The call of a horn rang out suddenly through the frightful heat and boredom. It left one or two more attentive ears particularly inquisitive as to what it might be. Listen: there it is again. It really did sound out again and it could generally have been believed that it was now ringing out from not so far away. "All good things come in threes," lisped a facetious fop. "Sound one more time, horn!" And time marched on. People had become somewhat pensive--and now, in addition, frightened, as if the thing had grown wings and was riding on fiery monsters in that direction, consumed by flames and shouting, setting up a long cry: We're coming! It was in truth as if a subterranean world had suddenly received a breath of fresh air, breaking in through the hard earth above. The sound was like the opening up of a dark precipice and it seemed as if the sun were shining down now out of a darkened sky even more glowingly, even more harshly, but a light coming down out of hell and not out of heaven. People laughed again--there are moments when man thinks he ought to smile when really what he feels is the icy grip of terror. The mood of a military expedition made up of many men is, at the end of the day, not very different from the mood of a single and solitary individual. The whole of the landscape in its stifling white heat now seemed to be still making a hooting noise. It had turned into the sounds of horns and now there entered without any more ado into the range of horns being blown, as if from an opening, the crowd of men from whom the sound had gone out. Now the landscape was featureless. The sky and the earth in summer came together as something solid. The season disappeared. A geographical location, a tilting yard, a bellicose play area had become a battlefield. Nature plays no part in a battle. Everything depends on luck, the calibre of the weaponry, one crowd of people and another crowd of people.