The school, its very self, its soul, had struggled to its feet, and as a little child was taking its first conscious steps—the most beautiful, perhaps, that it was ever destined to take—when they, those mechanicians, with their mailed fists smote it in the face, crushed it heartlessly to the ground, with Louvain and Belgium not only before their eyes but on their very lips.
"Oh, this world is a rotten place," he said, at my side.
"I wonder," I murmured in reply, and I still do….