If only he could see him thus, made into a soldier like his cousin! See him enduring all the hardships of military existence ...

but living! In order not to be too greatly moved, he drank and paid close attention to what the three youths were saying.

Blanes, the legionary, as romantic as the son of a merchant bent upon adventure should be, was talking of the daring deeds of the troops of the Orient with all the enthusiasm of his twenty-two years.

There wasn't time to throw themselves upon the Bulgarians with bayonets and arrive at Adrianopolis.

As a Catalan, this war in Macedonia was touching him very close.
"We are going to avenge Roger de Flor," he said gravely.
And his uncle wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat of Ponza.
Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him to the war.