THE PLAN OF THE CAMPAIGN.
The count returned the young man's affectionate pressure, but shook his head sorrowfully and remained silent.
"Why do you not answer me?" the captain asked him. "Do you doubt my willingness to be of service to you?"
"It is not that," the count said sadly. "I know that your heart is noble and generous, and that you will not hesitate to come to my aid."
"Whence arises this hesitation, then?"
"Friend," the count answered with a melancholy smile, "I reproach myself at this moment for having come to find you."
"For what reason?"
"Need I tell you? This land you cultivate, only a few years back, was a virgin forest, serving as a lurking place for wild beasts: now, thanks to your labour and intelligence, it has been metamorphosed into a fertile and cultivated plain; numerous flocks feed in your prairies; the desolation and neglect of this frontier have disappeared to make room for the incessant toil of civilisation. This colony of Guetzalli, founded with so much trouble, bedewed with so much blood, prospers, and is beginning to repay amply the toil and perspiration it cost you. The day is at hand when, stimulated by your example, other colonists will come to join you, and, by aiding you to repulse the Indios Bravos into their impenetrable deserts, will for ever protect the Mexican frontiers from the depredations of the savages, and restore to this magnificent country its pristine splendour.
"Well?" the captain remarked.
"Well," the count continued, "is it fitting for me, a stranger, a man to whom you owe nothing, to drag you into a contest without any probable issue—to mix you up in a quarrel which does not concern you, and in which you have everything to lose, so that tomorrow the land you have, after so many efforts, torn from desolation, should fall back into its primitive barbarism? In a word, my friend, I ask myself by what title and by what right I should drag you down in my fall."