Word: huguenau
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With the third book, The Realist, laid in 1918, the moral breakdown is complete. Huguenau, the central character, is a deserter. Clever, self-confident, cocky, a smooth salesman, he finds himself in a town where the aging Major von Pasenow (the hero of The Romantic) is the town commandant and where Esch, spiritualized and suffering, and with vague Messianic visions, is the editor of a failing radical paper. Huguenau becomes friendly with Esch in order to denounce him to the commandant, organizes a company to buy the paper, and is unmasked as a deserter just as the revolution begins...
When the Town Hall is burning, the jail opened, and the looters swarming in the streets, Huguenau, the deserter, perceives Esch, the visionary, walking ahead of him. "Should he knock him over the head with the rifle butt? No, that would only be silly, what was needed was something that would end the business for good. And then it overwhelmed him like an illumination-he lowered his rifle, reached Esch with a few feline tango-like leaps, and ran the bayonet into his angular back. To the murderer's great astonishment, Esch went on calmly for a few steps...
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