. . . Julio was in daily danger of death,
but the old ranchman was buoyed up by his conviction that his son led
a charmed life--no harm could touch him. His chief preoccupation,
therefore, was to keep himself tranquil, avoiding all emotional storms.
He had been reading with considerable alarm of the frequency with which
well-known persons, politicians, artists and writers, were dying in
Paris. War was not doing all its killing at the front; its shocks were
falling like arrows over the land, causing the fall of the weak, the
crushed and the exhausted who, in normal times, would probably have
lived to a far greater age.
"Attention, Marcelo!" he said to himself with grim humor. "Keep cool
now! . . . You must avoid Friend Tchernoff's four horsemen, you know!"
He spent an afternoon in the studio going over the war news in the
papers. The French had begun an offensive in Champagne with great
advances and many prisoners.
Desnoyers could not but think of the loss of life that this must
represent. Julio's fate, however, gave him no uneasiness, for his son
was not in that part of the front. But yesterday he had received a
letter from him, dated the week before; they all took about that
length of time to reach him. Sub-lieutenant Desnoyers was as blithe and
reckless as ever. They were going to promote him again--he was among
those proposed for the Legion d'Honneur.
Pages:
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579