His triumph was so sweeping and comprehensive as to
be somewhat shapeless to the view. He had a sense
of fascinated pain when he tried to define to himself
what its limits would probably be. Vistas of unchecked,
expanding conquest stretched away in every direction.
He held at his mercy everything within sight. Indeed, it
rested entirely with him to say whether there should be any
such thing as mercy at all--and until he chose to utter
the restraining word the rout of the vanquished would go
on with multiplying terrors and ruin. He could crush
and torture and despoil his enemies until he was tired.
The responsibility of having to decide when he would stop
grinding their faces might come to weigh upon him later on,
but he would not give it room in his mind to-night.
A picture of these faces of his victims shaped itself
out of the flames in the grate. They were moulded
in a family likeness, these phantom visages: they were
all Jewish, all malignant, all distorted with fright.
They implored him with eyes in which panic asserted itself
above rage and cunning. Only here and there did he recall
a name with which to label one of these countenances;
very few of them raised a memory of individual rancour.
The faces were those of men he had seen, no doubt,
but their persecution of him had been impersonal;
his great revenge was equally so.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25