The imploring crowd was not
composed entirely of women. Desnoyers saw men of his age, pompous and
grave, moving their lips and fixing steadfast eyes on the altar on which
were reflected like lost stars, the flames of the candles. And again he
felt envy. They were fathers who were recalling their childhood prayers,
thinking of their sons in battle. Don Marcelo, who had always considered
religion with indifference, suddenly recognized the necessity of
faith. He wanted to pray like the others, with a vague, indefinite
supplication, including all beings who were struggling and dying for a
land that he had not tried to defend.
He was scandalized to see von Hartrott's wife kneeling among these
people raising her eyes to the cross in a look of anguished entreaty.
She was begging heaven to protect her husband, the German who perhaps
at this moment was concentrating all his devilish faculties on the
best organization for crushing the weak; she was praying for her sons,
officers of the King of Prussia, who revolver in hand were entering
villages and farmlands, driving before them a horror-stricken crowd,
leaving behind them fire and death. And these orisons were going to
mingle with those of the mothers who were praying for the youth trying
to check the onslaught of the barbarians--with the petitions of these
earnest men, rigid in their tragic grief! .
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