the ribs of the pale horse. His parchment-like skin betrayed the lines and hollows of his skeleton. The front of his skull-like face was twisted with the sardonic laugh of destruction. His cane-like arms were whirling aloft a gigantic sickle. From his angular shoulders was hanging a ragged, filthy shroud.
And the furious cavalcade was pa.s.sing like a hurricane over the immense a.s.semblage of human beings. The heavens showed above their heads, a livid, dark-edged cloud from the west. Horrible monsters and deformities were swarming in spirals above the furious horde, like a repulsive escort. Poor Humanity, crazed with fear, was fleeing in all directions on hearing the thundering pace of the Plague, War, Hunger and Death. Men and women, young and old, were knocking each other down and falling to the ground overwhelmed by terror, astonishment and desperation. And the white horse, the red, the black and the pale, were crushing all with their relentless, iron tread--the athletic man was hearing the crashing of his broken ribs, the nursing babe was writhing at its mother"s breast, and the aged and feeble were closing their eyes forever with a childlike sob.
"G.o.d is asleep, forgetting the world," continued the Russian. "It will be a long time before he awakes, and while he sleeps the four feudal hors.e.m.e.n of the Beast will course through the land as its only lords."
Tchernoff was overpowered by the intensity of his dramatic vision.
Springing from his seat, he paced up and down with great strides; but his picture of the fourfold catastrophe revealed by the gloomy poet"s trance, seemed to him very weak indeed. A great painter had given corporeal form to these terrible dreams.
"I have a book," he murmured, "a rare book." ...
And suddenly he left the studio and went to his own quarters. He wanted to bring the book to show to his friends. Argensola accompanied him, and they returned in a few minutes with the volume, leaving the doors open behind them, so as to make a stronger current of air among the hollows of the facades and the interior patio.
Tchernoff placed his precious book under the light. It was a volume printed in 1511, with Latin text and engravings. Desnoyers read the t.i.tle, "The Apocalypse Ill.u.s.trated." The engravings were by Albert Durer, a youthful effort, when the master was only twenty-seven years old. The three were fascinated by the picture portraying the wild career of the Apocalyptic hors.e.m.e.n. The quadruple scourge, on fantastic mounts, seemed to be precipitating itself with a realistic sweep, crushing panic-stricken humanity.
Suddenly something happened which startled the three men from their contemplative admiration--something unusual, indefinable, a dreadful sound which seemed to enter directly into their brains without pa.s.sing through their ears--a clutch at the heart. Instinctively they knew that something very grave had just happened.
They stared at each other silently for a few interminable seconds.
Through the open door, a cry of alarm came up from the patio.
With a common impulse, the three ran to the interior window, but before reaching them, the Russian had a presentiment.
"My neighbor! ... It must be my neighbor. Perhaps she has killed herself!"
Looking down, they could see lights below, people moving around a form stretched out on the tiled floor. The alarm had instantly filled all the court windows, for it was a sleepless night--a night of nervous apprehension when everyone was keeping a sad vigil.
"She has killed herself," said a voice which seemed to come up from a well. "The German woman has committed suicide."
The explanation of the concierge leaped from window to window up to the top floor.
The Russian was shaking his head with a fatalistic expression. The unhappy woman had not taken the death-leap of her own accord. Someone had intensified her desperation, someone had pushed her... . The hors.e.m.e.n! The four hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse! ... Already they were in the saddle! Already they were beginning their merciless gallop of destruction!
The blind forces of evil were about to be let loose throughout the world.
The agony of humanity, under the brutal sweep of the four hors.e.m.e.n, was already begun!
PART II
CHAPTER I
WHAT DON MARCELO ENVIED
Upon being convinced that war really was inevitable, the elder Desnoyers was filled with amazement. Humanity had gone crazy. Was it possible that war could happen in these days of so many railroads, so many merchant marines, so many inventions, so much activity developed above and below the earth? ... The nations would ruin themselves forever. They were now accustomed to luxuries and necessities unknown a century ago.
Capital was master of the world, and war was going to wipe it out. In its turn, war would be wiped out in a few months" time through lack of funds to sustain it. His soul of a business man revolted before the hundreds of thousands of millions that this foolhardy event was going to convert into smoke and slaughter.
As his indignation had to fix upon something close at hand, he made his own countrymen responsible for this insanity. Too much talk about la revanche! The very idea of worrying for forty-four years over the two lost provinces when the nation was mistress of enormous and undeveloped lands in other countries! ... Now they were going to pay the penalty for such exasperating and clamorous foolishness.
For him war meant disaster writ large. He had no faith in his country.
France"s day had pa.s.sed. Now the victors were of the Northern peoples, and especially that Germany which he had seen so close, admiring with a certain terror its discipline and its rigorous organization. The former working-man felt the conservative and selfish instinct of all those who have ama.s.sed millions. He scorned political ideals, but through cla.s.s interest he had of late years accepted the declarations against the scandals of the government. What could a corrupt and disorganized Republic do against the solidest and strongest empire in the world? ...
"We are going to our deaths," he said to himself. "Worse than "70! ...
We are going to see horrible things!"
The good order and enthusiasm with which the French responded to their country"s call and transformed themselves into soldiers were most astonishing to him. This moral shock made his national faith begin to revive. The great majority of Frenchmen were good after all; the nation was as valiant as in former times. Forty-four years of suffering and alarm had developed their old bravery. But the leaders? Where were they going to get leaders to march to victory? ...
Many others were asking themselves the same question. The silence of the democratic government was keeping the country in complete ignorance of their future commanders. Everybody saw the army increasing from hour to hour: very few knew the generals. One name was beginning to be repeated from mouth to mouth, "Joffre ... Joffre." His first pictures made the curious crowds struggle to get a glimpse of them. Desnoyers studied them very carefully. "He looks like a very capable person." His methodical instincts were gratified by the grave and confident look of the general of the Republic. Suddenly he felt the great confidence that efficient-looking bank directors always inspired in him. He could entrust his interests to this gentleman, sure that he would not act impulsively.
Finally, against his will, Desnoyers was drawn into the whirlpool of enthusiasm and emotion. Like everyone around him, he lived minutes that were hours, and hours that were years. Events kept on overlapping each other; within a week the world seemed to have made up for its long period of peace.
The old man fairly lived in the street, attracted by the spectacle of the mult.i.tude of civilians saluting the mult.i.tude of uniformed men departing for the seat of war.
At night he saw the processions pa.s.sing through the boulevards. The tricolored flag was fluttering its colors under the electric lights. The cafes were overflowing with people, sending forth from doors and windows the excited, musical notes of patriotic songs. Suddenly, amidst applause and cheers, the crowd would make an opening in the street. All Europe was pa.s.sing here; all Europe--less the arrogant enemy--and was saluting France in her hour of danger with hearty spontaneity. Flags of different nations were filing by, of all tints of the rainbow, and behind them were the Russians with bright and mystical eyes; the English, with heads uncovered, intoning songs of religious gravity; the Greeks and Roumanians of aquiline profile; the Scandinavians, white and red; the North Americans, with the noisiness of a somewhat puerile enthusiasm; the Hebrews without a country, friends of the nation of socialistic revolutions; the Italians, as spirited as a choir of heroic tenors; the Spanish and South Americans, tireless in their huzzas. They were students and apprentices who were completing their courses in the schools and workshops, and refugees who, like shipwrecked mariners, had sought shelter on the hospitable strand of Paris. Their cheers had no special significance, but they were all moved by their desire to show their love for the Republic. And Desnoyers, touched by the sight, felt that France was still of some account in the world, that she yet exercised a moral force among the nations, and that her joys and sorrows were still of interest to humanity.
"In Berlin and Vienna, too," he said to himself, "they must also be cheering enthusiastically at this moment ... but Germans only, no others. a.s.suredly no foreigner is joining in their demonstrations."
The nation of the Revolution, legislator of the rights of mankind, was harvesting the grat.i.tude of the throngs, but was beginning to feel a certain remorse before the enthusiasm of the foreigners who were offering their blood for France. Many were lamenting that the government should delay twenty days, until after they had finished the operations of mobilization, in admitting the volunteers. And he, a Frenchman born, a few hours before, had been mistrusting his country! ...