... Another
street fight in the little town of Saar.... In the middle of the
square stands a high pillar of the Virgin. The mother of God
holds her child in one arm, and stretches the other out in
blessing.... Here the fight was prolonged, man to man. They
were hacking at me, I laying about me on all sides.... A
Prussian dragoon, strong as Goliath, tore one of our officers (a
pretty, dandified lieutenant--how many girls are, perhaps, mad
after him?) out of his saddle and split his skull at the feet of
the Virgin's pillar. The gentle saint looked on unmoved.
Another of the enemy's dragoons--a Goliath, too--seized, just
before me almost, my right-hand man, and bent him backwards in
his saddle so powerfully that he broke his back--I myself heard
it crack. To this the Madonna gave her blessing also."
VIII.
It can be said that these incidents of battle are imagined, like
the facts of Vereschagin's pictures, but like these they are
imagined rather below than above the real horror of war, and
represent them inadequately.
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