The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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"But it will have to come to an end, sometime," interpolated Desnoyers.

"Undoubtedly, but who knows when? . . . And in what condition will they
both be when it is all over?" . . .

He was counting upon a rapid finale when it was least expected, through
the exhaustion of one of the contestants, carefully dissimulated until
the last moment.

"Germany will be vanquished," he added with firm conviction. "I do
not know when nor how, but she will fall logically. She failed in her
master-stroke in not entering Paris and overcoming its opposition. All
the trumps in her pack of cards were then played. She did not win, but
continues playing the game because she holds many cards, and she will
prolong it for a long time to come. . . . But what she could not do at
first, she will never be able to do."

For Tchernoff, the final defeat did not mean the destruction of Germany
nor the annihilation of the German people.

"Excessive patriotism irritates me," he pursued. "Hearing people form
plans for the definite extinction of Germany seems to me like listening
to the Pan-Germanists of Berlin when they talk of dividing up the
continents."

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 noblest 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 passing
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, passing 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 horsemen, 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 passed 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 quantities 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 Titans 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 scum 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 shells 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, butterflies 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 breasts 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.

The operators next showed him the servants of these pieces, great oval
cylinders extracted from subterranean storehouses called shelters. These
storage places were deep burrows, oblique wells reinforced with sacks of
stones and wood. They served as a refuge to those off duty, and kept
the munitions away from the enemy's shell. An artilleryman exhibited two
pouches of white cloth, joined together and very full. They looked like
a double sausage and were the charge for one of the large cannons. The
open packet showed some rose-colored leaves, and the senator greatly
admired this dainty paste which looked like an article for the dressing
table instead of one of the most terrible explosives of modern warfare.

"I am sure," said Lacour, "that if I had found one of these delicate
packets on the street, I should have thought that it had been dropped
from some lady's vanity bag, or by some careless clerk from a perfumery
shop . . . anything but an explosive! And with this trifle that looks as
if it were made for the lips, it is possible to blow up an
edifice!" . . .

As they continued their visit of investigation, they came upon a
partially destroyed round tower in the highest part of the mountain.
This was the most dangerous post. From it, an officer was examining
the enemy's line in order to gauge the correctness of the aim of the
gunners. While his comrades were under the ground or hidden by the
branches, he was fulfilling his mission from this visible point.

A short distance from the tower a subterranean passageway opened before
their eyes. They descended through its murky recesses until they found
the various rooms excavated in the ground. One side of the mountain cut
in points formed its exterior facade. Narrow little windows, cut in the
stone, gave light and air to these quarters.

An old commandant in charge of the section came out to meet them.
Desnoyers thought that he must be the floorwalker of some big department
store in Paris. His manners were so exquisite and his voice so suave
that he seemed to be imploring pardon at every word, or addressing a
group of ladies, offering them goods of the latest novelty. But this
impression only lasted a moment. This soldier with gray hair and
near-sighted glasses who, in the midst of war, was retaining his
customary manner of a building director receiving his clients, showed
on moving his arms, some bandages and surgical dressings within his
sleeves, He was wounded in both wrists by the explosion of a shell, but
he was, nevertheless, sticking to his post.

"A devil of a honey-tongued, syrupy gentleman!" mused Don Marcelo. "Yet
he is undoubtedly an exceptional person!"

By this time, they had entered into the main office, a vast room which
received its light through a horizontal window about ten feet wide and
only a palm and a half high, reminding one of the open space between the
slats of a Venetian blind. Below it was a pine table filled with papers
and surrounded by stools. When occupying one of these seats, one's eyes
could sweep the entire plain. On the walls were electric apparatus,
acoustic tubes and telephones--many telephones.

The Commandant sorted and piled up the papers, offering the stools with
drawing-room punctilio.

"Here, Senator Lacour."

Desnoyers, humble attendant, took a seat at his side. The Commandant
now appeared to be the manager of a theatre, preparing to exhibit an
extraordinary show. He spread upon the table an enormous paper which
reproduced all the features of the plain extended before them--roads,
towns, fields, heights and valleys. Upon this map was a triangular group
of red lines in the form of an open fan; the vertex represented the
place where they were, and the broad part of the triangle was the limit
of the horizon which they were sweeping with their eyes.

"We are going to fire at that grove," said the artilleryman, pointing
to one end of the map. "There it is," he continued, designating a little
dark line. "Take your glasses."

But before they could adjust the binoculars, the Commandant placed a new
paper on top of the map. It was an enormous and somewhat hazy photograph
upon whose plan appeared a fan of red lines like the other one.

"Our aviators," explained the gunner courteously, "have taken this
morning some views of the enemy's positions. This is an enlargement from
our photographic laboratory. . . . According to this information, there
are two German regiments encamped in that wood."

Don Marcelo saw on the print the spot of woods, and within it white
lines which represented roads, and groups of little squares which were
blocks of houses in a village. He believed he must be in an aeroplane
contemplating the earth from a height of three thousand feet. Then he
raised the glasses to his eyes, following the direction of one of the
red lines, and saw enlarged in the circle of the glass a black bar,
somewhat like a heavy line of ink--the grove, the refuge of the foe.

"Whenever you say, Senator Lacour, we will begin," said the Commandant,
reaching the topmost notch of his courtesy. "Are you ready?"

Desnoyers smiled slightly. For what was his illustrious friend to
make himself ready? What difference could it possibly make to a mere
spectator, much interested in the novelty of the show? . . .

There sounded behind them numberless bells, gongs that called and gongs
that answered. The acoustic tubes seemed to swell out with the gallop
of words. The electric wire filled the silence of the room with the
palpitations of its mysterious life. The bland Chief was no longer
occupied with his guests. They conjectured that he was behind them, his
mouth at the telephone, conversing with various officials some distance
off. Yet the urbane and well-spoken hero was not abandoning for one
moment his candied courtesy.

"Will you be kind enough to tell me when you are ready to begin?" they
heard him saying to a distant officer. "I shall be much pleased to
transmit the order."

Don Marcelo felt a slight nervous tremor near one of his legs; it was
Lecour, on the qui vive over the approaching novelty. They were going
to begin firing; something was going to happen that he had never seen
before. The cannons were above their heads; the roughly vaulted roof
was going to tremble like the deck of a ship when they shot over it. The
room with its acoustic tubes and its vibrations from the telephones was
like the bridge of a vessel at the moment of clearing for action. The
noise that it was going to make! . . . A few seconds flitted by that
to them seemed unusually long . . . and then suddenly a sound like
a distant peal of thunder which appeared to come from the clouds.
Desnoyers no longer felt the nervous twitter against his knee. The
senator seemed surprised; his expression seemed to say, "And is that
all?" . . . The heaps of earth above them had deadened the report, so
that the discharge of the great machine seemed no more than the blow
of a club upon a mattress. Far more impressive was the scream of the
projectile sounding at a great height but displacing the air with such
violence that its waves reached even to the window.

It went flying . . . flying, its roar lessening. Some time passed before
they noticed its effects, and the two friends began to believe that
it must have been lost in space. "It will not strike . . . it will not
strike," they were thinking. Suddenly there surged up on the horizon,
exactly in the spot indicated over the blur of the woods, a tremendous
column of smoke, a whirling tower of black vapor followed by a volcanic
explosion.

"How dreadful it must be to be there!" said the senator.

He and Desnoyers were experiencing a sensation of animal joy, a selfish
hilarity in seeing themselves in such a safe place several yards
underground.

"The Germans are going to reply at any moment," said Don Marcelo to his
friend.

The senator was of the same opinion. Undoubtedly they would retaliate,
carrying on an artillery duel.

All of the French batteries had opened fire. The mountain was
thundering, the shell whining, the horizon, still tranquil, was
bristling with black, spiral columns. The two realized more and more how
snug they were in this retreat, like a box at the theatre.

Someone touched Lacour on the shoulder. It was one of the captains who
was conducting them through the front.

"We are going above," he said simply. "You must see close by how our
cannons are working. The sight will be well worth the trouble."

Above? . . . The illustrious man was as perplexed, as astonished as
though he had suggested an interplanetary trip. Above, when the enemy
was going to reply from one minute to another? . . .

The captain explained that sub-Lieutenant Lacour was perhaps awaiting
his father. By telephone they had advised his battery stationed a little
further on; it would be necessary to go now in order to see him. So
they again climbed up to the light through the mouth of the tunnel. The
senator then drew himself up, majestically erect.

"They are going to fire at us," said a voice in his interior, "The foe
is going to reply."

But he adjusted his coat like a tragic mantle and advanced at a
circumspect and solemn pace. If those military men, adversaries of
parliamentarism, fancied that they were going to laugh up their sleeve
at the timidity of a civilian, he would show them their mistake!

Desnoyers could not but admire the resolution with which the great man
made his exit from the shelter, exactly as if he were going to march
against the foe.

At a little distance, the atmosphere was rent into tumultuous waves,
making their legs tremble, their ears hum, and their necks feel as
though they had just been struck. They both thought that the Germans
had begun to return the fire, but it was the French who were shooting.
A feathery stream of vapor came up out of the woods a dozen yards away,
dissolving instantly. One of the largest pieces, hidden in the nearby
thicket, had just been discharged. The captains continued their
explanations without stopping their journey. It was necessary to pass
directly in front of the spitting monster, in spite of the violence of
its reports, so as not to venture out into the open woods near the watch
tower. They were expecting from one second to another now, the response
from their neighbors across the way. The guide accompanying Don Marcelo
congratulated him on the fearlessness with which he was enduring the
cannonading.

"My friend is well acquainted with it," remarked the senator proudly.
"He was in the battle of the Marne."

The two soldiers evidently thought this very strange, considering
Desnoyers' advanced age. To what section had he belonged? In what
capacity had he served? . . .

"Merely as a victim," was the modest reply.

An officer came running toward them from the tower side, across the
cleared space. He waved his kepi several times that they might see him
better. Lacour trembled for him. The enemy might descry him; he was
simply making a target of himself by cutting across that open space in
order to reach them the sooner. . . . And he trembled still more as he
came nearer. . . . It was Rene!