* * * * * *
He has returned, to show his face to me. Ah, now there is a bandage round his head, and so I recognize him by his crown of filth! I begin again that moment when I clasped him against me to crush him; when I propped him against the shell, when my arms felt his bones cracking round his heart! It was he!—It was I! He says nothing, from the eternal abysses in which he remains my brother in silence and ignorance. The remorseful cry which tears my throat outstrips me, and would find some one else.
Who?
That destiny which killed him by means of me—has it no human faces?
"Kings!" said Termite.
"The big people!" said the man whom they had snared, the close-cropped German prisoner, the man with the convict's hexagonal face, he who was greenish from top to toe.
But these kings and majesties and superhuman men who are illuminated by fantastic names and never make mistakes—were they not done away with long since? One does not know.
One does not see those who rule. One only sees what they wish, and what they do with the others.
Why have They always command? One does not know. The multitudes have not given themselves to Them. They have taken them and They keep them. Their power is supernatural. It is, because it was. This is its explanation and formula and breath—"It has to be."
As they have laid hold of arms, so they lay hold of heads, and make a creed.