They were fathers who were recalling their childhood prayers, thinking of their sons in battle.

Don Marcelo, who had always considered religion with indifference, suddenly recognized the necessity of faith.

He wanted to pray like the others, with a vague, indefinite supplication, including all beings who were struggling and dying for a land that he had not tried to defend.
He was scandalized to see von Hartrott's wife kneeling among these people raising her eyes to the cross in a look of anguished entreaty.
She was begging heaven to protect her husband, the German who perhaps at this moment was concentrating all his devilish faculties on the best organization for crushing the weak; she was praying for her sons, officers of the King of Prussia, who revolver in hand were entering villages and farmlands, driving before them a horror-stricken crowd, leaving behind them fire and death.

And these orisons were going to mingle with those of the mothers who were praying for the youth trying to check the onslaught of the barbarians--with the petitions of these earnest men, rigid in their tragic grief!.

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