The twilight was beginning.
“It is chilly here by the river,” I said. “Let us go to the house.”
We went up by a sloping path between pear-trees, and reached the
vestibule of the house. From afar we heard the sound of the stage-coach
bells; a headlight gleamed, and we saw it pass by and afterwards
disappear among the trees. “What a mistake to ask more of life than it
can give!” suddenly exclaimed Laura. “The sky, the sun, conversation,
love, the fields, works of art... think of looking on all these as a
bore, from which one desires to escape through some violent occupation,
so as to have the satisfaction of not noticing that one is alive.”
“Because noticing that one is alive is disagreeable,” replied her
brother.
“And why?”
“The idea! Why? Because life is not an idyll, not by a good deal. We
live by killing, destroying everything there is around us; we get to
be something by ridding ourselves of our enemies. We are in a constant
struggle.”
“I don’t see this struggle. Formerly, when men were savages, perhaps....
But now!”
“Now, just the same. The one difference is that the material struggle,
with the muscles, has been changed to an intellectual one, a social one.
Nowadays, it is evident, a man does not have to hunt the bull or the
wild boar in the prairies; he finds their dead bodies at the butcher’s.
Neither does the modern citizen have to knock his rival down to overcome
him; nowadays the enemy is conquered at the desk, in the factory, in
the editor’s office, in the laboratory.... The struggle is just as
infuriated and violent as it was in the depths of the forests, only it
is colder and more courteous in form.”
“I don’t believe it. You won’t convince me.”
Laura plucked a branch of white blossoms from a wild-rose bush and put
it into her bosom.
“Well, Cæsar, let us go to the hotel,” she said; “it is very late.”
“I will escort you a little way,” I suggested.
We went out on the highway. The night was palpitating as it filled
itself with stars. Laura hummed Neapolitan songs. We walked along a
little while without speaking, gazing at Jupiter, who shone resplendent.
“And you have the conviction that you will succeed?” I suddenly asked
Cæsar. “Yes. More than anything else I have the vocation for being an
instrument. If I win success, I shall be a great figure; if I go to
pieces, those who know me will say: ‘He was an upstart; he was a thief.’
Or perhaps they may say that I was a poor sort, because men who have the
ambition to be social forces never get an unprejudiced epitaph.”
“And what will you do in a practical way, if you succeed?”
“Something like what you dream of. And how shall I do it? By destroying
magnates, by putting an end to the power of the rich, subduing the
middle-class... I would hand over the land to the peasants, I would
send delegates to the provinces to make hygiene obligatory, and
my dictatorship should tear the nets of religion, of property, of
theocracy....”
“What nonsense!” murmured Laura.
“My sister doesn’t believe in me,” Cæsar exclaimed, smiling.
“Oh, yes, _bambino_,” she replied. “Yes, I believe in you. Only, why
must you have such silly ambitions?”
We were getting near the bath establishment, and when we came in front
of it we said good-bye.
Laura was starting the next day to Biarritz, and Cæsar for Madrid.
We pressed one another’s hands affectionately.
“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, doctor!”
“Good luck!”
They went along toward the establishment, and I returned home by the
highway, envying the energy of that man, who was getting himself ready
to fight for an ideal. And I thought with melancholy of the monotonous
life of the little town.