The Spectator

Irène Némirovsky

The Spectator (Le spectateur)

Translated by Bridget Patterson

They had eaten well. The creaminess of the quenelles brought out the deep, dark flavor of the truffles: not too overpowering, but mingling with the tender flesh of the fish and the delicate white sauce, just as the deep notes of the cello had harmonized with the sound of the piano in the delightful concerto he had heard yesterday. If one used one’s imagination and experience it was possible, thought Hugo Grayer, to extract the maximum pleasure from life, and innocent enjoyment. After the exquisite and complex taste of the quenelles, the Chateaubriand steak with potatoes had an austere simplicity reminiscent of classical design. They had drunk a small amount of wine—Hugo had a delicate liver—but it was a 1924 Château Ausone. What a bit of luck it had been to discover such a rare wine in an apparently simple restaurant on one of the Parisian quays. With a smile Magda said, in English, “You are a marvel, Hugo dear!”

  She took his arm. He was short and very thin, and looked as if he had been created by a particularly refined artist using only a limited palette of colors: gray for his suit, hair, and eyes; a touch of pale ocher for his face and gloves; a few spots of white on his stiff collar and forehead; and a gleam of gold in his mouth. His companion, taller than he, solidly built and rosy-cheeked, was wearing a little hat, fashionably and jauntily perched on top of her silvery curls like a bird on a branch. She walked by his side with long, confident strides that rang out on the old cobblestones.

  It was an August day in Paris, on the Quai d’Orléans by the Seine. Hugo kept congratulating himself that this year he had postponed his departure to Deauville: the weather was fine and Magda quite entertaining. He did not like dining with pretty girls; at his age it was better to keep his pleasures separate. For a lunch like this what he needed was a hard-boiled, cynical old American such as Magda, who appreciated her food and had good taste in wine. She admired him, but that left him indifferent: he had always been admired for his taste, his wealth, his splendid collection of porcelain, his knowledge of ancient Greek writers, his generosity, and his intelligence. He did not need other people’s admiration, yet Magda amused him. It was better, and more unusual, to be amused than admired … better and more unusual to be amused than loved.

  “Egoist.”

  A weeping young woman had called him that once. The sensual memory of her tears still touched his heart pleasurably: she had been so young and so beautiful. He had been young then, too. Egoist … he might have replied that in this world of mad, brutal men and their stupid victims, the only harmless people were egoists like him. They did not hurt anyone. All the misery suffered by human beings, thought Hugo, is unleashed by those who love others more than themselves and want that love to be acknowledged. Whereas he just wanted to lead a peaceful, quiet life. There was no great secret about it. One had to think of life as an interesting theatrical production, every detail of which deserved praise, and then it all acquired great beauty. He showed Magda a dank little street between two old houses, where a girl was standing by a gate clutching a crusty loaf of bread to her chest. Hugo looked at her kindly: a few basic elements—an anemic child, a pale golden loaf, some ancient stones—had by chance come together to form a graceful, touching picture that pleased Hugo Grayer.

  “I’ve had my share of sadness, like everyone else,” he said to Magda. “Old Fontenelle used to insist that no sorrow, however wretched, could survive an hour’s reading. But for me it isn’t books or works of art that console me; it’s the contemplation of our imperfect world.”

  “Fontenelle must have led a peaceful existence like yours,” said Magda, laughing.

  Her laugh was the only thing about her that Hugo did not like; she laughed like a neighing horse.

  “It’s not that peaceful,” he replied.

  He did not know why, but he felt both proud and annoyed when it was implied that he was happier than other people. He was like a pedigree dog pulling on its lead, trying, for a change, to get at the food of lesser breeds.

  “I’ve had my share of misery,” he said, thinking of his mother’s death. They had often quarreled: she was a horrible woman. But her last moments and the deathbed reconciliation had been brief; there were no tears or shouting, and due to their measured, almost aesthetic observance of convention, all had been forgiven. And he thought about his divorce twenty years ago, and about De Beers, which had just dropped a hundred points. Well, a man like himself had worries on a spiritual plane that the mass of humanity could not possibly grasp. He had suffered, truly suffered, because of certain books, unsuccessful journeys, silly women, dreams, and gloomy premonitions. A night spent in an ugly hotel room overwhelmed him with sadness. Some gaudy wallpaper, in an inn where a cold had kept him in bed for a week, had been at the root of a chronic melancholy, a tendency to migraine, and gloomy speculation about the future. And now this remark of Magda’s had irritated him: she was too down-to-earth to be able to understand him.

  But Magda had stopped at the spot on the quay at which the Seine gently curved around to the right. Hugo thought how ugly and sharp the usual expression, “the river’s elbow,” was, evoking the image of an old beggar woman lifting her arm to ward off a blow. In fact, it was a graceful and exquisitely elegant movement. The Seine twined itself around Paris like a woman putting her arms around her lover—a very young woman, affectionate and blushing, Hugo said to himself, as he watched the water glitter. How he loved its flow, its pale color …

  Nearby there was a quiet little square.

  “It’s all so beautiful!” murmured Hugo. “Europe has the charm of those who are going to die,” he said, stroking the river’s gray stone parapet as he went on walking. “That’s what makes it so seductive. For several years I’ve felt particularly drawn to these threatened cities: Paris, London, Rome. Every time I leave I have tears in my eyes, as though I’m saying good-bye to a terminally ill friend. It was the same in Salzburg before the Anschluss … God, it was so moving, listening to Mozart’s music on those cold summer nights and thinking of Hitler a few miles away, tormented by insomnia and greed. One was witnessing the end of a civilization. One was watching a country shudder and die while singing, just as one might feel the beating heart of a wounded nightingale in one’s hand. Poor, charming Austria … And then all this,” he said, pointing at Notre Dame, “destroyed in air raids, ruined and in ashes, how horrible! And yet …”

  He felt a little out of breath. He could not keep up with Magda, who was walking too fast for him, but vanity would not allow him to admit it. (Magda was, in fact, older than he but considerably more robust.)

  “Women are indestructible,” he thought.

  He suggested sitting on a bench in the square; the weather was too nice to be shut up in a car.

  “So do you believe in this war?” she asked, as she looked at herself in her little handbag mirror and rearranged her curls, which resembled the carved chunks of solid silver decorating a Victorian soup tureen. A young street urchin, fascin

ated by so much glamour, stopped in front of her and stared. She smiled.

  “So do you believe in this war?” she repeated.

  “My dear friend,” said Hugo emphatically, “do you believe in the bullet that comes out of a loaded revolver when the trigger is pulled?”

  They contemplated Notre Dame with compassion.

  “The fate of those old stones affects me more than that of human beings, Magda.”

  The little boy was still standing in front of them. Hugo Grayer took some small change out of his pocket.

  “Here you are, child, go and buy yourself some barley sugar.”

  Surprised, the child looked down, hesitated, then took the money and walked away.

  “After all, it took centuries to build an irreplaceable cathedral and it takes only a few seconds to create a man, similar to all other men, for they are interchangeable, alas, with their vulgar passions and pleasures and crass stupidity.”

  “Yes,” said Magda, “at mealtimes during the Spanish War, when I thought about the El Grecos that might be destroyed, I couldn’t eat a thing. I could truthfully hear a voice repeating in my ear, ‘the El Grecos, the El Grecos you’ll never see again!’”

  “There were certain scenes from the Spanish War in the cinema that could match the El Grecos.” Hugo sighed.

  Magda gazed at the sky, trying to look as if she was thinking about the war in Spain. Actually she was wondering if her stockbroker had managed to sell her Mexican Eagle shares in time. Dear Hugo was so detached from worldly concerns, unsurprisingly since he possessed one of the largest fortunes in Uruguay. Then she thought about the two big rooms on the first floor of her home in New York, briefly considering the best combination of colors: purple and pink, perhaps? That could be fun, with her Italianate mirrors painted with birds and flowers …

  Hugo smiled in the sunlight. Even though it was the height of summer, the light wasn’t too bright, but soft and gentle. He would go to the Louvre and look at L’homme au verre de vin, one of his favorite paintings, before going home to dress for dinner. He had been invited to dine outside Paris by a Brazilian woman friend who lived in Versailles. Yes, it was strange to watch old Europe sinking like this, like a ship taking on water from all sides, plunging into those terrible depths where God’s voice ceaselessly resounds. In a few weeks or months would the ancient towers of Notre Dame be blown up by bombs, hurling their martyred stones to the heavens? And all those beautiful old houses … What a pity! He felt compassion, as well as a suitable indignation, and the comfortable peace of mind one experiences when watching a play. There is a lot of blood, and a lot of tears, but they are flowing a long way away from you and will never affect you. He himself was a neutral; “a citizen of no man’s land” was how he smilingly described himself. There was a handful of people on earth (Magda was one) who, by virtue of their birth, ancestors, family ties, and a quirk of fate, had so many different racial strains within them that no country could lay claim to them. Hugo’s father was Scandinavian, his mother Italian. He had been born in the United States but had become a national of the small South American republic in which he owned some property.

  Young men and women strolled slowly along with their arms around each other’s waists. How would they all feel if one day …? What curious conflicts of emotion and duty they would have! And their poor bodies, made for pleasure! No, the human body was certainly not created for pleasure, thought Hugo; he put his hand over his eyes, for the sun suddenly shone brightly between two dark clouds that had come from nowhere: man had been created to endure hunger, cold, and exhaustion, and his heart was made to be filled with primitive, violent passions—fear, hope, and hatred.

  Benevolently he watched the pedestrians strolling by. They didn’t understand the resources within them, or that the human species could endure almost anything. Hugo Grayer was deeply convinced of this. The way things were at the moment, it took courage to come to Europe every year as he did. He might find himself trapped, an innocent man, among these nations going up in flames, just like some poor rat in a burning house. So what? He would leave in good time. With some difficulty he wrenched his thoughts back to Magda, who was asking his advice about the house she had recently bought in New Jersey. Then they got up and walked back to the Boulevard Saint Germain, where the car was waiting for them. Then they went to Versailles for dinner, and Hugo went back to his hotel. He was still asleep the next morning when the citizens of France were reading the announcement printed in capital letters on the front page of their newspaper: AUGUST 22, 1939. THE OFFICIAL GERMAN NEWS AGENCY STATES: THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REICH AND THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT HAVE DECIDED TO AGREE TO A PACT OF NON-AGGRESSION.

  There were those who thought, “Things will sort themselves out again.”

  Others thought, “There’s nothing to be done this time; we’ll have to leave.”

  It was like hearing a knock on the door in the night, warning you that your sleep is over, that you must set off again, and for a moment your heart seems to stop beating. Women looked at their husbands, or at sons old enough to fight, and prayed, “Not that! Have pity! Lord, remove this cup from me.”

  That same morning a thousand candles were lit in churches “for peace.” In the street people stopped at newspaper stands, and strangers talked to one another; their faces looked calm but very solemn. Hugo had lived in Europe long enough to be able to interpret warning signs like this. He asked for his bill. He was sad to be leaving, but of course there was nothing he could do here. He handed out generous tips.

  “Monsieur is going?” asked the chambermaid. “It’s because of what’s happening, isn’t it? Everyone wants to go back to their own country. It’s only natural in a way.”

  Where would Hugo go? Well, first to America, where he had heard there was to be a sale of antique ivory: he was beginning to get bored with porcelain. After that, he’d see. It was very disappointing to think that he wouldn’t see Cannes this year.

  “Of course, I’d love to stay,” he said, “but there’ll be air raids …”

  When he looked at all the strong, handsome men who might be going to their deaths, he felt a sort of ironic affection for himself, for his fragile bones, his narrow spine, and his long, pale hands that had never in his life done any ordinary, rough work; they had never touched an ax or a weapon, but they knew how to stroke old books, look after flowers, or gently rub boiled linseed oil into some valuable piece of Elizabethan furniture.

  However, the weather was so beautiful that he decided to put off his departure until the next day, and still he lingered. War was declared on a radiant September day. That day, on the Alexandre III bridge, Hugo came across a middle-class family going for a walk: father, mother, and a son—still young, but almost old enough to join up. The father looked at his watch and said, “We’ve been at war for twenty minutes.”

  “It’s remarkable how resigned these Europeans are,” Hugo Grayer thought. Some pigeons flew away with cheerful squawks.

  Hugo would leave the next day. He sighed. He was starting to think that Paris would not be bombed … not straightaway … but there was the potential inconvenience, gasoline rationing, the best restaurants being closed … Yet how interesting it would have been to see the beginning of this war! What would everyone feel? How shaken they would be! What would come out of this terrible crisis? Heroism? A longing for pleasure? Hatred? And how would it manifest itself? Would men become better? More intelligent? Or worse? It was fascinating, all this, fascinating! Behind each human face lay a mystery that, until now, had been seen only in works of art. Yet, above all, he felt a kind of detached pity, like that of a god who, from the empyrean heights, watches the futile activities of mankind. Those poor people! Poor mad people! Never mind—the human body was made for suffering and death. And maybe these monotonous, gray lives would be livened up by enthusiasm, by passion, by new experiences. Like all fortunate, intelligent men, Hugo was inclined to be pessimistic about his own prospects but optimistic on others’ behalf. It was nevertheles

s quite clear that he could do nothing to help them and it would be madness to stay.

  He left France at the same time as Magda. Their ship was neutral, of course. It sailed serenely across a blue sea. It was moving farther away from Europe. Soon they would not think about it anymore. It would be like the stage after you have left the theater, like a blood-soaked Shakespearean tragedy when the curtain comes down and the footlights are turned out. The horror was unreal, but the memory of it still held a certain beauty. Sometimes, on a fine evening, in the bar or on deck, people competed with one another to recall these historic moments: “When I knew it was about to start, I wanted to see how the French were taking it: I went to Fouquet’s.”

  “Well, I went all around Paris; it was a historic moment. I stopped in all the cafés in Montparnasse. It was so moving! And, as it was dark, there were people kissing each other in every corner.”

  But by the second evening Europe was already forgotten.

  In his cabin Hugo was undressing. On a tray next to his bed there was a bowl of fruit, some iced tea, and a book. He wanted desperately to go to sleep. He was one of those men who would continue to enjoy some of their childhood pleasures until the day they died: deep sleep, the subtle taste of little cream cakes dusted with icing sugar, the best fruit. He greatly missed his French servant, whom he had been forced to leave in Paris in the first hours of the war. The poor devil had been called up. They had almost cried as they parted.

  “He stole so much from me that in the end he became as attached to me as a peasant does to the ox that provides him with a living by working the soil. Poor Marcel … I’d send him some sweetmeats, but he’ll be dead before they reach him. His health was bad and, after eight years’ service with me, he was very spoiled. It’s funny to think of him having wartime adventures,” he thought to himself, as he carefully chose a peach.

He usually fell asleep like that, half-undressed, one hand on his book, the other luxuriantly squeezing a piece of fresh fruit as if it were a woman’s breast. He would then wake up fifteen or twenty minutes later, put on his pajamas, cut an orange or a grapefruit in half, drink a few mouthfuls of the delicious iced juice sprinkled with a little sugar, put down his book, and sleep until morning. But tonight a prolonged earsplitting blast of sound disturbed his sleep. He listened to it incredulously at first, thinking that he was dreaming about Paris and was imagining he was one of those wretched Parisians who were probably just then listening to the sirens in their beds. But he was Hugo Grayer, a neutral, on a neutral ship on a sea that belonged to no one! The call of the sirens reached Hugo’s ears from the depths of the sea and the pinnacle of the heavens, like an echo of those ringing out in a sorrowing Europe: it was a harsh, inhuman voice, quivering with anguish and concern, calling out to all mortals, “Watch out! Be careful! I can do nothing for you except warn you!”

  He leaped out of bed and began to dress. Were they being shipwrecked? Impossible, the sea was so calm … Was it a fire, a submarine attack? Doors banged. People ran along the corridors. He put on trousers, socks, and a pullover. He had never felt so alert before, and yet he was very calm.

  However, he could not get his jacket on; he could not find the sleeve. But so what! It was warm and “is not the body more than clothing?” This thought stunned him for a moment. From what buried memories did those ancient words come? In shirtsleeves, his life preserver correctly fastened but his soul uncertain and angry (it wasn’t fair; he was a neutral. He wasn’t mixed up in their arguments. Why had they disturbed him?), Hugo Grayer went up on deck. He was not afraid. Perhaps a very intelligent, well brought up man can’t experience panic-stricken, primitive, animal terror? He was furious. It seemed to him that there must be someone to call to account, someone who had not done what he should, the captain of the ship perhaps, or the company that owned it? He had an acute sense of how ridiculous his situation was. It was vulgar, hateful, to be walking around in shirtsleeves, wearing a life preserver, on the deck of a torpedoed ship.

  For now he knew. He had heard other passengers talking as they ran: they were being pursued by submarines. “A mistake they won’t make again,” Hugo Grayer had said at the bar the previous night, forgetting that human nature is fallible and man’s memory short.

  He felt reduced to the level of a savage. It was as if, tattooed and with a ring in his nose, he had suddenly been forced to dance! He was a civilized man! He had nothing to do with their war! There were moments when he thought he was still dreaming. Yes, this all had the incoherence, the brutal speed, and unreality of a nightmare, right down to the colors that one sees only in dreams: the purple ink of the shadows, the livid brightness of torches, the blinding light of reflections in the swirling water. Split into small groups, the passengers were waiting at the embarkation points where the lifeboats were to be lowered from the upper deck. In the darkness Hugo could see diamonds twinkling on bare hands. That’s where his people were; he went to join them. The women had put their fur coats on over their nightdresses and were wearing their jewels safely next to their skin, believing this to be more secure than leaving them in a case that might be dropped as they jumped into the sea.

  Mechanically Hugo adjusted his life preserver and looked at the black water. The first boats were just being lowered when there was a blast of gunfire. A smell of gunpowder wafted past Hugo’s astonished nostrils; it was a smell he had never experienced, but something in him recognized it; it was a coarse, violent smell that aroused a muffled excitement rather than terror. A shudder ran right through him, from his narrow feet to his pale hands, and it seemed to him that death was touching him, blowing in his mouth, and grabbing him by the hair. Nearby there were screams of pain and fear. There was a second, then a third burst of gunfire.

  An invisible hand was shuffling, shaking up and mixing all these hitherto separate groups of people, as if they were ingredients in a cocktail shaker. First- and third-class passengers, women in mink coats, young German-Jewish children on their way to an Uruguayan orphanage with an American charity: they were all running together now, bumping into one another as they rushed toward the boats that were slowly being lowered into the sea. A shell whistled past Hugo. It did not hit him, but someone nearby who pulled him down as he fell.

  At that very moment the moon rose with a horribly theatrical brilliance, just like a spotlight over a stage. Hugo saw a woman who had been cut in half. Her head with its dark hair, her ears with their silver earrings, and her torso were intact, but her legs had been blown off. There were cries of “the torpedo!” and everyone crowded onto the starboard side, away from the expected point of impact. The crowd was now behaving as one, quivering like an animal about to be whipped. Hugo got up and ran farther off. The first torpedo had missed them. The second arrived. It seemed strange still to be alive. The second went through the bow of the ship.

  There were very few boats left that were of any use: some of the lifeboats had been smashed and several sailors killed by the shelling. Hugo realized that he would not get a place on one; there were too many women and children on board. He jumped into the sea. He didn’t know how to swim. Buoyed up by his life preserver, he made futile and exhausting efforts to get away from the ship. The waves played with him, tossing him from one to another with ironic condescension.

  A lifeboat went past, but no one saw him. At last he was noticed by some sailors on a raft. They had picked up some women and children floating in the sea, and now Hugo. They wanted to get away from the torpedoed ship, but the wind was blowing them back. They were still close, horribly close … They did not have time to worry about the survivors lying at their feet. Hugo had injured his hip jumping into the water. He was lying among people as drenched as he, as frozen as he, and as dazed as he, none of whom could help him. There were two little girls beside him. They must have been part of the group of orphans traveling to Uruguay; their wet hair hung limply over their pale faces. He could give them nothing. He tried to talk to them, to reassure them. They did not reply; they did not understand. Like him, they were awaiting death, for although the ship was still afloat, it would soon capsize and the raft would go down with it, sucked in by the backwash.

  Hours passed, as slow and confusing as a night of fever. He was shivering with cold. The wind that had seemed so soft was in fact bitterly cold. It would soon be daylight.

  He asked one of the sailors, “Are there many dead?”

  He did not know. A woman sitting near Hugo, probably one of the chambermaids, as she addressed him formally, answered, “Monsieur cannot imagine how many bodies I’ve seen.”

  The ship was still afloat. Fascinated, he watched the black hull that, like a careless fish, would soon dive below the water, taking them with it. Was Hugo afraid of death? He had always thought not—but it’s one thing to see death at the end of a long road, a natural end to a long and happy life, quite another to think that this very night, this very morning, these very moments, might be his last. And what a death! In the dawning light he looked at the water.

  It was terrifying. It was being churned up by the wind, bringing to the surface a sort of scum that could not be seen in broad daylight or from the top deck of a ship; foam, seaweed, and the thousands of bits of rubbish floating there since the previous day, or since time began, created a greenish sludge that Hugo contemplated with horror. Where was the fresh sea of a September morning on a French beach? Was this what it concealed in its depths? The waves rose and fell all around him, and he was surrounded by steam, shadows, and ghosts.

  Occasionally he became confused again. What was he doing here? Hugo Grayer, a victim of the war, how ridiculous! With every wave, he thought, “This time, it’s the end!” But the raft was solid. It was not sinking, but it was not making any progress.

  “If I could row, it would help,” Hugo thought.

  But where would he find the strength to pick

up oars? His hip was so painful … He felt as if he had been lying there for weeks, or even months, although in moments of lucidity he realized that it was barely daylight, that the torpedo had struck in the middle of the night, that he had been suffering like this for only a few hours—the period of time that had once separated lunch from dinner, or a concert, or one pleasure from another. Five or six hours at most! How short that was! How long! How long it was when every second trickled by in beads of anguished sweat! How cold he was! Suddenly his stomach heaved and he vomited. He wanted to turn his head away out of a sense of decency, but he found his neck was too stiff to move; he remained lying down, vomiting over himself like an animal.

  “Monsieur is ill,” the woman next to him said compassionately. The awful retching had relieved him for a moment and he was able to reply, “No, it’s nothing.”

  He suddenly remembered that once—a century ago, or was it yesterday?—he had said to someone—Magda? Someone else?—that he was curious to know what sort of emotions would be aroused by extreme danger. Now he knew. He also knew that everything was not immediately lost, that shame, pity, and human solidarity stayed alive in people’s hearts. It gave him some comfort to know that he had answered with a measure of dignity. He wanted to do better. Painfully, he breathed, “Thank you.”

  “You’re very cold, monsieur …”

  She was no longer speaking so formally. She took Hugo’s pale, inert hands in hers and held them; she squeezed them, gently rubbing each one as she lifted it …

  There was no end to the suffering his poor body could endure. His hip was being stabbed cruelly and relentlessly, as if a wicked and intelligent lobster were digging at him with its pincers. Seasickness added to his appalling feeling of cold and abandonment. The day was passing. He dozed, cried out. No one could help him. They looked at him with pity; that was all they could offer him. To hell with their pity! He, too, had watched with compassion as French soldiers went off to fight. Enough, he’d had enough! It was time for these horrible waves to stop! It was time for some warmth! Time to stop seeing those little girls’ faces in front of him, as pale and lifeless as dead fish! How tolerable misfortunes appear when they affect only other people! How strong the human body seems when it’s another man’s flesh that bleeds! How easy it is to look death in the face when it’s another man’s turn! Well, now it was his turn. This was no longer about a Chinese child, a Spanish woman, a Central European Jew, or those poor charming Frenchmen, but about him, Hugo Grayer. It was about his body being tossed about in the spume of the waves, his vomiting; it was about his frozen, lonely, wretched, shivering self! How often, before going to bed, had he casually crumpled the newspaper he had been reading, in which there were stories about air raids, torpedoes, or fires—oh, so many of them that he wearied of pity? So tomorrow, decent, untroubled people would briefly consider the picture of a calm, smooth sea with its floating wreckage and would not lose an hour’s sleep over it or pause over their breakfast. His body would be bloated by the water, eaten by sea creatures, while in a cinema in New York or Buenos Aires the screen would show “The first neutral ship torpedoed in this war!” Then it would be old news, of interest to nobody. People would be thinking about other things, their ailments and their little irritations. Boys would grab hold of girls’ waists in the dark; children would suck their sweets.

  It was appalling; it was unfair! The whole lot of them were behaving like chickens that allow their mothers and sisters to have their throats cut while they carry on clucking and pecking at their food. They did not understand that it was this passivity, this silent acquiescence, that would, when the time came, also deliver them up to a strong, merciless hand. Hugo thought suddenly that he had always proclaimed his hatred of violence and how it was one’s duty to be opposed to evil. Hadn’t he said that? Perhaps he had not had time to say it, but one thing was certain: he had always thought it, professed it, believed it! And now here he was in this terrible situation, while others … others, in their turn, would maintain their fastidious scruples, parade their well-meaning neutrality, and enjoy delightful peace of mind.

  Meanwhile the hours dragged on …