ous leader. In the meanwhile you
live in Toledo, dreaming of glory, of hairbreadth enterprises, of
gigantic battles and noisy triumphs. But when, with the two stars on
your arm you go to a regiment, the first thing that comes to meet you
at the barrack gate, even before you receive the salute of the sentry,
is the ugly and disagreeable reality. He who dreams of covering
himself with glory and becoming a great leader before he is thirty,
thinking of nothing but strategic combinations and original
fortifications, must occupy himself with the washing and decency of a
lot of wild lads, who come in from the fields reeking with excessive
health; try the rations, discuss drawers and shirts, calculate the
lasting of ankle boots and hempen shoes, and he who never went near
the kitchen at home, was most carefully looked after by his mother,
and thought that everything was women's work except giving words
of command and drawing soldiers up in line, now finds the first
requirement in a regiment is to be cook, tailor, shoemaker, etc., very
often receiving reprimands from his superiors if he prove lazy in
those duties."

"That is true," said Juanito laughing; "but without these things there
cannot be an army, and an army is necessary."

"We are not discussing if it is necessary or no. I only wish to point
out that you (or perhaps not you, as you enter on a good footing,
but certainly your companions) are self-deceivers, and are preparing
without knowing it the shipwreck of your lives, precisely like those
other youths who, poorer, or perhaps less energetic, crowd to enter
the Church. The Church has come to an end as there is no longer faith;
military glory has ended in Spain as there are no longer wars of
conquest, and our character as strong fighting men has been lost for
centuries. If we have a war, it is either civil or colonial--wars that
might be called disasters--without glory and without profit, but in
which men die as at Thermopyle or Austerlitz, as a man can only die
once; but without the consolation of fame, or of public applause,
without in fact that aureole that you call glory. You have all been
born too late; you are the warriors of a people who must perforce live
in peace; just as those seminarists will be the future priests in a
country where there are no longer miracles nor faith, only routine and
utter stagnation of thought."

"But if we have no foreign wars, if conquests have come to an end, we
serve at least to