Then he closed the door and turned and started back down the room, then in the same instant stopped again and now apparently essayed to efface from it even the rumor of war which had entered at second hand; motionless for that moment at the top of the splendid diminishing vista, there was about him like an aura a quality insouciant solitary and debonair like Harlequin solus on a second- or third-act stage as the curtain goes down or rises, while he stood with his head turned slightly aside, listening. Then he moved, rapid and boneless on his long boneless legs, toward the nearest window. But the old marshal spoke before he had taken the second step, saying quietly in English: 'Leave them open,'
The aide paid no attention whatever. He strode to the window and thrust his whole upper body out as he reached for the out-swung casement and began to swing it in. Then he stopped. He said in French, not loud, in a sort of rapt amazement, dispassion-ate and momentary: 'It looks like a crowd at a race track waiting for the two-sou window to open-if they have such. No, they look as if they are watching a burning pawnshop,'
'Leave it open,' the old general said in English. The aide paused again, the casement half closed. He turned his head and said in English too, perfectly, with no accent whatever, not even of Ox-ford, not even of Beacon Hilclass="underline" 'Why not have them inside and be done with it? They cant hear what's going on out there,'
This time the old general spoke French. They dont want to know,' he said. They want only to suffer. Leave it open,'
'Yes sir,' the aide said in French. He flung the casement out again and turned. As he did so one leaf of the double doors in the opposite wall opened. It opened exactly six inches, by no visible means, and stopped. The aide didn't even glance toward it. He came on into the room, saying in that perfect accentless English, 'Dinner, gentlemen,' as both leaves of the door slid back.
The old general rose when the two other generals did but that was all. When the doors closed behind the last aide, he was already seated again. Then he pushed the closed folder further aside and folded the spectacles into their worn case and buttoned the case into one of his upper tunic pockets, and alone now in the vast splendid room from which even the city's tumult and anguish was fading as the afternoon light died from the ceiling, motionless in the chair whose high carven back topped him like the back of a Wednesday Night throne, his hands hidden below the rich tremendous table which concealed most of the rest of him too and apparently not only immobile but immobilised beneath the mass and glitter of his braid and stars and buttons, he resembled a boy, a child, crouching amid the golden debris of the tomb not of a knight or bishop rav-ished in darkness but (perhaps the mummy itself) of a sultan or pharaoh violated by Christians in broad afternoon.
Then the same leaf of the double door opened again, exactly as before, for exactly six inches and no hand to show for it and making only the slightest of sounds, and even then giving the im-pression that if it had wanted to, it could have made none and that what it did make was only the absolute minimum to be audible at all, opening for that six inches and then moving no more until the old general said: 'Yes, my child,' Then it began to close, making no sound at all now that sound was no longer necessary, moving on half the distance back to closure with its fellow leaf when it stopped again and with no pause began to open again, still noiseless but quite fast now, so fast that it had opened a good eighteen inches and in another instant who or whatever moved it would of necessity reveal, expose him or itself, before the old general could or did speak. 'No,' he said. The door stopped. It didn't close; it just quit moving at all and seemed to hang like a wheel at balance with neither top nor bottom, hanging so until the old general spoke again: 'Leave them open,'
Then the door closed. It went all the way to this time, and the old general rose and came around the table and went to the nearest window, walking through the official end of day as across a threshold into night, because as he turned the end of the table the scattered bugles began to sound the three assemblies, and as he crossed the room the clash of boots and rifles came up from the courtyard, and when he reached the window the two guards were already facing each other for the first note of the three re-treats and the formal exchange to begin. But the old general didn't seem to be watching it. He just stood in the window above the thronged motionless Place where the patient mass of people lay against the iron fence; nor did he turn his head when the door opened rapidly this time and the young aide entered, carrying a telephone whose extension flowed behind him across the white rug like the endless tail of a trophy, and went behind the table and with his foot drew up one of the chairs and sat down and set the telephone on the table and lifted the receiver and shot into view the watch on his other wrist and became motionless, the re-ceiver to his ear and his eyes on the watch. Instead, he just stood there, a little back from the window and a little to one side, holding the curtain slightly aside, visible if anyone in the Place had thought to look up, while the scattered brazen adjurations died into the clash and stamp as the two guards came to at ease and the whole borderline, no longer afternoon yet not quite evening either, lay in unbreathing suspension until the bugles began again, the three this time in measured discordant unison, the three voices in the courtyard barking in unison too yet incorrigibly alien, the two groups of heavily armed men posturing rigidly at each other like a tribal ritual for religious immolation. He could not have heard the telephone, since the aide already had the receiver to his ear and merely spoke an acknowledging word into it, then listened a moment and spoke another word and lowered the receiver and sat waiting too while the bugles chanted and wailed like cocks in the raddled sunset, and died away.
'He has landed,' the aide said. 'He got down from the aeroplane and drew a pistol and called his pilot to attention and shot him through the face. They dont know why,'
They are Englishmen,' the old general said. That will do,'
'Of course,' the aide said. 'I'm surprised they have as little trou-ble as they do in Continental wars. In any of their wars,' He said: 'Yes sir,' He rose to his feet. 'I had arranged to have this line open at five points between here and Villeneuve Blanche, so you could keep informed of his progress-'
'It is indistinguishable from his destination,' the old general said without moving. 'That will do,' The aide put the receiver back on its hook and took up the telephone and went back around the Wednesday Night table, the limber endless line recoiling onto itself across the rug until he flicked the diminishing loop after him through the door, and closed it. At that moment the sunset gun thudded: no sound, but rather a postulation of vacuum, as though back into its blast-vacated womb the regurgitated martial day had poured in one reverberant clap; from just beyond the window came the screak and whisper of the three blocks and the three down-reeling lan-yards and the same leaf of the door opened again for that exact six inches, paused, then without any sound opened steadily and unmotived onward and still the old general stood while the thrice-alien voices barked, and beneath the three tenderly borne mystical rags the feet of the three color guards rang the cobbled courtyard and, in measured iron diminution, the cobbled evening itself.
And now the mass beyond the fence itself began to move, flowing back across the Place toward the diverging boulevards, emptying the Place, already fading before it was out of the Place, as though with one long quiet inhalation evening was effacing the whole meek mist of man; now the old general stood above the city which, already immune to man's enduring, was now even free of his tumult. Or rather, the evening effaced not man from the Place de Ville so much as it effaced the Place de Ville back into man's enduring anguish and his invincible dust, the city itself not really free of either but simply taller than both. Because they endured, as only endurance can, firmer than rock, more impervious than folly, longer than grief, the darkling and silent city rising out of the darkling and empty twilight to lower like a thunderclap, since it was the effigy and the power, rising tier on inviolate tier out of that mazed chiaroscuro like a tremendous beehive whose crown challenged by day the sun and stemmed aside by night the myriad smore of stars.