Caesar or Nothing | Page 5

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-class... I would hand over the land to the peasants, I would send delegates to the provinces to make hygiene obligatory, and my dictatorship 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.

I
THE PARIS-VENTIMIGLIA EXPRESS
_MARSEILLES!_
The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses, had stopped a moment at Marseilles.
It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars, with their bevelled-glass 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 glass the dishevelled head of a woman appeared.
In the dining-car a waiter went about preparing the tables for breakfast; two or three gentlemen, wrapped in their ulsters, their caps pulled down, were seated at the tables by the windows and kept yawning.
At one of the little tables at the end Laura and Caesar had installed themselves.
"Did you sleep, sister?" he asked.
"Yes. I did. Splendidly. And you?"
"I didn't. I can't sleep on the train."
"That's evident."
"I look so bad, eh?" and Caesar examined himself in one of the car mirrors. "I certainly am absurdly pale."
"The weather is just as horrible as ever," she added.
They had left a Paris frozen and dark. During the whole night the cold had been most intense. One hadn't been able to put a head outside the car; snow and a furious wind had had their own violent way.
"When we reach the Mediterranean, it will change," Laura had said.
It had not; they were on the edge of the sea and the cold continued intense and the weather dark.

HOW BEAUTIFUL!
The train began its journey again; the houses of Marseilles could be seen through the morning haze; the Mediterranean appeared, greenish, whitish, and fields covered with hoar-frost.
"What horrid weather!" exclaimed Laura, shuddering. "I dislike the cold more and more all the