“They have shot him, Your Excellency. . . .  They have just killed him in spite of your order.”

The smile which crossed the Count’s face immediately informed him of his mistake.

“That is war, my dear sir,” said the player, pausing for a moment.  “War with its cruel necessities. . . .  It is always expedient to destroy the enemy of to-morrow.”

And with a pedantic air as though he were giving a lesson, he discoursed about the Orientals, great masters of the art of living.  One of the personages most admired by him was a certain Sultan of the Turkish conquest who, with his own hands, had strangled the sons of the adversary.  “Our foes do not come into the world on horseback and brandishing the lance,” said that hero.  “All are born as children, and it is advisable to wipe them from the face of the earth before they grow up.”

Desnoyers listened without taking it in.  One thought only was occupying his mind. . . .  That man that he had supposed just, that sentimentalist so affected by his own singing, had, between two arpeggios, coldly given the order for death! . . .

The Count made a gesture of impatience.  He might retire now, and he counselled him to be more discreet in the future, avoiding mixing himself up in the affairs of the service.  Then he turned his back, running his hands over the piano, and giving himself up to harmonious melancholy.

For Don Marcelo there now began an absurd life of the most extraordinary events, an experience which was going to last four days.  In his life history, this period represented a long parenthesis of stupefaction, slashed by the most horrible visions.

Not wishing to meet these men again, he abandoned his own bedroom, taking refuge on the top floor in the servants’ quarters, near the room selected by the Warden and his family.  In vain the good woman kept offering him things to eat as the night came on—­he had no appetite.  He lay stretched out on the bed, preferring to be alone with his thoughts in the dark.  When would this martyrdom ever come to an end? . . .

There came into his mind the recollection of a trip which he had made to London some years ago.  In his imagination he again saw the British Museum and certain Assyrian bas-reliefs—­relics of bestial humanity, which had filled him with terror.  The warriors were represented as burning the towns; the prisoners were beheaded in heaps; the pacific countrymen were marching in lines with chains on their necks, forming strings of slaves.  Until that moment he had never realized the advance which civilization had made through the centuries.  Wars were still breaking out now and then, but they had been regulated by the march of progress.  The life of the prisoner was now held sacred; the captured towns must be respected; there existed a complete code of international law to regulate how men should be killed and nations should combat, causing the least possible harm. . . .