the incidents of the trans-atlantic passage.

When he least expected it, Don Marcelo found himself at the end of that
delightful and proud existence which his son's presence had brought him.
The fortnight had flown by so swiftly! The sub-lieutenant had returned
to his post, and all the family, after this period of reality, had
had to fall back on the fond illusions of hope, watching again for the
arrival of his letters, making conjectures about the silence of the
absent one, sending him packet after packet of everything that the
market was offering for the soldiery--for the most part, useless and
absurd things.

The mother became very despondent. Julio's visit home but made her feel
his absence with greater intensity. Seeing him, hearing those tales of
death that her husband was so fond of repeating, made her realize all
the more clearly the dangers constantly surrounding her son. Fatality
appeared to be warning her with funereal presentiments.

"They are going to kill him," she kept saying to Desnoyers. "That wound
was a forewarning from heaven."

When passing through the streets, she trembled with emotion at sight of
the invalid soldiers. The convalescents of energetic appearance, filled
her with the greatest pity. They made her think of a certain trip with
her husband to San Sebastian where a bull fight had made her cry out
with indignation and compassion, pitying the fate of the poor, gored
horses. With entrails hanging, they were taken to the corrals, and
submitted to a hurried adjustment in order that they might return to the
arena stimulated by a false energy. Again and again they were reduced to
this makeshift cobbling until finally a fatal goring finished them.
. . . These recently cured men continually brought to her mind those poor
beasts. Some had been wounded three times since the beginning of the
war, and were returning surgically patched together and re-galvanized to
take another chance in the lottery of Fate, always in the expectation of
the supreme blow. . . . Ay, her son!

Desnoyers waxed very indignant over his wife's low spirits, retorting:

"But I tell you that Nobody will kill Julio! . . . He is my son. In my
youth I, too, passed through great dangers. They wounded me, too, in the
wars in the other world, and nevertheless, here I am at a ripe old age."

Events seemed to reinforce his blind faith. Calamities were raining
around the family and saddening his relatives, yet not one grazed the
in