"Sebastian, my dear fellow! Do you think that, if your worthy father could return to this world, he would be well pleased to see you thus idly wasting the precious hours of your youth?"
"I do not at all understand your meaning, captain."
"That is possible. I never pretended to be a great orator, and today less than at any other period of my long career. I will, however, try to explain myself so clearly that, if you do not understand me, caray! It is because you will not."
"Go on; I am listening."
"Your father, muchacho, whose history you probably do not know, was at once a brave soldier and a good officer. He was one of the founders of our liberty, and his name is a symbol of loyalty and devotion to every Mexican. For ten years your father fought the enemies of his country on every battlefield, enduring, though rich and a gentleman, hunger and thirst, heat and cold, gaily and without complaining; and yet, had he wished it, he might have led a luxurious and thoroughly easy life. You loved your father?"
"Alas, captain! Can I ever be consoled for his loss?"
"You will be consoled. You have many things to learn yet, and that among others. Poor boy! There is nothing eternal in the world—neither joy, nor sorrow, nor pleasure. But let us return to what I was saying. Were your father permitted to quit the abode of the just, where he is doubtlessly sojourning, and return for a few moments to earth, he would speak to you as I am now doing; he would ask an account of the useless indolence in which you spend your youth, thinking no more of your country, which you can and ought to serve, than if you lived in the heart of a desert. Did your father endure so many sacrifices in order to create such an existence—tell me, muchacho?"
The worthy captain, who had probably never preached so much in his life, stopped, awaiting a reply to the question he had asked; but this reply did not come. The young man, with his arms crossed on his chest, his body thrown back, and his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground, seemed plunged in deep thought. The captain continued after a lengthened delay,—
"We," he said, "demolished; you young men must rebuild. No one at the present day has the right to deprive the Republic of his services. Each must, under penalty of being considered a bad citizen, carry his stone to the social edifice, and you more than anyone else, muchacho—you, the son of one of the most celebrated heroes of the War of Independence. Your country calls you—it claims you: you can no longer remain deaf to its voice. What are you doing here among your dogs and horses, wasting ingloriously your courage, dissipating your energy without profit to anyone, and growing daily more brutalised in a disgraceful solitude? Cuerpo de Cristo! I can understand that a man may love his father, and even weep for him—for that is the duty of a good son, and your father certainly deserves the sacred recollection you give him—but to make of that grief a pretext to caress and satisfy your egotism, that is worse than a bad action—it is cowardice!"
At this word the young man's tawny eye flashed lightning.