Zoutpansberg

“ In 1868 a public meeting was held at Potchefstroom to consider the war then going on with the Zoutpansberg natives. According to the report of the proceedings, the Rev. Mr. Ludorf said that "on a particular occasion a number of native children, who were too young to be removed, had been collected in a heap, covered with long grass, and burned alive. Other atrocities had also been committed, but these were too horrible to relate." When called upon to produce his authority for this statement, Mr. ”

“ The irons clicked shut upon one, then the other.
"You know everything now," said Zoberg, in a soft voice but a steady one. "I was—I am—a wolf; a wolf who hoped to mate with an angel."
His bright eyes rested upon Susan, who shrank back. Judge Pursuivant took a step toward the prisoner.
"There is no need for you to insult her," he said.
Zoberg grinned at him, with every long tooth agleam. "Do you want to hear my confession, or don't you?"
"Sure we want to hear it," grunted O'Bryant. "Leave him alone, judge, and let him talk." He glanced at me. "Got any paper, Mr. Wills? ”

“ The greater number are Frenchmen, droves of those long blue turned-back overcoats and red trousers, flowing sluggishly between the rows of low barracks, Frenchmen of every sort of training and temperament, swept here like dust by the war into common anonymity. I do not remember any picture of the war more curious, and, as it were, uncanny than the first sight of Zossen as our motor came lurching down the muddy road from Berlin—that huge, forgotten eddy, that slough of idle, aimless human beings against the gray March sky, milling slowly round and round in the mud. ”

“ They were all silent for a while, then: “No, I had enough of it!” said Prosper. “If they had but set us at work that amounted to something, as out there in Africa! but this going up the hill only to come down again, the feeling that one is of no earthly use to anyone, that is no kind of a life at all. And then I should be lonely, now that poor Zephyr is dead; all that is left me to do is to go to work on a farm. That will be better than living among the Prussians as a prisoner, don’t you think so? ”

“ Zoberg said deeply, "she would be prepared in heart and soul to change at touch of the ointment—the ectoplasm. Then, to me she must turn as a fellow-creature. Together, throughout the world, adventuring in a way unbelievable——"
His voice died, and we let it. He stood in the firelight, head thrown back, manacled hands folded. He might have been a martyr instead of a fiend for whom a death at the stake would be too easy.
"I can tell what spoiled the seance," I told him after a moment. "Gird, sitting opposite, saw that it was you, not Susan, who had changed. ”

“ The camp was pitched in the centre of a fertile plain at a mile or so from Mulhausen, in the direction of the Rhine. In the twilight of a sultry day in August, under the dull sky, across which heavy clouds were drifting, the rows of shelter-tents could be seen stretching out amid a broad expanse of ploughed land. At regular intervals along the front gleamed the piles of arms, guarded by sentinels with loaded rifles, who stood there stock-still, their eyes fixed dreamily on the violet-tinted mist which was rising from the great river on the far horizon. ”

“ Jadgor, this was planned. Even among the men of Mazzer among us have there been whispers, so that blue men have slain the Bithurians in whose homes they were employed, and information has been transmitted from among us to our foes. This is Zollaria's vengeance she sends another to fulfil. Like a blue swarm of stinging insects, they swarm against us. Ten towns lie in ashes. Medai, our governor, is gathering our people for defense so quickly as may be. Yet, and aid be not sent us quickly, Zitu himself knows what may be endured. ”

“ It was not right to make men suffer like that, just for the fun of walking them up and down the country. They were advancing in column across the naked plain in two files occupying the sides of the road, leaving a free central space in which the officers could move to and fro and keep an eye on their men, but it was not the same now as it had been in Champagne after they left Rheims, a march of song and jollity, when they tramped along gayly and the knapsack was like a feather to their shoulders, in the belief that soon they would come up with the Prussians and give them a sound drubbing ”

“ The most important section, the one which leads the Zofingia, is that of Zurich. Here the problems of the hour are discussed with especial eagerness. Centring round opposite poles, there are two parties, substantially equal in numbers, and inspired with equal enthusiasm. On the one hand we see conservatives, authoritarian and centralist in trend, the devotees of "Studententum" of the old style. At the other pole are the young Zofingians whose outlook is socialistic, idealistic, and revolutionary. ”

“ Doesburg having been thus reduced, the Earl now proceeded toward the more important city which he had determined to besiege. Zutphen, or South- Fen, an antique town of wealth and elegance, was the capital of the old Landgraves of Zutphen. It is situate on the right bank of the Yssel, that branch of the Rhine which flows between Gelderland and Overyssel into the Zuyder-Zee.
The ancient river, broad, deep, and languid, glides through a plain of almost boundless extent, till it loses itself in the flat and misty horizon. ”

“ Zoberg gave me a brief, penetrating glance, then seemed to shrivel up in his own chair. He looked almost as exhausted as Susan. I, too, was feeling near to collapse.
"You want to own up, Mr. Wills?" invited O'Bryant.
"I certainly do not," I snapped at him. "You've got the wrong man."
"I thought," he made answer, as though catching me in a damaging admission, "that it was a devil, not a man, who killed Gird." ”

“ Had not Zussmann—ay, and his wigless wife, Hulda, too—been seen emerging from the mighty Church that stood in frowsy majesty amid its tall, neglected box-like tombs, and was to the Ghetto merely a topographical point and the chronometric standard? And yet, here was Zussmann an assiduous attendant at the synagogue of the first floor—nay, a scholar so conversant with Hebrew, not to mention European, lore, that the Red Beadle felt himself a Man-of-the-Earth, only retaining his superiority by remembering that learning did not always mean logic.
"Nature make herself!" ”

“ In the waning light of that [Pg 365] rainy day everything had a livid hue—a dismal, mud-smeared vista was offered to his eyes. The defile of St. Albert, the narrow road by which the Prussians had approached, skirted the loop of the river as far as some whitish quarry pits. The crests of the wood of La Falizette waved beyond the slopes of the Seugnon hill; and almost in front of him, just a little on the left, was St. Menges with its road sloping down to the ferry. In the centre, just opposite, rose the Hattoy hill. ”

“ There must be fighting going on, away down the river near Froeschwiller, on that dark and threatening Saturday, that ominous 6th of August; there was premonition of it in the sultry air, and the stray puffs of wind passed shudderingly over the camp as if fraught with tidings of impending evil. And for two days the division had believed that it was marching forth to battle; the men had expected to find the Prussians in their front, at the termination of their forced march from Belfort to Mülhausen. ”

“ But poor Alois Zoschg, the more he thought, the more puzzled he got, and the boasts of Andrä Margesin only made him more furious. There he stood, crying out against the judge, and against his ill-luck, against his poverty and the opulence of Margesin, till it became necessary to close the court, and his friends prevailed on him to [239] go home. But all the way his passion grew more and more outrageous, and by the time he reached his cottage he was raging like a maniac; the other men could do nothing with him, and slunk away one by one, some in disgust, some in despair. ”

“ Zoberg spun around somehow on his knees, stiffened and screamed. Perhaps I should say that he howled. In his voice was the inarticulate agony of a beast wounded to death. Then he collapsed.
Both men stooped above him, cautious but thorough in their examination. Finally Judge Pursuivant straightened up and faced toward us.
"Keep Miss Susan there with you," he warned me. "He's dead, and not a pretty sight."
Slowly they came back to us. Pursuivant was thoughtful, while O'Bryant, Zoberg's killer, seemed cheerful for the first time since I had met him. ”

“ John Schönbrunner, formerly canon of Zurich, who had retired to Zug at the epoch of the Reformation, could not restrain his tears; "Whatever may have been thy creed," said he, "I know, Zwingle, that thou hast been a loyal confederate! May thy soul rest with God!"
But the pensioners of the foreigner, on whom Zwingle had never ceased to make war, required that the body of the heretic should be dismembered, and a portion sent to each of the Five Cantons. "Peace be to the dead! and God alone be their Judge!" exclaimed the avoyer Golder and the landamman Thoss of Zug. ”

“ Every evening towards nine o'clock, when the inn was emptying, Étienne remained thus talking with Souvarine. He drank his beer in small sips, while the engine-man smoked constant cigarettes, of which the tobacco had at last stained his slender fingers. His vague mystic's eyes followed the smoke in the midst of a dream; his left hand sought occupation by nervously twitching; and he usually ended by installing a tame rabbit on his knees, a large doe with young, who lived at liberty in the house. This rabbit, which he had named Poland, had grown to worship him ”

“ The most profound silence had been kept during this altercation; but, as soon as Stamm disappeared, Captain Pravdine, an old officer, addressed himself to us all.
"We can not let them fight, gentlemen," he said.
Zodomirsky touched him gently on his arm.
"Captain," he said, "I am a newcomer among you; none of you know me. I have yet, as it were, to win my spurs; it is impossible for me to let this quarrel pass without fighting. I do not know what I have done to annoy this gentleman, but it is evident that he has some spite against me." ”

“ Then, I hardly know, but the town must have been captured, and we found ourselves on a mountain—the Geissberg they call it, I think—and there, having entrenched ourselves in a kind of château, we kept on potting those pigs. They jumped into the air as we hit them, and it was a sight to see how they came down again on their snouts. But it was all no good; they kept on coming up till they were quite ten to one, and with as many guns as they wanted. [17] It is all very well to be brave, but bravery in an affair like that simply means leaving one's carcase on the field. ”

“ He cried:
"You will all be mown down, overthrown, cast to the dung-heap. Someone will be born who will annihilate your race with its cowardly enjoyments. And look here! you see my hands; if my hands were able they would take up the earth, like that, and shake it until it was smashed to fragments, and you were all buried beneath the rubbish."
"Well said," declared Madame Rasseneur, with her polite and convinced air.
There was silence again. Then Étienne spoke once more of the Borinage men. He questioned Souvarine concerning the steps that had been taken at the Voreux. ”

“ Alois Zoschg was a peasant of the Sarnthal; his holding was inconsiderable, but it sufficed for all his needs; his cottage was small, but his family consisted of only himself and his daughter, and they found room for all their requirements.
Katharina was bright enough, however, to make any home happy. Though she shared the cottage with her father alone, she never seemed to feel the want of younger companions; thoughtful and prudent beyond her years, and thrifty and notable with all the work of the place, she was at the same time always ready with her joke and her song. ”

“ One evening the French military prisoners were being marched into camp at the conclusion of the day's work. Among them was a Zouave. Half-starved from an insufficiency of food he could scarcely drag one foot before the other. At last he dropped out from sheer fatigue. The guard struck him with the butt end of his rifle and roughly ordered him to get up and keep step and pace with his comrades. The Zouave pleaded that he really could not walk another step because he felt so weak and ill. The guard thereupon pulled the wretched prisoner to his feet and gave him a heavy blow across his back. ”

“ Rozmberk.—Has every one conspired against me today, is there no one here who will obey my commands?
Zuzanka.—Not at all, my master. For you yourself expressed the wish that the slightest shadow of today might disappear and be forgotten. See, the entire town and all the surrounding country united to celebrate this day with you,—the Highest Game Warden came to tell you that your wishes would be realized in all the countries which have stepped away from King Rudolf,—and in this victorious moment a human life is to be sacrificed, and that trifling incident of today is to be baptized with blood? ”

“ Zodomirsky's pale face was flushed with a sudden flame. He turned to Stamm, and replied in a quiet but firm voice: "I think, monsieur, that you are wrong in calling it lost time to learn to shoot with a pistol; in our garrison life an imprudent word often leads to a meeting between comrades, in which case he who is known for a good shot inspires respect among those indiscreet persons who amuse themselves in asking useless questions."
"Oh! that is not a reason, Captain. In duels, as in everything else, something should be left to chance. ”