“‘An old woman, comrade, an old gray witch struck me, and then proposed that I should kill her!’
“‘Was she arrested?’
“‘I said that I had done it myself, that I had fallen and hurt myself. The commander did not believe it, I could see it by his eyes. But, don’t you see, it was awkward to confess that I had been wounded by an old woman. Eh? The devil! Of course they are hard pressed, and one can understand that they do not love us!’
“‘H’m!’ thought I. The doctor came and two ladies with him, one of them fair and very pretty, evidently a Venetian. I don’t remember the other. They looked at my wound. It was slight, of course. They applied a poultice and went away....
“My comrade and I used to sit at the window. We sat in such a way that the light did not fall on us, and there once we heard the charming voice of this fair lady. She and her companion were walking with the doctor in the garden outside the window and talking in French, which I understand very well.
“‘Did you notice the color of his eyes?’ she asked. ‘He is a peasant of course, and once he has taken off his uniform will no doubt become a Socialist, like all of them here. People with eyes like that want to conquer the whole of life, to drive us out, to destroy us in order that some blind, tedious justice should triumph!’
“‘Foolish fellows,’ said the doctor—‘half children, half brutes.’
“‘Brutes, that is quite true. But what is there childish about them?’
“‘What about those dreams of universal equality?’