Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Spanish).djvu/192

188 life and the next, has need of tears, a time came in which many were shed in this house, to prove to its inmates that God bestows this blessing, almost preferably, on the poor and the righteous.

The draft was proclaimed and both sons were enrolled for the drawing.

Those who know how passionate is the affection which the mothers of the people have for their children can understand Maria's inconsolable grief. She believed that she loved both sons equally; she feared for both with the same anguish; with the same fervor she prayed to God and to the Virgin that both might escape the draft; but when they returned from the drawing and she learned that the soldier's lot had fallen on her own son, the cry which this intelligence drew from her mother's heart—"Child of my soul, I knew that it must fall upon you!"—showed that a mother's love can be equalled by no other.

Michael saw Maria's grief with a breaking heart, a grief which not all his own efforts nor those of her husband could diminish or soothe.

On the following day John Joseph took his son to the barrack, but what was the astonishment of both when the commandant told Gaspar that he was free and that he might return home.

"Free!" cried Gaspar in amazement. "And why?"

"Because you have a substitute," answered the officer.