Part 15

Behind him, dragging itself along like a drunken demon emitting frightful grunts, came another spectre of fire, the pig, which fell to the ground in the middle of the field, burning like a torch of grease.

There remained now only the walls and the grape-vines with their twisted runners distorted by fire, and the posts, which stood up like bars of ink over the red background.

Batistet, in his longing to save something, ran recklessly over the paths, shouting, beating at the doors of the neighbouring farm-houses, which seemed to wink in the reflection of the fire.

"Help! Help! Fire! Fire!"

His shouts died away, raising a funereal echo, like that heard amid ruins and in cemeteries.

The father smiled cruelly. He was calling in vain. The _huerta_ was deaf to them. There were eyes within those white farm-houses, which looked curiously out through the cracks; perhaps there were mouths which laughed with infernal glee, but not one generous voice to say "Here I am!"

Bread! At what a cost it is earned! And how evil it makes man!

In one farm-house there was burning a pale light, yellowing and sad. Teresa, confused by her misfortune, wished to go there to implore help, with the hope of some relief, of some miracle which she longed for in their misfortune.

Her husband held her back with an expression of terror. No: not there. Anywhere but there.

And like a man who has fallen low, so low that he already is unable to feel any remorse, he shifted his gaze from the fire and fixed it on that pale light, yellowish and sad; the light of a taper which glows without lustre, fed by an atmosphere in which might almost be perceived the fluttering of the dead.

Good-bye, Pimentó! You were departing from the world well-served. The farm-house and the fortune of the odious intruder were lighting up your corpse with merrier splendour than the candles bought by the bereaved Pepeta, mere yellowish tears of light.

Batistet returned desperate from his useless trip. Nobody had answered.

The plain, silent and scowling, had said good-bye to them for ever.

They were more alone than if they had been in the midst of a desert; the solitude of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature.

They must flee from there; they must begin another life, with hunger ever treading at their heels: they must leave behind them the ruin of their work, and the small body of one of their own, the poor little fellow who was rotting in the earth, an innocent victim of the mad battle.

And all of them, with Oriental resignation, seated themselves upon the bank, and there awaited the day, their shoulders chilled with cold, but toasted from the front by the bed of live coals, which tinged their stupefied faces with the reflection of blood; following with the unchangeable passivity of fatalism the course of the fire, which was devouring all their efforts, and changing them into embers as fragile and tenuous as their old illusions of work and peace.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Get up!

[B] A _huerta_ is a cultivated district divided usually into tiny, fertile, truck-garden and fruit farms.

[C] Translator's Note:--Asensis Nebot, a Franciscan monk, surnamed El Fraile (The Friar), leader of a band of foot soldiers and cavalry in the War of Independence (1810-12): he waged a guerilla warfare against the French around Valencia until the city was taken.

[D] Barrete means "a round hat without a visor." Translator's note.

[E] "Dawn-Songs," serenades at dawn. Translator's note.

[F] A term of contempt, meaning barbarians.

[G] One in charge of the _tanda_, or turn in irrigating.

[H] Star-cakes--a local provincial dainty.

[I] Long, boat-shaped rolls.

[J] A Valencian dish of rice, meat and vegetables.