The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-07-29
The Stars Ten Minute
Rapid Fire Short Story
Mere Savage.

woman, who was known to be well.to.
do.
They were four big boys of fair com.
IleXion, with blond boards and blue
eyes, who had kept fat notwithstand-
ing the fatigues which they had en-
dured already, and who also, though
in a conquered country, had remained
kind and gentle. Alone with this aged
woman, they showed themselves full
of consideration, sparing her, as much
as they could, all expenses and fatigue.
They could be seen of a morning, all
four of them, making their toilet
around the we'll, in their shirt sleeves,
splashing with great swishes' of water,
under the crude daylight of the snowy
weather, their pink-white Northman's
flesh. La Mere Savage went and
came, preparing the soup. Then they
would be seen cleaning the kitchen,
rubbing the tiles, splitting wood, peel.
ing potatoes, doing up all the house
work. like four good sons about their
mother.
But the old woman thought always
of her own son, so tall and thin, with
his hooked nose and his brown eyes
and his heavy mustache which made
a roll of black hairs upon his lip. She
asked every day of each of the sol
diers who were installed beside her
heartA:
DO you know where the French
marching regiment Number 20 was
sent? My boy is in it,"
They invariably answered. "No, we
don't know, we don't know thing at
all" And, understanding her pain and
uneasiness (they who had mothers too
at home) they rendered her a thou
sand little services. She loved them
well, moreover, her four enemies,
since the peasantry feel no patriotic
hatred; that belongs to the upper
class alone. The humble, those who
pay the most, because they are poor,
and because every new burden
crushes them down; those who are
killed I'M masses, who make the true
cannon'sprey, because they are so
many; those, in fine, who suffer most
cruelty the atrocious miseries of war,
because they are the feeblest, and offer
least resistance-they hardly under
stand at all those bellicose ardors,
that eXcitable sense of honor, or those
pretended political combinations
which in six months exhaust two ma
tlcns, the conqueror as well as the
conquered.
They said on the countryside in
speaking of La Mere Savage:
There are four fellows who have
found a soft berth"
Now one morning when the old
woman was alone in the house, she
saw far off on the plain a man coming
towards her dwelling. Soon she rec
ognized him; it was the postman to
distribute the letters. He gave her a
folded paper, and she drew out of her
case the spectacles which she used
for sewing; then she read:
Madame Savage:
THE present letter is to tell you
sad news. Your boy Victor was killed
yesterday by shell which nearly cut
him in two. l was near by, as we
stood next each other in the company,
and he told me about you and to let
you know on the same day if anything
happened to him.
81 took his watch, which was in his
pocket, to bring it back to you when
the war is done.
81 salute you very kindly,
"CESAIRE RIVOT,
Soldier of the I'd Glass, March.
Reg. o."
The letter was dated three weeks be-
fore.
She did not cry at all. She remained
so overcome and stupefed
that she did not even suffer as yet
She thought; There's Victor who is
killed now!" Then little by little the
tears came to her eyes, and the sor-
row caught her heart. The ideas came
to her, one by one, dreadful, torturing.
She would never kiss him again, her
child, her big boy, never again. The
gendarmes had killed the father, the
Prussians had killed the son. He had
been cut in two by a cannon ball. She
seemed to see the thing, the horrible
thing: the head falling, the eyes open,
while he chewed the corner of his big
mustache, as he always did in mo-
ments of anger
What hnd Lhnu done with Lis hndu