The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained in the drawing-
room of the villa. The men, seated, or astride of garden chairs, were smoking outside the
door of the house, around a table laden with cups and liqueur glasses.
Their lighted cigars shone like eyes in the darkness, which was gradually becoming more
dense. They had been talking about a frightful accident which had occurred the night
before--two men and three women drowned in the river before the eyes of the guests.
General de G---- remarked:
"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.
"Horrible, that well-known word, means much more than terrible. A frightful accident
like this affects, upsets, terrifies; it does not horrify. In order that we should experience
horror, something more is needed than emotion, something more than the spectacle of a
dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense of mystery, or a sensation of abnormal
terror, more than natural. A man who dies, even under the most tragic circumstances,
does not excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible; blood is not horrible; the vilest
crimes are rarely horrible.
"Here are two personal examples which have shown me what is the meaning of horror.
"It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont-Audemer, after having
passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twenty thousand men, twenty
thousand routed men, disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to disband at
Havre.
"The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not eaten anything
since the day before. They were fleeing rapidly, the Prussians not being far off.
"All the Norman country, sombre, dotted with the shadows of the trees surrounding the
farms, stretched out beneath a black, heavy, threatening sky.
"Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight but the confused sound, undefined
though rapid, of a marching throng, an endless tramping, mingled with the vague clink of
tin bowls or swords. The men, bent, round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags,
dragged themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed stride.
"The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it was freezing hard
that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefoot, as
his shoes hurt his weary feet; and at every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some
time, he would sit down in a field for a few minutes' rest, and he never got up again.
Every man who sat down was a dead man.
