The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(Los Cuatro Jinettes del Apocalipsis)

by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Translated by Charlotte Brewster Jordan

CONTENTS

PART I

I. THE TRYST--IN THE GARDEN OF THE EXPIATORY CHAPEL
II. MADARIAGA, THE CENTAUR
III. THE DESNOYERS FAMILY
IV. THE COUSIN FROM BERLIN
V. IN WHICH APPEAR THE FOUR HORSEMEN

PART II

I. WHAT DON MARCELO ENVIED
II. NEW LIFE
III. THE RETREAT
IV. NEAR THE SACRED GROTTO
V. THE INVASION
VI. THE BANNER OF THE RED CROSS

PART III

I. AFTER THE MARNE
II. IN THE STUDIO
IV. "NO ONE WILL KILL HIM"
V. THE BURIAL FIELDS

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE TRYST

(In the Garden of the Chapelle Expiatoire)

They were to have met in the garden of the Chapelle Expiatoire at
five o'clock in the afternoon, but Julio Desnoyers with the
impatience of a lover who hopes to advance the moment of meeting by
presenting himself before the appointed time, arrived an half hour
earlier.  The change of the seasons was at this time greatly
confused in his mind, and evidently demanded some readjustment.

Five months had passed since their last interview in this square had
afforded the wandering lovers the refuge of a damp, depressing
calmness near a boulevard of continual movement close to a great
railroad station.  The hour of the appointment was always five and
Julio was accustomed to see his beloved approaching by the
reflection of the recently lit street lamps, her figure enveloped in
furs, and holding her muff before her face as if it were a half-
mask.  Her sweet voice, greeting him, had breathed forth a cloud of
vapor, white and tenuous, congealed by the cold.  After various
hesitating interviews, they had abandoned the garden.  Their love
had acquired the majestic importance of acknowledged fact, and from
five to seven had taken refuge in the fifth floor of the rue de la
Pompe where Julio had an artist's studio.  The curtains well drawn
over the double glass windows, the cosy hearth-fire sending forth
its ruddy flame as the only light of the room, the monotonous song
of the samovar bubbling near the cups of tea--all the seclusion of
life isolated by an idolizing love--had dulled their perceptions to
the fact that the afternoons were growing longer, that outside the
sun was shining later and later into the pearl-covered depths of the
clouds, and that a timid and pallid Spring was beginning to show its
green finger tips in the buds of the branches suffering the last
nips of Winter--that wild, black boar who so often turned on his
tracks.

Then Julio had made his trip to Buenos Aires, encountering in the
other hemisphere the last smile of Autumn and the first icy winds
from the pampas.  And just as his mind was becoming reconciled to
the fact that for him Winter was an eternal season--since it always
came to meet him in his change of domicile from one extreme of the
planet to the other--lo, Summer was unexpectedly confronting him in
this dreary garden!

A swarm of children was racing and screaming through the short
avenues around the monument.  On entering the place, the first thing
that Julio encountered was a hoop which came rolling toward his
legs, trundled by a childish hand.  Then he stumbled over a ball.
Around the chestnut trees was gathering the usual warm-weather
crowd, seeking the blue shade perforated with points of light.  Many
nurse-maids from the neighboring houses were working and chattering
here, following with indifferent glances the rough games of the
children confided to their care.  Near them were the men who had
brought their papers down into the garden under the impression that
they could read them in the midst of peaceful groves.  All of the
benches were full.  A few women were occupying camp stools with that
feeling of superiority which ownership always confers.  The iron
chairs, "pay-seats," were serving as resting places for various
suburban dames, loaded down with packages, who were waiting for
straggling members of their families in order to take the train in
the Gare Saint Lazare. . . .

And Julio, in his special delivery letter, had proposed meeting in
this place, supposing that it would be as little frequented as in
former times.  She, too, with the same thoughtlessness, had in her
reply, set the usual hour of five o'clock, believing that after
passing a few minutes in the Printemps or the Galeries on the
unfrequented garden without risk of being seen by any of her
numerous acquaintances.

Desnoyers was enjoying an almost forgotten sensation, that of
strolling through vast spaces, crushing as he walked the grains of
sand under his feet.  For the past twenty days his rovings had been
upon planks, following with the automatic precision of a riding
school the oval promenade on the deck of a ship.  His feet
accustomed to insecure ground, still were keeping on terra firma a
certain sensation of elastic unsteadiness.  His goings and comings
were not awakening the curiosity of the people seated in the open,
for a common preoccupation seemed to be monopolizing all the men and
women.  The groups were exchanging impressions.  Those who happened
to have a paper in their hands, saw their neighbors approaching them
with a smile of interrogation.  There had suddenly disappeared that
distrust and suspicion which impels the inhabitants of large cities
mutually to ignore one another, taking each other's measure at a
glance as though they were enemies.

"They are talking about the war," said Desnoyers to himself.  "At
this time, all Paris speaks of nothing but the possibility of war."

Outside of the garden he could see also the same anxiety which was
making those around him so fraternal and sociable.  The venders of
newspapers were passing through the boulevard crying the evening
editions, their furious speed repeatedly slackened by the eager
hands of the passers-by contending for the papers.  Every reader was
instantly surrounded by a group begging for news or trying to
decipher over his shoulder the great headlines at the top of the
sheet.  In the rue des Mathurins, on the other side of the square, a
circle of workmen under the awning of a tavern were listening to the
comments of a friend who accompanied his words with oratorical
gestures and wavings of the paper.  The traffic in the streets, the
general bustle of the city was the same as in other days, but it
seemed to Julio that the vehicles were whirling past more rapidly,
that there was a feverish agitation in the air and that people were
speaking and smiling in a different way.  The women of the garden
were looking even at him as if they had seen him in former days.  He
was able to approach them and begin a conversation without
experiencing the slightest strangeness.

"They are talking of the war," he said again but with the
commiseration of a superior intelligence which foresees the future
and feels above the impressions of the vulgar crowd.

He knew exactly what course he was going to follow.  He had
disembarked at ten o'clock the night before, and as it was not yet
twenty-four hours since he had touched land, his mentality was still
that of a man who comes from afar, across oceanic immensities, from
boundless horizons, and is surprised at finding himself in touch
with the preoccupations which govern human communities.  After
disembarking he had spent two hours in a cafe in Boulogne,
listlessly watching the middle-class families who passed their time
in the monotonous placidity of a life without dangers.  Then the
special train for the passengers from South America had brought him
to Paris, leaving him at four in the morning on a platform of the
Gare du Nord in the embrace of Pepe Argensola, the young Spaniard
whom he sometimes called "my secretary" or "my valet" because it was
difficult to define exactly the relationship between them.  In
reality, he was a mixture of friend and parasite, the poor comrade,
complacent and capable in his companionship with a rich youth on bad
terms with his family, sharing with him the ups and downs of
fortune, picking up the crumbs of prosperous days, or inventing
expedients to keep up appearances in the hours of poverty.

"What about the war?" Argensola had asked him before inquiring about
the result of his trip.  "You have come a long ways and should know
much."

Soon he was sound asleep in his dear old bed while his "secretary"
was pacing up and down the studio talking of Servia, Russia and the
Kaiser.  This youth, too, skeptical as he generally was about
everything not connected with his own interests, appeared infected
by the general excitement.

When Desnoyers awoke he found her note awaiting him, setting their
meeting at five that afternoon and also containing a few words about
the threatened danger which was claiming the attention of all Paris.
welcoming him back, had asked him the war news.  And in the
restaurant, the cafe and the street, always war . . . the
possibility of war with Germany. . . .

Julio was an optimist.  What did all this restlessness signify to a
man who had just been living more than twenty days among Germans,
crossing the Atlantic under the flag of the Empire?

He had sailed from Buenos Aires in a steamer of the Hamburg line,
the Koenig Frederic August.  The world was in blessed tranquillity
when the boat left port.  Only the whites and half-breeds of Mexico
were exterminating each other in conflicts in order that nobody
might believe that man is an animal degenerated by peace.  On the
rest of the planet, the people were displaying unusual prudence.
Even aboard the transatlantic liner, the little world of passengers
of most diverse nationalities appeared a fragment of future society
implanted by way of experiment in modern times--a sketch of the