"Mateo! You talk like a child. I will never be on my feet again. But just the same," and he winked impishly at his wife, "I'm a long way from dying."
"Of course you are," Hall insisted.
"There, you see?" Tabio said to everyone in the room. "Mateo can tell you. He knows how tough our breed is. Tell me, Mateo, is it true that the American Ambassador considers me to be the most violent Bolshevik outside of Russia?"
Lavandero laughed, and Hall laughed, and when Tabio, laughing, turned to his wife and son, they laughed too.
"He is such a pompous fool, that Ambassador. Oh, I am being terribly undiplomatic, viejo, but to think of an old-fashioned bourgeois reformer like me being compared to Lenin and Stalin! It is the height of confusion. But if you ever meet him you can tell him that I admire Stalin and the Russian people. Your Ambassador and I were together at a State dinner the day the Nazis invaded Russia and he said that the Soviets would be crushed in a month and that he was glad. I told him then that the Red Army would destroy the Nazi war machine and I told him that before the war was over the United States would be fighting on the side of Russia and that therefore it was dangerous of him to say he was glad so many Red Army soldiers were being killed. And you can tell him that some day when I speak to Mr. Roosevelt again I will tell him what the American Ambassador to our country said openly in June of 1941."
"Please, Don Anibal," one of the doctors begged, "you must save your strength."
"For the speech," Lavandero added, quickly, motioning to Hall that it was time for everyone but the doctors to leave the room.
Hall stood up, again patted the blue-veined hand of the President. He watched Tabio, pausing to gain strength, mutely protesting with glazed eyes the obvious stage directions of the doctors who ended this visit.
"I must go now, Don Anibal," Hall said, softly. "If you wish, I will be back tomorrow or the next day."
"Matthew," Tabio said, and he began to address Hall in English, "you were in Spain. You saw. Tell them it does not matter if one man lives or dies. I have no fears for truth. I have come a long way on truth. Tell them, viejo, tell them what a miracle truth is in the hands of the people. You have but"—the words were coming with great difficulty—"you have but to make this truth known...."