In 1853, Gaspar and Michael, who had grown up together like two brothers,
had arrived at the age of manhood; and they were as honest and industrious
as the father who had guided them. Catherine was a beautiful girl, as
modest and as diligent as the mother at whose side she had grown up.
Michael, who had a noble and affectionate, and consequently a grateful
heart, loved the family who had adopted him with ardent affection; but
especially did he love Catherine, for whom he felt all the affection of a
brother, joined to all the tenderness of a lover toward her whom he
desired to make the companion of his life.
Many days of tranquil happiness were enjoyed by these united and worthy
people; but as happiness, like the blue of the sky, cannot be lasting, for
the earth, to yield its fruits, requires the rain, and man, to estimate at
their true value this 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.
"'I!" said Gaspar, with ever-increasing astonishment; "why, that can't be
so!"
"Why do you say it can't be so? If the substitute is already accepted and
enrolled it is so."
"But who is he?" asked Gaspar, amazed.
"That young man, there," answered the officer, pointing to the man whom
his parents, in their beneficence, had brought up as a son.
"Michael, what have you done?" exclaimed Gaspar, strongly moved.
"What my mother charged me on her death-bed to do," answered Michael; "I
have paid a debt.'
"You owed me nothing," answered Gaspar; "but I now owe you a debt; and God
grant me the opportunity to pay it, brother; if the occasion presents
itself, you may be sure I will not let it pass; that I will not."