"Nevertheless it is after a good old French mode. It's by Ronsard," said Pierre:
"...else I would only claim
A century hence, sans glory and sans fame
Slothful to die upon thy lap, Cassandra...."
"A hundred years!" sighed Luce. "He doesn't ask much!..."
"Or I mistake, or more delights are heaped
In death like that than all the honors reaped
By Caesar great or firebolt Alexander."
"Naughty, naughty, naughty little scamp! have you no shame? In this epoch of heroes!"
"There are too many," said Pierre. "I would rather be a little fellow who loves, a babe of a man."
"The babe of a woman who still has on his lips the milk from my breast," cried Luce, seizing him round the neck. "My babe, my own!"
Survivors of those days who, since then, have been witness to the dazzling change of fortune, will have forgotten doubtless the menacing heavy flight of the dark wing which, during that week, covered the Ile de France and touched Paris with its shadow. Joy does not take further stock in past trials.—The German drive reached the line of its summit between Holy Monday and Holy Wednesday. The Somme traversed, Bapaume, Vesle, Guiscard, Roye, Noyon, Albert carried. Eleven hundred guns taken. Sixty thousand prisoners.... Symbol of the land of grace trampled upon, on Holy Tuesday died Debussy the harmonious. A lyre that is snapped.... "Poor little expiring Greece!" What will remain of it? A few chiseled vases, a few perfect stelae which the grass will invade from the Path of Tombs. Immortal vestiges of ruined Athens....
As from the height of a hill, Pierre and Luce watched the shadow that moved upon the town. Still wrapped in the rays of their love, they waited without fear for the end of the brief day. Now they would be two in the night. Like to the evening Angelus there rose up to them, conjured up, the voluptuous melancholy of the lovely chords of Debussy which they had so greatly loved. More than it had ever done in any other time, music responded to the need of their hearts. Music was the only art which rendered the voice of the delivered soul behind the screen of forms.