“I’m leaving everything I care about, including peace, with the sole aim of proving to you that I love you and want you solely and purely for myself. I am going off to fight.”

Maria Cora looked utterly astonished. I understood then that she really did love me with a genuine passion, and that if she were widowed, she would not marry anyone else. I swore again that I was going off to the war in the South. Deeply moved, she held out her hand to me. This was pure romanticism. When I was a child, my parents believed that such actions were the only real proof of love, and my mother would tell me stories in verse of knights-errant who, out of love for their faith and for their lady, journeyed to the Holy Land to liberate Christ’s tomb. Yes, pure romanticism.

Chapter V

I traveled south. The battles between Legalists and rebels were continuous and bloody, and this encouraged me. And yet, since no political passion prompted me to enter the fight, I must confess that, for a moment, I felt discouraged and hesitant. I wasn’t afraid of death, you understand, but I nevertheless loved life, which is, perhaps, a synonymous state; whatever it was, it was not so overwhelming as to cause me to hesitate for very long. In the city of Rio Grande I met a friend, to whom I had written saying that I was going there for political reasons, although without specifying what those were. He wanted to know more.

“My reasons are, of course, secret,” I responded, trying to smile.

“Fine, but there’s one thing I should know, just one, because I have no idea of your views on the matter, since you’ve never told me. Whose side are you on: the Legalists’ or the rebels’?”

“Oh, really! I would hardly have written to you if I wasn’t on the side of the Legalists. I would have come here under cover.”

“Have you some secret commission from the marshal?”

“No.”