Page:The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - (Los cuatro jinetes de Apocalipsis) (IA cu31924014386738).djvu/501

 plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name.… No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.

It was Chichí who notified them with a cry, "Here.… Here it is!" The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier, and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of his comrades-at-arms—"DESNOYERS." … Then in military abbreviations, the rank, regiment and company.

A long silence. Doña Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on the cross—those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep. Till then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing itself in the usual ways.

The father was staring at the rustic grave in dumb amazement. His son was there, there forever!… and he would never see him again! He imagined him sleeping unshrouded below, in direct contact with the earth, just as Death had surprised him in his miserable and heroic old uniform. He recalled the exquisite care which the lad had always given his body—the long bath, the massage, the invigorating exercise of boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume … all that he might come to this!… that he might be interred just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden!

The bereaved father wished to transfer his son immediately from the official burial fields, but he could not do it yet. As soon as possible it should be done, and he