The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, through the shadows. To-
night, lamps are gleaming softly in every window. It looks like a
silent, illuminated ship, the prow of which is cutting through an
ice-bank. Nothing emerges from it but this quiet light. Nothing
reveals the nature of its terrible freight.
We know that in every room, in every storey, on the level of every
floor, young mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A hundred
hearts send the over-heated blood in swift pulsations towards the
suffering limbs. Through all these bodies the projectile in its
furious course made its way, crushing delicate mechanisms, rending
the precious organs which make us take pleasure in walking,
breathing, drinking....
Up there, this innocent joy of order no longer exists; and in
order to recapture it, a hundred bodies are performing labours so
slow and hard that they call forth tears and sighs from the
strongest.
But how the murmurs of this centre of suffering are muffled by the
walls! How silently and darkly it broods in space!
Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, the Chateau covers its
contents closely, and one sees nothing but these lamps, just such
lamps as might illuminate a studious solitude, or a conversation
between intimate friends at evening, or a love lost in self-
contemplation.
We are now walking through thickets of spindle-wood, resplendent
under the snow, and the indifference of these living things to the
monstrous misery round them makes the impotent soul that is
strangling me seem odious and even ridiculous to me.
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