The fountains were still crusted with their beards of ice; the earth snapped as the feet weighed down its hidden crystals; the trees, black and sleeping, were still retaining the coat of metallic green in which the winter had clothed them; from the depths of the earth still issued an acute, deadly chill, like that of burned-out planets. . . . But Spring had already girded herself with flowers in her palace in the tropics, and was saddling with green her trusty steed, neighing with impatience. Soon they would race through the fields, driving before them in disordered flight the black goblins of winter, and leaving in their wake green growing things and tender, subtle perfumes. The wayside greenery, robing itself in tiny buds, was already heralding their arrival. The birds were venturing forth from their retreats in order to wing their way among the crows croaking wrathfully above the closed tombs. The landscape was beginning to smile in the sunlight with the artless, deceptive smile of a child who looks candidly around while his pockets are stuffed with stolen goodies.
The husbandmen had ploughed the fields and filled the furrows with seed. Men might go on killing each other as much as they liked; the soil had no concern with their hatreds, and on that account, did not propose to alter its course. As every year, the metal cutter had opened its usual lines, obliterating with its ridges the traces of man and beast, undismayed and with stubborn diligence filling up the tunnels which the bombs had made.
Sometimes the ploughshare had struck against an obstacle underground . . . an unknown, unburied man; but the cultivator had continued on its way without pity. Every now and then, it was stopped by less yielding obstructions, projectiles which had sunk into the ground intact. The rustic had dug up these instruments of death which occasionally had exploded their delayed charge in his hands.
But the man of the soil knows no fear when in search of sustenance, and so was doggedly continuing his rectilinear advance, swerving only before the visible tombs; there the furrows had curved mercifully, making little islands of the mounds surmounted by crosses and flags. The seeds of future bread were preparing to extend their tentacles like devil fish among those who, but a short time before, were animated by such monstrous ambition. Life was about to renew itself once more.
The automobile came to a standstill. The guide was running about among the crosses, stooping over in order to examine their weather-stained inscriptions.
"Here we are!"
He had found above one grave the number of the regiment.
Chichi and her husband promptly dismounted again. Then Dona Luisa, with sad resolution, biting her lips to keep the tears back. Then the three devoted themselves to assisting the father who had thrown off his fur lap-robe. Poor Desnoyers! On touching the ground, he swayed back and forth, moving forward with the greatest effort, lifting his feet with difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.
"Lean on me, my poor dear," said the old wife, offering her arm.
The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step without their aid.
Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.
The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering.
Rene was doing the same on the other side of the road. Chichi went on alone, the wind whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a name. Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably--revealing thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty, of consummated love following her course through this land of death and desolation.
In the distance sounded feebly her father's voice:
"Not yet?"
The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son's resting place as soon as possible.
A half hour thus dragged by without any result--always unfamiliar names, anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments. Don Marcelo was no longer able to stand. Their passage across the irregularities of the soft earth had been torment for him. He was beginning to despair. . . . Ay, they would never find Julio's remains! The parents, too, had been scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name. . . . No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.
It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, "Here. . . . Here it is!" The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier, and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of his comrades-at-arms--"DESNOYERS." . . .
Then in military abbreviations, the rank, regiment and company.
A long silence. Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on the cross--those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep.
Till then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing itself in the usual ways.
