. . .
I wondered how they had met their fate, on the chill wintry morning. For
assuredly, in that restricted space, not a soul can have escaped alive;
the wreckage, hitherto undisturbed, still covered their remains.
And, remembering the old man and his humane converse that evening under
the trees, the true meaning of the catastrophe began to disentangle
itself from accidental and superficial aspects. For I confess that the
massacre of a myriad Chinamen leaves me cool and self-possessed; between
such creatures and ourselves there is hardly more than the frail bond of
a common descent from the ape; they are altogether too remote for our
narrow world-sympathies. I would as soon shed tears over the lost
Pleiad. But these others are our spiritual cousins; we have deep roots
in this warm soil of Italy, which brought forth a goodly tithe of what
is best in our own lives, in our arts and aspirations.
And I thought of the two nephews, their decent limbs all distorted and
mangled under a heap of foul rubbish, waiting for a brutal disinterment
and a nameless grave. This is no legitimate death, this murderous
violation of life. How inconceivably hateful is such a leave-taking, and
all that follows after! To picture a fair young body, that divine
instrument of joy, crushed into an unsightly heap; once loved, now
loathed of all men, and thrust at last, with abhorrence, into some
common festering pit of abominations.
