After the devourers of the soft parts will come the irresistible artisans of the bones. Myriads of micro-scopical workers will plow the skeleton, cleaning away the last impurities clinging to the framework, undoing the marvelous articulations, scraping away the cement which holds the vertebræ together. Some day the lower jaw will loosen, falling toward the abdominal cavity, leaving the upper jaw bone, the teeth of which knew the splendor of smiles and the caress of kisses. Some other day, the skull, as the pivot on which it rests comes apart, will fall in turn and mingle with the dust of the ribs and the little bones of the feet which mark the rhythm of an undulating walk. Within a few centuries revolutions and wars will perhaps bring this skull to the surface. Why not? Lubimoff has just seen at the front numerous cemeteries swept away by gunfire, with the dead emerging from the earth, raised thus by the bursting shells. And when some one, in the future, with the eternal curiosity of the Shakespearean Prince takes Alicia's skull in his hand, he will not be able to tell whether it belonged to a lady or a servant, whether it belonged to a beauty or to a drab.
Michael recalls with ironical sadness all the illusions, all the desires, he had in the past, concentrated on this nothingness. He begins to feel the need of forgetting the corpse. His eyes, looking within, see the diminutive foliage, the gaudy butterfly, and all that nature has placed on a nameless tomb. This is what a life which considered itself superior to all others has left as the only trace of its existence. Perhaps in the corolla of one of the little flowers there is something of Alicia's soul, the butterflies sip it, and continue in an intoxicated flight above the tombs.
Springtime! The Prince lifts his thoughts above the sorrows of individuals. He recalls what he has seen in a corner of the world ruined by man's bestiality: cities in ruins; villages that raise their walls only a yard above the soil, like towns which have been excavated after a cataclysm; barns set on fire; endless fields made sterile, torn apart and turned topsy turvy by five years of bombardment; many graves—thousands of graves—millions of graves. Women, dressed in black, stagger along the roads through the ruins and the funnel-shaped chasms opened by the monstrous projectiles. They have lost their children, they have seen their husbands executed, and now they are exploring the soil in search of their homes that were....
But the Winter-time of war is over; and now the Spring of Peace is here. The same hand, touching all things with green, puts little flowers and butterflies on the nameless graves, hangs fragrant garlands on the fire-blackened walls, spreads a velvet carpet of emerald on the sides of the shell holes, makes the birds warble and the insects stir above the tombs, and guides the curling creepers over the black wood of the crosses, as though trying to change them into thyrsi.
Alas! The earth knows nothing of our sorrows.
The Prince comes out of his abstraction, and sees the Colonel greeting him from a distance.
Don Marcos is already back, and with him is Madame Toledo, whose head scarcely reaches his shoulder. On the way she looks back several times, with the hope of finding herself followed by the American soldier.
On recognizing the Prince in the café, however, she forgets the other man, and seems to be entreating him with her eyes to leave his seat and to go out with her to the terraces.
The Colonel and his minx disappear in the direction of the terraces, and again Michael plunges into meditation. He recalls his talk with Don Marcos, shortly before, as they were descending from the cemetery.
Toledo seems inconsolable. According to him the war has not ended properly. He appears scandalized at the absurd manner of its conclusion! What terrible times these are! The fugitive of Amerongen disconcerts and irritates him.