as he detests the Germans, he yet, detesting, sorrows for them, sees them as mere misled yokels, uncosmopolite, obstreperous, of comical posturing in ostensible un-Latin lech, vainglorious and spying—children into whose hands has fallen Zola, children adream, somnambulistic, groping rashly for those things out of life that, groped for, are lost—that may come only as life comes, naturally, calmly, inevitably.
But the Frenchman, he never laughs at us; that would his culture forbid. And, if he smile, his mouth goes placid before the siege. His attitude is the attitude of one beholding a Comstock come to the hill of Hörselberg in Thuringia, there to sniff and snicker in Venus's crimson court. His attitude is the attitude of one beholding a Tristan en voyage for a garden of love and roses he can never reach. His attitude, the attitude of an old and understanding professor, shaking his head musingly as his tender pupils, unmellowed yet in the
