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 people about me murmur, timidly; they also blinking as though tardily enlightened by the spectacle of the poor benefactor.

But they are not heard—­they hardly even hear themselves—­in the flood of uproar from a brass band.  A triumphal march goes by with the strong and sensual driving force of its, “Forward!  You shall not know!” The audience fill themselves with brazen music, and overflow in cheers.

The ceremony is drawing to a close.  They who were seated on the rostrum get up.  Fontan, bewildered with sleepiness, struggles to put on a tall hat which is too narrow, and while he screws it round he grimaces.  Then he smiles with his boneless mouth.  All congratulate themselves through each other; they shake their own hands; they cling to themselves.  After their fellowship in patriotism they are going back to their calculations and gratifications, glorified in their egotism, sanctified, beatified; more than ever will they blend their own with the common cause and say, “We are the people!”

Brisbille, seeing one of the orators passing near him, throws him a ferocious look, and shouts, “Land-shark!” and other virulent insults.