MARS
521
this discovery
his
comrades--easily inflamed, fickle, their honor at
stake-turned on the cheater. Assailing him with blows and abuse,
they forced him to mutter an apology. Intoxicated with magnanimity,
champagne, and a feeling of brotherhood, they carried the helmeted
host aloft in triumph to the billiard table. They pressed a pistol into
his fist and they fired with drunken jerky hands at whatever target
he first hit.
The vine festoons swayed and rattled; glass crunched under the
soldiers' feet; plaster seeped from the ceiling, champagne corks ex–
ploded. The Alsatian, ashen gray, emptied a bottle into the cooler
and laved his forehead in the prickly fluid, sobbing loudly to him–
self. Soon only torn cords dangled down and one lonely bead swung
back and forth near the cross-piece of the window. The piano began
to roar again and could not be stopped because the knife had got
stuck and its blade had snapped off. A spring must have broken in
it, for the infernal machine ran bleating like mad and its debauched
clatter sent them all off again.
The host was completely sober, but, as though in the grip of a
nightmare, he began to shoot again, blindly hitting his own posses–
sions. Picture frames splintered, light bulbs burst, the lid of the glass
case was smashed in and the dull red of its velvet lining hung out
like a tongue, porous from the pricks of the cork collection. The
parlor presented a picture of wanton destruction. The succulent re–
mains of the banquet lay about obscenely, tempting the officers to
go on eating, or, where these remains lay on the floor, making them
slip and overturn the last chairs. The light grew fainter; finally only
one weak bulb remained, and at last this too flickered out, and the
room lay in darkness.
Immediately a wild turmoil arose. A high voice broke into the
song of Malbrouck who had gone forth to war and never returned.
At once others joined in; flashlights were lit everywhere and their
merciless beams revealed the damage more clearly than a diffused
light could ever have done. Some of the men joined hands and
formed a chain; they circled the billiard table on which the host stood
and beat time, his belly shaking in rhythm. Then they filed under
his leadership into the front rooms, filled with stale smoke and the
acrid smell of the deserted beer counter, and from there through the
vaulted cellar to the refectory, now used as a stable. They passed
