Page:The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - (Los cuatro jinetes de Apocalipsis) (IA cu31924014386738).djvu/217

 the time of what he should have done in his youth, of what he had dodged.

The veterans of '70 were passing through the streets, with the green and black ribbon in their lapel, souvenirs of the privations of the Siege of Paris, and of heroic and disastrous campaigns. The sight of these men, satisfied with their past, made him turn pale. Nobody was recalling his, but he knew it, and that was enough. In vain his reason would try to lull this interior tempest.… Those times were different; then there was none of the present unanimity; the Empire was unpopular … everything was lost.… But the recollection of a celebrated sentence was fixing itself in his mind as an obsession—"France still remained!" Many had thought as he did in his youth, but they had not, therefore, evaded military service. They had stood by their country in a last and desperate resistance.

Useless was his excuse-making reasoning. Nobler thoughts showed him the fallacy of this beating around the bush. Explanations and demonstrations are unnecessary to the understanding of patriotic and religious ideals; true patriotism does not need them. One's country … is one's country. And the laboring man, skeptical and jesting, the self-centred farmer, the solitary pastor, all had sprung to action at the sound of this conjuring word, comprehending it instantly, without previous instruction.

"It is necessary to pay," Don Marcelo kept repeating mentally. "I ought to pay my debt."

As in his dreams, he was constantly feeling the anguish of an upright and desperate man who wishes to meet his obligations.

Pay!… and how? It was now very late. For a moment the heroic resolution came into his head of offering himself as a volunteer, of marching with his bag