Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066220082
Table of Contents
THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN
CHAPTER I
THE Prince repeated his statement:
"Man's greatest wisdom consists in getting along without women."
He intended to go on but was interrupted. There was a slight stir of the heavy window curtains. Through their parting was seen below, as in a frame, the intense azure of the Mediterranean. A dull roar reached the dining-room. It seemed to come from the side of the house facing the Alps. It was a faint vibration, deadened by the walls, the curtains, and the carpets, distant, like the working of some underground monster; but there rose above the sound of revolving steel and the puffing of steam a clamor of human beings, a sudden burst of shouts and whistling.
"A train full of soldiers!" exclaimed Don Marcos Toledo, leaving his chair.
"The Colonel is at it again, always the hero, always enthusiastic about everything that has to do with his profession," said Atilio Castro, with a smile of amusement.
In spite of his years, the man whom they called the Colonel sprang to the nearest window. Above the foliage of the sloping garden, he could see a small section of the Corniche railroad, swallowed up in the smoky entrance of a tunnel, and reappearing farther on, beyond the hill, among the groves and rose colored villas of Cap-Martin. Under the mid-day sun the rails quivered like rills of molten steel. Although the train had not yet reached this side of the tunnel, the whole country-side was filled with the ever-increasing roar. The windows, terraces, and gardens of the villas were dotted black with people who were leaving their luncheon tables to see the train pass. From the mountain slope to the seashore, from walls and buildings on both sides of the track, flags of all colors began to wave.
Don Marcos ran to the opposite window overlooking the city. All he could see was an expanse of roofs with no trace of Nature's touch save here and there the feathery green of the gardens against the red of the tiles. It was like a stage setting broken into a succession of wings: in the foreground, amid trees, isolated villas with green balustrades and flower-strewn walls; next, the mass of Monte Carlo, its huge hotels bristling with pointed turrets and cupolas; and hazy in the background, as though floating in golden dust, the rocky cliffs of Monaco, with its promenades; the enormous pile of the Oceanographic Museum; the New Cathedral, a glaring white; and the square crested tower of the palace of the Prince. Buildings stretched from the edge of the sea halfway up the mountains. It was a country without fields, with no open land, covered completely with houses, from one frontier to the other.
But Don Marcos had known the view for years, and at once detected the unfamiliar detail. A long, interminable train was moving slowly along the hillside. He counted aloud more than forty cars, without coming to the rear coaches still hidden in a hollow.
"It must be a battalion … a whole battalion on a war footing. More than a thousand soldiers," he said in an authoritative manner, pleased at showing off his keen professional judgment before his fellow guests, who, for that matter, were not listening.
The train was filled with men, tiny yellowish gray figures, that gathered at the car windows, doors, and on the running-boards with their feet hanging over the track. Others were crowded in cattle pens or stood on the open flat-cars, among the tanks and crated machine guns. A great many had climbed to the roofs and were greeting the crowds with arms and legs extended in the shape of a letter X. Almost all of them had their shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, like sailors preparing to maneuver.
"They are English!" exclaimed Don Marcos. "English soldiers on their way to Italy!"
But this information seemed to irritate the Prince, who always spoke to him in familiar language, in spite of the difference in their ages. "Don't be absurd, Colonel. Anybody would know that. They are the only ones who whistle."
The men still seated at the table nodded. Military trains passed every day, and from a distance it was possible to guess the nationality of the passengers. "The French," said Castro, "go past silently. They have had a little over three years of fighting on their own soil. They are as silent and gloomy as their duty is monotonous and endless. The Italians coming from the French front sing, and decorate their trains with green branches. The English shout like a lot of boys, just out of school, and in their enthusiasm, whistle all the time. They are the real children in this war; they go with a sort of boyish glee to their death."
The whistling sound drew nearer, shrill as the howling of a witches' Sabbath. It passed between the mountains and the gardens of Villa Sirena; and then went on in the other direction, toward Italy, gradually growing fainter as it disappeared in the tunnel. Toledo, who was the only one in the room to watch the train pass, noticed how the houses, gardens, and potagers on both sides of the track were alive with people, waving handkerchiefs and flags in reply to the whistling of the English. Even along the seashore the fishermen stood up on the seats of their boats and waved their caps at a distant train. The quick ear of Don Marcos distinguished a sound of footsteps on the floor above. The servants doubtless were opening the windows to join with silent enthusiasm in that farewell.
When only a few coaches were still visible at the mouth of the tunnel, the Colonel came back to his place at the table.
"More meat for the slaughter house!" exclaimed Atilio Castro, looking at the Prince. "The racket is over. Go on, Michael."
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