Caesar or Nothing | Page 5

"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 pass 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-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