Caesar or Nothing Part 2

"But you prejudge the question," exclaimed Caesar; "you take it as settled beforehand. You say, good and evil exist...."

"And don't they exist?"

"I don't know."

"So that if they gave you the task of judging mankind, you would see no difference between Don Juan Tenorio and Saint Francis of a.s.sisi?"

"Perhaps it was the saint who had the more pleasure, who was the more vicious."

"How atrocious!"

"No, because the pleasure one has is the criterion, not the manner of getting it. As for me, what is called a life of pleasure bores me."

"And judging from the little I know of it, it does me too," said I.

"I see life in general," he continued, "as something dark, gloomy, and unattractive."

"Then you gentlemen do not place the devil in this life, since this life seems unattractive to you. Where do you find him?"

"Nowhere, I think," replied Caesar; "the devil is a stupid invention."

AT TWILIGHT

The twilight was beginning.

"It is chilly here by the river," I said. "Let us go to the house."

We went up by a sloping path between pear-trees, and reached the vestibule of the house. From afar we heard the sound of the stage-coach bells; a headlight gleamed, and we saw it pa.s.s by and afterwards disappear among the trees. "What a mistake to ask more of life than it can give!" suddenly exclaimed Laura. "The sky, the sun, conversation, love, the fields, works of art... think of looking on all these as a bore, from which one desires to escape through some violent occupation, so as to have the satisfaction of not noticing that one is alive."

"Because noticing that one is alive is disagreeable," replied her brother.

"And why?"

"The idea! Why? Because life is not an idyll, not by a good deal. We live by killing, destroying everything there is around us; we get to be something by ridding ourselves of our enemies. We are in a constant struggle."

"I don't see this struggle. Formerly, when men were savages, perhaps....

But now!"

"Now, just the same. The one difference is that the material struggle, with the muscles, has been changed to an intellectual one, a social one.

Nowadays, it is evident, a man does not have to hunt the bull or the wild boar in the prairies; he finds their dead bodies at the butcher's.

Neither does the modern citizen have to knock his rival down to overcome him; nowadays the enemy is conquered at the desk, in the factory, in the editor's office, in the laboratory.... The struggle is just as infuriated and violent as it was in the depths of the forests, only it is colder and more courteous in form."

"I don't believe it. You won't convince me."

Laura plucked a branch of white blossoms from a wild-rose bush and put it into her bosom.

"Well, Caesar, let us go to the hotel," she said; "it is very late."

"I will escort you a little way," I suggested.

We went out on the highway. The night was palpitating as it filled itself with stars. Laura hummed Neapolitan songs. We walked along a little while without speaking, gazing at Jupiter, who shone resplendent.

"And you have the conviction that you will succeed?" I suddenly asked Caesar. "Yes. More than anything else I have the vocation for being an instrument. If I win success, I shall be a great figure; if I go to pieces, those who know me will say: 'He was an upstart; he was a thief.'

Or perhaps they may say that I was a poor sort, because men who have the ambition to be social forces never get an unprejudiced epitaph."

"And what will you do in a practical way, if you succeed?"

"Something like what you dream of. And how shall I do it? By destroying magnates, by putting an end to the power of the rich, subduing the middle-cla.s.s... I would hand over the land to the peasants, I would send delegates to the provinces to make hygiene obligatory, and my dictators.h.i.+p should tear the nets of religion, of property, of theocracy...."

"What nonsense!" murmured Laura.

"My sister doesn't believe in me," Caesar exclaimed, smiling.

"Oh, yes, _bambino_," she replied. "Yes, I believe in you. Only, why must you have such silly ambitions?"

We were getting near the bath establishment, and when we came in front of it we said good-bye.

Laura was starting the next day to Biarritz, and Caesar for Madrid.

We pressed one another's hands affectionately.

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye, doctor!"

"Good luck!"

They went along toward the establishment, and I returned home by the highway, envying the energy of that man, who was getting himself ready to fight for an ideal. And I thought with melancholy of the monotonous life of the little town.

PART ONE. ROME

I. THE PARIS-VENTIMIGLIA EXPRESS

_Ma.r.s.eILLES!_

The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses, had stopped a moment at Ma.r.s.eilles.

It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars, with their bevelled-gla.s.s windows, dripped water from all parts; the locomotive puffed, resting from its run, and the bellows between car and car, like great accordeons, had black drops slipping down their corrugations.

The rails shone; they crossed over one another, and fled into the distance until lost to sight. The train windows were shut; silence reigned in the station; from time to time there resounded a violent hammering on the axles; a curtain here or there was raised, and behind the misted gla.s.s the dishevelled head of a woman appeared.