"Pardieu!" he exclaimed, smiling.
The old officer shook his head several times, with a melancholy air.
"Take care, general," he at last said; "these imprudences, I have a presentiment, will someday cost you dear."
"Bah! You are foolish to disquiet yourself thus, Don Sylvio. You will soon see me reappear, gay and in good trim, take my word for it."
And without listening any more to the old officer, who tried still to retain him, the young man drove the spurs into the sides of his horse, which started off at a gallop, and soon disappeared at the turn of the path.
For nearly three hours, notwithstanding the difficulties of the route which he followed, and which, in certain places became almost impracticable, the Montonero kept his horse going at a rapid pace; then, when he thought himself at a sufficient distance from his companions not to risk being overtaken by them, he pulled the bridle, put his horse into a walk, and, allowing his head to fall on his breast, he gave himself up to his reflections.
In thus suddenly leaving his squadron, Don Zeno Cabral acted under the influence of serious thoughts. Since his departure from Tucumán, the political situation had been much altered. The independence of the Buenos Airean provinces—thanks to the treason of several chiefs of the revolutionary movement—was more than ever put in question.
Not that the chiefs had any thought of treating with the royalists, and of again placing their country under the detested yoke of Spain—such was not their intention, far from it. As always happens in critical periods, in a country where people have overturned one government, they seek to establish another; and ambitious designs, at first drowned in the ever-increasing flood of patriotism, already began to float to the surface. Leaders who, until now, had fought with the utmost devotion and enthusiasm for their country, thinking the moment favourable, spread their nets and planted their batteries, in the hope of turning the revolution to their own profit, and of making for themselves a dictator's toga, or a king's mantle from the bloodstained banners of independence, of which they had been the foremost soldiers.
The Montonero had accepted the revolution with that joy and enthusiasm which characterise exceptional natures. The first dangerous squadron which the insurgents had opposed to the royal troops was that which he still commanded, and which he had, with rare devotion and disinterestedness, raised and equipped at his own expense. He had never raised himself up with the political intrigues which, from the first day of the rising, had distracted the colonies. Without personal ambition, deeply loving his country, Zeno Cabral was content to fight for it under all circumstances, and to place himself boldly in the front, generously offering his heart to the first blows of the enemy.
A man of Zeno Cabral's character, then, ought to put in the shade all those people of low ambition, and the vultures in their track, who seek an easy and productive prey in all great popular movements, who, in their sordid selfishness can see nothing but their own interest, and for whom the sacred name of country is but a mere sound.