The correspondent was delighted with this subjective utterance which he had managed to evoke. Now he could show the commander in the sympathetic rôle of one who renounces, one who cannot always do as he would. He bent over his note-book for an instant. When he looked up again he found to his astonishment that His Excellency's face had completely changed. His brow was furrowed, his eyes stared wide-open with an anxiously expectant look in them at something back of the correspondent.
The correspondent turned and saw a pale, emaciated infantry captain making straight toward His Excellency. The man was grinning and he had a peculiar shambling walk. He came closer and closer, and stared with glassy, glaring eyes, and laughed an ugly idiotic laugh. The adjutant started up from his seat frightened. The veins on His Excellency's forehead swelled up like ropes. The correspondent saw an assassination coming and turned pale. The uncanny captain swayed to within a foot or two of the general and his adjutant, then stood still, giggled foolishly, and snatched at the orders on His Excellency's chest like a child snatching at a beam of light.
"Beautiful—shines beautifully—" he gurgled in a thick voice. Then he pointed his frightfully thin, trembling forefinger up at the sun and shrieked, "Sun!" Next he snatched at the medals again and said, "Shines beautifully." And all the while his restless glance wandered hither and thither as if looking for something, and his ugly, bestial laugh repeated itself after each word.
His Excellency's right fist was up in the air ready for a blow at the fellow's chest for approaching him so disrespectfully, but, instead, he laid his hand soothingly on the poor idiot's shoulder.
"I suppose you have come from the hospital to listen to the music, Captain?" he said, winking to his adjutant. "It's a long ride to the hospital in the street-car. Take my automobile. It's quicker."
"Auto—quicker," echoed the lunatic with his hideous laugh. He patiently let himself be taken by the arm and led away. He turned round once with a grin at the glittering medals, but the adjutant pulled him along.
The general followed them with his eyes until they entered the machine. The "storm-signal" was hoisted ominously between his eyebrows. He was boiling with rage at such carelessness in allowing a creature like that to walk abroad freely. But in the nick of time he remembered the civilian at his side, and controlled himself, and said with a shrug of the shoulders:
"Yes, these are some of the sad aspects of the war. You see, it is just because of such things that the leader must stay behind, where nothing appeals to his heart. No general could ever summon the necessary severity to direct a war if he had to witness all the misery at the front."
"Very interesting," the correspondent breathed gratefully, and closed his book. "I fear I have already taken up too much of Your Excellency's valuable time, but may I be permitted one more question? When does Your Excellency hope for peace?"
The general started, bit his underlip, and glanced aside with a look that would have made every staff officer of the ——th Army shake in his boots. With a visible effort he put on his polite smile and pointed across the square to the open portals of the old cathedral.