Charles Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door
took hold of the horse's bridle; the practicante endeavoured to conceal
his guitar hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and
Charles Gould, on his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark corner
of the patio at another group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman
kneeling by his side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same
time to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying
man.
The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and sufferings
of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of lives and of deaths
thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the
problem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in
a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he
could see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a conviction
of irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too idealistic
to look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as Martin Decoud,
the imaginative materialist, was able to do in the dry light of his
scepticism.
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