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Updated: May 23, 2025
The division reformed, the commands of the officers were heard and a quick trot, accompanied by the clanking of metal, told Don Marcelo that the last of the army had left. He remained near the barricade in a solitude of intense silence, as though the world were suddenly depopulated. Two dogs, abandoned by the flight of their masters, leaped and sniffed around him, coaxing him for protection.
"Oh, don't go on, Master," she called stopping his hurried step. "They have killed him. . . . They have just shot him." Don Marcelo stood rooted to the ground. Shot! . . . and after the General's pardon! . . . Suddenly he ran back to the castle, hardly knowing what he was doing, and soon reached the salon.
Above the blue sleeves of their military cloaks Don Marcelo could distinguish blanched faces and eyes immeasurably distended with suffering. Their legs were dragging on the ground, sticking out between the tatters of their red pantaloons. One of them still had on his kepis.
Don Marcelo recognized him, in spite of his greenish pallor and wild look. It was Blumhardt another Blumhardt with a bestial expression of terrifying ferocity and lust.
There was no other smoke but that of the explosions, the black spirals that were flinging their great shells to burst on the ground. These were rising on all sides, encircling the castle like a ring of giant tops, but not one of that orderly circle ventured to touch the edifice. Don Marcelo again stared at the Red Cross flag.
He spoke in Castilian, and Don Marcelo felt greater surprise at this than at the many things which he had been experiencing so painfully during the last twenty-four hours. "You really do not know me?" queried the German, always in Spanish. "I am Otto. . . . Captain Otto von Hartrott." The old man's mind went painfully down the staircase of memory, stopping this time at a far-distant landing.
Don Marcelo walked all the morning long. The white, rectilinear ribbon of roadway was spotted with approaching groups that on the horizon line looked like a file of ants. He did not see a single person going in his direction.
Like his father, he longed to get away. It offended his aesthetic sense. Don Marcelo returned from this visit with melancholy resignation. Those people had undoubtedly made great strides. He was not such a blind patriot that he could not admit what was so evident.
It hides, spouting blood, forty . . . sixty . . . a hundred years, but eventually it reappears. All that we can hope is that its wound may be long and deep, that it may remain hidden so long that the generation that now remembers it may never see it again." Don Marcelo was climbing up a mountain covered with woods. The forest presented a tragic desolation.
May God punish those who have brought such sorrow on the world! The Emperor is innocent. His adversaries are to blame for it all . . ." Don Marcelo was silent about the letter in his wife's presence. He pitied Elena for her losses, so he overlooked her political connections. He was touched, too, at Dona Luisa's distress about Otto. She had been his godmother and Desnoyers his godfather.
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