Desperate with the gnawings of his empty stomach, he accosted several doctors who were speaking French, but all in vain.  They would not listen to him, and when he repeated his petitions they pushed him roughly out of their way. . . .  He was not going to perish with hunger in the midst of his riches!  Those people were eating; the indifferent nurses had established themselves in his kitchen. . . .  But the time passed on without encountering anybody who would take pity on this old man dragging himself weakly from one place to another, in the misery of an old age intensified by despair, and suffering in every part of the body, the results of the blows of the night before.  He now knew the gnawings of a hunger far worse than that which he had suffered when journeying over the desert plains—­a hunger among men, in a civilized country, wearing a belt filled with gold, surrounded with towers and castle halls which were his, but in the control of others who would not condescend to listen to him.  And for this piteous ending of his life he had amassed millions and returned to Europe! . . .  Ah, the irony of fate! . . .

He saw a doctor’s assistant leaning up against a tree, about to devour a slab of bread and sausage.  His envious eyes scrutinized this fellow, tall, thick-set, his jaws bristling with a great red beard.  The trembling old man staggered up to him, begging for the food by signs and holding out a piece of money.  The German’s eyes glistened at the sight of the gold, and a beatific smile stretched his mouth from ear to ear.

“Ya,” he responded, and grabbing the money, he handed over the food.

Don Marcelo commenced to swallow it with avidity.  Never had he so appreciated the sheer ecstasy of eating as at that instant—­in the midst of his gardens converted into a cemetery, before his despoiled castle where hundreds of human beings were groaning in agony.  A grayish arm passed before his eyes; it belonged to the German, who had returned with two slices of bread and a bit of meat snatched from the kitchen.  He repeated his smirking “Ya?” . . . and after his victim had secured it by means of another gold coin, he was able to take it to the two women hidden in the cottage.

During the night—­a night of painful watching, cut with visions of horror, it seemed to him that the roar of the artillery was coming nearer.  It was a scarcely perceptible difference, perhaps the effect of the silence of the night which always intensifies sound.  The ambulances continued coming from the front, discharging their cargoes of riddled humanity and going back for more.  Desnoyers surmised that his castle was but one of the many hospitals established in a line of more than eighty miles, and that on the other side, behind the French, were many similar ones in which the same activity was going on—­the consignments of dying men succeeding each other with terrifying frequency.  Many of the combatants were not even having the satisfaction of being taken