Suddenly, in front of me and a few paces from my couch—­as if I were in a bed, in a bedroom, and had all at once woke up—­an uncouth shape rises awry.  Even in the darkness I see that it is mangled.  I see about its face something abnormal which dimly shines; and I can see, too, by his staggering steps, sunk in the black soil, that his shoes are empty.  He cannot speak, but he brings forward the thin arm from which rags hang down and drip; and his imperfect hand, as torturing to the mind as discordant chords, points to the place of his heart.  I see that heart, buried in the darkness of the flesh, in the black blood of the living—­for only shed blood is red.  I see him profoundly, with my heart.  If he said anything he would say the words that I still hear falling, drop by drop, as I heard them yonder—­“Nothing can be done, nothing.”  I try to move, to rid myself of him.  But I cannot, I am pinioned in a sort of nightmare; and if he had not himself faded away I should have stayed there forever, dazzled in presence of his darkness.  This man said nothing.  He appeared like the dead thing he is.  He has departed.  Perhaps he has ceased to be, perhaps he has entered into death, which is not more mysterious to him than life, which he is leaving—­and I have fallen back into myself.

* * * * * *

He has returned, to show his face to me.  Ah, now there is a bandage round his head, and so I recognize him by his crown of filth!  I begin again that moment when I clasped him against me to crush him; when I propped him against the shell, when my arms felt his bones cracking round his heart!  It was he!—­It was I!  He says nothing, from the eternal abysses in which he remains my brother in silence and ignorance.  The remorseful cry which tears my throat outstrips me, and would find some one else.

Who?

That destiny which killed him by means of me—­has it no human faces?

“Kings!” said Termite.

“The big people!” said the man whom they had snared, the close-cropped German prisoner, the man with the convict’s hexagonal face, he who was greenish from top to toe.

But these kings and majesties and superhuman men who are illuminated by fantastic names and never make mistakes—­were they not done away with long since?  One does not know.

One does not see those who rule.  One only sees what they wish, and what they do with the others.

Why have They always command?  One does not know.  The multitudes have not given themselves to Them.  They have taken them and They keep them.  Their power is supernatural.  It is, because it was.  This is its explanation and formula and breath—­“It has to be.”

As they have laid hold of arms, so they lay hold of heads, and make a creed.

“They tell you,” cried he, whom none of the lowly soldiers would deign to listen to; “they say to you, ’This is what you must have in your minds and hearts.’”