The memory of his own son surged up in his memory.  If only he could see him thus, made into a soldier like his cousin!  See him enduring all the hardships of military existence ... but living!

In order not to be too greatly moved, he drank and paid close attention to what the three youths were saying.  Blanes, the legionary, as romantic as the son of a merchant bent upon adventure should be, was talking of the daring deeds of the troops of the Orient with all the enthusiasm of his twenty-two years.  There wasn’t time to throw themselves upon the Bulgarians with bayonets and arrive at Adrianopolis.  As a Catalan, this war in Macedonia was touching him very close.

“We are going to avenge Roger de Flor,” he said gravely.

And his uncle wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat of Ponza.

Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him to the war.  He wanted to fight for the liberty of all oppressed nations, for the resurrection of all forgotten nationalities,—­Poles, Czechs, Jugo-Slavs....  And very simply, as though he were saying something indisputable, he included Catalunia among the people who were weeping tears of blood under the lashes of the tyrant.  Thereupon his companion, the Andalusian, burst forth indignantly.  They passed their time arguing furiously, exchanging insults and continually seeking each other’s company as though they couldn’t live apart.

The Andalusian was not battling for the liberty of this or that people.  He had a longer range of vision.  He was not near-sighted and egoistic like his friend, “the Catalan.”  He was giving his blood in order that the whole world might be free and that all monarchies should disappear.

“I am battling for France because it is the country of the great Revolution.  Its former history makes no difference to me, for we still have kings of our own, but dating from the 14th of July, whatever France is, I consider mine and the property of all mankind.”

He stopped a few seconds, searching for a more concrete affirmation.

“I am fighting, Captain, because of Danton and Hoche.”

Ferragut in his imagination saw the white, disheveled hair of Michelet and the romantic foretop of Lamartine upon a double pedestal of volumes which used to contain the story-poem of the Revolution.

“And I am also fighting for France,” concluded the lad triumphantly, “because it is the country of Victor Hugo.”

Ulysses suspected that this twenty-year-old Republican was probably hiding in his knapsack a blank book full of original verses written in lead pencil.

The South American, accustomed to the disputes of his two companions, looked at his black fingernails with the melancholy desperation of a prophet contemplating his country in ruins.  Blanes, the son of a middle-class citizen, used to admire him for his more distinguished family.  The day of the mobilization he had gone to Paris in an automobile of fifty horse-power to enroll as a volunteer; he and his chauffeur had enlisted together.  Then he had donated his luxurious vehicle to the cause.