When the sun awoke this miserable band
they gathered themselves together with heavy step, still stiffened by
the night. Many were going toward the station in the hope of a train
which never came, thinking that, perhaps, they might have better luck
during the day that was just dawning. Some were continuing their way
down the track, hoping that fate might be more propitious in some other
place.
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. All were fleeing toward the South, and on meeting this city
gentleman, well-shod, with walking stick and straw hat, going on alone
toward the country which they were abandoning in terror, they showed the
greatest astonishment. They concluded that he must be some functionary,
some celebrity from the Government.
At midday he was able to get a bit of bread, a little cheese and a
bottle of white wine from a tavern near the road. The proprietor was at
the front, his wife sick and moaning in her bed. The mother, a rather
deaf old woman surrounded by her grandchildren, was watching from the
doorway the procession of fugitives which had been filing by for the
last three days. "Monsieur, why do they flee?" she said to Desnoyers.
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