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Updated: May 14, 2025
He who strikes also receives blows.... But to aid the submarines is a very different thing. They attack, hidden, without danger.... And I, for my part, do not like treachery." Finally his mate's insistence exasperated Ferragut, exhausting his enforced good nature. "We will say no more about it," he said haughtily.
At the head of the expedition had been a priest, young and elegant, a Roman Monsignor, clad in silk, and with him two showy foreign women, who were always climbing up in the highest places, raising their skirts rather high for fear of the star lizards that were writhing in and out of the ruins. Ferragut, in humble admiration, always remained below, glimpsing the country from behind their legs.
Ferragut knew all their names, having read them in the Trovas of Mosen Febrer, a metrical composition in Provençal, about the warriors that came to the neighborhood of Valencia from Aragon, Catalunia, the South of France, England and remote Germany. At the conclusion of the mass, the imposing personages would nod their heads, saluting the faithful nearest them. "Good day!"
They went a little way off with marked indecision, turning repeatedly to look at him once more. In a few moments one of them, the oldest, returned, approaching the table timidly. "Excuse me, but aren't you Captain Ferragut?..." He asked this question in Valencian, with his right hand at his cap, ready to take it off. Ulysses stopped his salutation and offered him a seat. Yes, he was Ferragut.
The voice of good counsel, that prudent voice that always spoke in one-half of his brain whenever the captain found himself in difficult situations, had begun to cry out, scandalized at the first revelations made by this woman: "Flee, Ferragut!... Flee! You are in a bad fix. Do not agree to any relations with such people. What have you to do with the country of this adventuress?
And this general activity was also taking in the women who were devoting their labor to factories and hospitals, or their intelligence on the other side of the frontiers, to the service of their country. Ferragut, surprised by this outright revelation, remained silent, but finally ventured to formulate his thought. "According to that, you are a spy?"... She heard the word with contempt.
Ferragut saw that he was intensely pale, panting, casting his eyes around him with the expression of an animal at bay, but still thinking of the possibility of defending himself. His right hand was feeling around one of his pockets. Perhaps he was going to draw out a revolver in order to die, defending himself. A negro nearby raised a beam of wood which he was grasping as a club.
After that on each of his return trips Ferragut saw a new son, although always the same one; first it was a bundle of batiste and lace carried by a showily-uniformed nurse; then by the time he was captain of the transatlantic liner, a little cherub in short skirts, chubby-cheeked, with a round head covered with a silky down, holding out its little arms to him; finally a boy who was beginning to go to school and at sight of his father would grasp his hard right hand, admiring him with his great eyes, as though he saw in his person the concentrated perfection of all the forces of the universe.
"It must have been that lad from Vannes.... He's the only one who could have done it." For him the other gunners simply did not exist. And, inflamed by his enthusiasm, he wriggled out of the hands of the two seamen who had begun to bandage his head with a deftness learned in land combats. Ferragut was entirely satisfied with this encounter.
The count began a protest, but stopped on seeing the good-natured gesture of the sentimental lady. "They love each other so much!... Something must be conceded to love...." The three went down the sloping streets of Chiaja to the shore of S. Lucia. In spite of his preoccupation, Ferragut could not but look attentively at the count's appearance.
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