“Good-bye, my boy!  Do your best.”

“Good-bye, father.”

They did not clasp hands, and each was avoiding looking at the other.  The official was smiling like an automaton.  The father turned his back brusquely, and threading his way through the throng, entered a cafe, where for some time he needed the most retired seat in the darkest earner to hide his emotion.

And Don Marcelo envied his grief.

Some of the Reservists came along singing, preceded by a flag.  They were joking and jostling each other, betraying in excited actions, long halts at all the taverns along the way.  One of them, without interrupting his song, was pressing the hand of an old woman marching beside him, cheerful and dry-eyed.  The mother was concentrating all her strength in order, with feigned happiness, to accompany this strapping lad to the last minute.

Others were coming along singly, separated from their companies, but not on that account alone.  The gun was hanging from the shoulder, the back overlaid by the hump of the knapsack, the red legs shooting in and out of the turned-back folds of the blue cloak, and the smoke of a pipe under the visor of the kepis.  In front of one of these men, four children were walking along, lined up according to size.  They kept turning their heads to admire their father, suddenly glorified by his military trappings.  At his side was marching his wife, affable and resigned, feeling in her simple soul a revival of love, an ephemeral Spring, born of the contact with danger.  The man, a laborer of Paris, who a few months before was singing La Internacional, demanding the abolishment of armies and the brotherhood of all mankind, was now going in quest of death.  His wife, choking back her sobs, was admiring him greatly.  Affection and commiseration made her insist upon giving him a few last counsels.  In his knapsack she had put his best handkerchiefs, the few provisions in the house and all the money.  Her man was not to be uneasy about her and the children; they would get along all right.  The government and kind neighbors would look after them.

The soldier in reply was jesting over the somewhat misshapen figure of his wife, saluting the coming citizen, and prophesying that he would be born in a time of great victory.  A kiss to the wife, an affectionate hair-pull for his offspring, and then he had joined his comrades. . . .  No tears.  Courage! . . .  Vive la France!

The final injunctions of the departing were now heard.  Nobody was crying.  But as the last red pantaloons disappeared, many hands grasped the iron railing convulsively, many handkerchiefs were bitten with gnashing teeth, many faces were hidden in the arms with sobs of anguish.

And Don Marcelo envied these tears.

The old woman, on losing the warm contact of her son’s hand from her withered one, turned in the direction which she believed to be that of the hostile country, waving her arms with threatening fury.