fray. He spends his whole life preparing for war, he is a soldier in
body and soul, and yet he knows the excitement of battle only from
hearsay."

The correspondent was delighted with this subjective utterance which he
had managed to evoke. Now he could show the commander in the sympathetic
role of one who renounces, one who cannot always do as he would. He bent
over his note-book for an instant. When he looked up again he found to
his astonishment that His Excellency's face had completely changed. His
brow was furrowed, his eyes stared wide-open with an anxiously expectant
look in them at something back of the correspondent.

The correspondent turned and saw a pale, emaciated infantry captain
making straight toward His Excellency. The man was grinning and he had a
peculiar shambling walk. He came closer and closer, and stared with
glassy, glaring eyes, and laughed an ugly idiotic laugh. The adjutant
started up from his seat frightened. The veins on His Excellency's
forehead swelled up like ropes. The correspondent saw an assassination
coming and turned pale. The uncanny captain swayed to within a foot or
two of the general and his adjutant, then stood still, giggled
foolishly, and snatched at the orders on His Excellency's chest like a
child snatching at a beam of light.

"Beautiful--shines beautifully--" he gurgled in a thick voice. Then he
pointed his frightfully thin, trembling forefinger up at the sun and
shrieked, "Sun!" Next he snatched at the medals again and said, "Shines
beautifully." And all the while his restless glance wandered hither and
thither as if looking for something, and his ugly, bestial laugh
repeated itself after each word.