... Universal mob-fights, senseless and sanguinary. The slightest
provocation gives rise to the most savage club-law, knives, stones,
logs of wood coming into action, and it is all the same who is being
killed--red blood asks to be let loose, and flows willingly and
plentifully.
There were six of them, all peasants, and they were being led by three
soldiers with loaded guns. In their quaint peasant's dress, simple
and primitive like a savage's, with their quaint countenances, that
seemed as if made of clay and adorned with felted wool instead of
hair, in the streets of a rich town, under the escort of disciplined
soldiers--they resembled slaves of the antique world. They were being
led off to the war, and they moved along in obedience to the bayonets
as innocent and dull as cattle led to the slaughter-house. In front
walked a youth, tall, beardless, with a long goose neck, at the end of
which was a motionless little head. His whole body was bent forward
like a switch, and he stared at the ground under his feet so fixedly
as if his gaze penetrated into the very depths of the earth. The last
in the group was a man of small stature, bearded and middle-aged; he
had no desire of resistance, and there was no thought in his eyes, but
the earth attracted his feet, gripped them tightly, not letting them
loose, and he advanced with his body thrown back, as if struggling
against a strong wind. And at each step the soldier gave him a push
with the butt-end of his rifle, and one leg, tearing itself from the
earth, convulsively thrust itself forward, while the other still stuck
tightly. The faces of the soldiers were weary and angry, and evidently
they had been marching so for a long time; one felt they were tired and
indifferent as to how they carried their guns and how they marched,
keeping no step, with their feet turned in like countrymen. The
senseless, lingering and silent resistance of the peasants seemed to
have dimmed their disciplined brains, and they had ceased to understand
where they were going and what their goal was.
"Where are you leading them to?" I asked of one of the soldiers. He
started, glanced at me, and in the keen flash of his eyes I felt the
bayonet as distinctly as if it were already at my breast.
"Go away!" said the soldier; "go away, or else...."
The middle-aged man took advantage of the moment and ran away; he ran
with a light trot up to the iron railings of the boulevard and sat
down on his heels, as if he were hiding. No animal would have acted so
stupidly, so senselessly. But the soldier became savage. I saw him go
close up to him, stoop down and, thrusting his gun into the left hand,
strike something soft and flat with the right one. And then again. A
crowd was gathering. Laughter and shouts were heard....