“They don’t understand what modern warfare means.  They ignore the fact that our generals have studied the art of overcoming the enemy and they will apply it mercilessly.  Ruthlessness is the only means, since it perturbs the intelligence of the enemy, paralyzes his action and pulverizes his resistance.  The more ferocious the war, the more quickly it is concluded.  To punish with cruelty is to proceed humanely.  Therefore, Germany is going to be cruel with a cruelty hitherto unseen, in order that the conflict may not be prolonged.”

He had risen and was standing, cane and straw hat in hand.  Argensola was looking at him with frank hostility.  The professor, obliged to pass near him, did so with a stiff and disdainful nod.

Then he started toward the door, accompanied by his cousin.  The farewell was brief.

“I repeat my counsel.  If you do not like danger, go!  It may be that I am mistaken, and that this nation, convinced of the uselessness of defense, may give itself up voluntarily. . . .  At any rate, we shall soon see.  I shall take great pleasure in returning to Paris when the flag of the Empire is floating over the Eiffel Tower, a mere matter of three or four weeks, certainly by the beginning of September.”

France was going to disappear from the map.  To the Doctor, her death was a foregone conclusion.

“Paris will remain,” he admitted benevolently, “the French will remain, because a nation is not easily suppressed; but they will not retain their former place.  We shall govern the world; they will continue to occupy themselves in inventing fashions, in making life agreeable for visiting foreigners; and in the intellectual world, we shall encourage them to educate good actresses, to produce entertaining novels and to write witty comedies. . . .  Nothing more.”

Desnoyers laughed as he shook his cousin’s hand, pretending to take his words as a paradox.

“I mean it,” insisted Hartrott.  “The last hour of the French Republic as an important nation has sounded.  I have studied it at close range, and it deserves no better fate.  License and lack of confidence above—­sterile enthusiasm below.”

Upon turning his head, he again caught Argensola’s malicious smile.

“We know all about that kind of study,” he added aggressively.  “We are accustomed to examine the nations of the past, to dissect them fibre by fibre, so that we recognize at a glance the psychology of the living.”

The Bohemian fancied that he saw a surgeon talking self-sufficiently about the mysteries of the will before a corpse.  What did this pedantic interpreter of dead documents know about life? . . .

When the door closed, he approached his friend who was returning somewhat dismayed.  Argensola no longer considered Doctor Julius von Hartrott crazy.

“What a brute!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands.  “And to think that they are at large, these originators of gloomy errors! . . .  Who would ever believe that they belong to the same land that produced Kant, the pacifist, the serene Goethe and Beethoven! . . .  To think that for so many years, we have believed that they were forming a nation of dreamers and philosophers occupied in working disinterestedly for all mankind! . . .”