Let them come! . . . He was longing for the
struggle with the anxiety of a punctilious business man wishing to
cancel a former debt as soon as possible.
In the streets of Paris he met many groups of fugitives. They were from
the North and East of France, and had escaped before the German advance.
Of all the tales told by this despondent crowd--not knowing where to go
and dependent upon the charity of the people--he was most impressed
with those dealing with the disregard of property. Shootings and
assassinations made him clench his fists, with threats of vengeance;
but the robberies authorized by the heads, the wholesale sackings by
superior order, followed by fire, appeared to him so unheard-of that
he was silent with stupefaction, his speech seeming to be temporarily
paralyzed. And a people with laws could wage war in this fashion, like a
tribe of Indians going to combat in order to rob! . . . His adoration of
property rights made him beside himself with wrath at these sacrileges.
He began to worry about his castle at Villeblanche. All that he owned in
Paris suddenly seemed to him of slight importance to what he had in his
historic mansion. His best paintings were there, adorning the gloomy
salons; there, too, the furnishings captured from the antiquarians after
an auctioneering battle, and the crystal cabinets, the tapestries, the
silver services.
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