Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/366

322 trumpet from children, till they learn to do what they are bid.

These combats were in the streets of the city, and the conquerors in one were now prisoners in another. His father followed him everywhere like a tutelar angel, but was often unable to restrain his fanaticism. Indeed, on one occasion, when the noble Leprida most affectionately and earnestly, but in vain, endeavored to withdraw him from the combat,—the illustrious Leprida, President of that Congress of Tucuman, which declared the independence of Spanish rule, and before whom the most eminent men of the Republic bowed their heads, as before one of the fathers of their country, and who perished in that terrible massacre,—he also obliged his father to flee without him, who lingering too long on the road, almost beside himself with anxiety and shame for having preserved his own life by flight, was at last taken prisoner and carried to San Juan, where he escaped being shot only by a ransom of two thousand dollars. The young Sarmiento escaped many perils at that time—that of being shot by the order of his own government, from which he was saved by a noble foe, who carried him and other enthusiastic youths who were brought prisoners to him, to the shelter of his own roof, where he protected them at the risk of his own life; the peril of being shot in the barracks by three assassins instigated by Aldao, beside that of innumerable skirmishes and engagements. He says human nature never showed itself more unworthy to him than in that treacherous attack of the drunken friar, Aldao, upon a group of sixty officers, who had assembled after a truce had been agreed upon.