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Show I CONDENSED 1 I CLASSICS I I THE FOUR I HORSEMEN OF THE t APOCALYPSE ? & i By BLASCO IBANEZ $ Condensation by x X Alice G. Higgins, Boston Athe- .j. naeum. Vicente Blanco Ihancs Trail born In Valencia, Spain, In January, 1867, the nob. of n proprietor pro-prietor of n dry good ahop. He attended the University Uni-versity of Valencia Valen-cia and received a degree In lair. He was agalnat the eatabllnhed order from bin college dnj-n. Am a result he received re-ceived the first of a series of Imprisonments Impris-onments vrhea be which he saw the Apocalyptic Beast rising out of the sea. Four terrible horsemen preceded the appearance of the monster, and these scourges of the earth, Conquest, War, Famine and Death, were beginning their mad, desolating des-olating course over the heads of terrified terri-fied humanity. K Julio, being an Argentinian, was ex- empt from military service and had noped to continue his life as though Nothing were happening. Ills inamorata, inamo-rata, however, from a woman Infatuated Infatu-ated with dress, was gradually transformed trans-formed by her desire to serve. The war had made her ponder much on the values of life, and her sense of duty to the husband whom she so greatly wronged sent her back to his side when she heard that he had been severely wounded. To Julio she said, "You must leave me . . . Life is not what we have thought It. Ilad It not been for the war we might, perhaps, have realized our dream, but nowl . . . For the remainder of my life I shall carry the heaviest burden, and yet at the same time. It will be sweet," since the more It weighs me down the greater great-er will my atonement be." The vanquished lover said good-by to Love and Ilappiness, but this repulse re-pulse gave him a new Impetus to fill the vacuum of his empty existence. When Paris was threatened and refugees told of the wholesale sackings of their homes, Don Marcelo began to fear for his castle, and went to Vllle-blanche, Vllle-blanche, arriving in time to witness the discouraged exhaustion of the French army's retreat. Closely following follow-ing were the invading Germans shouting shout-ing joyously, "Nach Paris!" Villeblanche became the camping ground for a regiment and its bewildered bewil-dered proprietor was subjected to Innumerable In-numerable Indignities, saw his most choice possessions looted and was tho powerless witness to the murder of prominent civilians of the village. A young officer arrived who introducer' himself as Captain Otto von Hartrott He explained with true German callousness cal-lousness the ruin and plunder of his uncle's castle by saying to him, "It If war . . . We have to be very ruthless ruth-less that It may not last long. Tru kindness consists in being cruel, be cause thenthe terror-stricken enemy gives In sooner, and so the world suf fers less." For four days Don Marcelo 'live -1 through a period of stupefaction slashed by the most horrible visions. The village was reduced to a mass of ruins before his eyes, and his household house-hold suffered unspeakably from the bestiality of the carousing officers. A war hospital was established on the estate, but moved on urtder the stress of battle, though the banner of the Red Cross remained to deceive the French about the artillery which was Installed In the park. When a French airplane discovered this piece of treachery Don Marcelo found himself in the heart of a furious battle. The cannonading of the Germans and the bursting of French shells terrified him until at last he saw at the foot of the highway near his castle several of the attacking columns wbjch had crossed the Marne. They rushed forward unmoved un-moved by the deadly fire of the Germans, Ger-mans, and he realized his beloved French were driving back the Teuton horde. Only ruins of his once beautiful es tate were now left to him and he said farewell to Villeblanche. After his return to Paris a young soldier of the Infantry called to see him. It was his son Julio, never so distinguished looking look-ing as in this rough, ready-made uniform. uni-form. Their reconciliation was complete. com-plete. Withvhls son on the battlefield Don Marcelo lived through months of anxious anx-ious suspense. Through the influence of a friend he was able to see the young hero. It was a tortuous journey through the zigzags and curves of the trenches, while bullets buzzed like horseflies through the air, and on through dark galleries and subterranean subterra-nean fortifications until he reached th outer intrenchment line. Desnoyers hardly recognized his son on account of bis changed appearance, but in spite of his hard life Julio had found content in comradeships such as he had never known. For the first time In his life ho was tasting the-dell cht of knowing that he; was a useful being. As his father left him, hope sang Ic his ears. "No one will kill him. My heart which never deceives me tells me so." Julio became a sergeant, then a sublieutenant sub-lieutenant and for Ills exceptional bravery received the. Croix de Guerre, the military medal, and finally vas among those proposed for the Legion d' Ilonneur. One afternoon during the Champagne offensive, Desnoyers, still cherishing the fond illusions of hope, returned to his home .n gay spirits t find the dreadful news awaiting him. Julio, his son, lay dead on the field of honor. When he went to the burial fields to find his son's lust resting plac be recalled re-called Tchernoff, the dreamer, and the four terrible horsemen riding ruthlessly ruthless-ly over his follow creatures whom he saw In his vision, and the prophecy which he then made: "No, the Beast does not ale. It Is the eternal companion of mad. It nides, spouting the toood forty . . . sixty . . . a hundred years, but eventually It reappears. re-appears. All that we can hope i that its wound may be long and deep, tbnt it may remain hidden so lor.g that the generation that now remembers It. may never see It again." Copyright. 1919. by the lost Publtahing Co. (The Buston Post). Copyright in tht United Klngdoin, tho Dominion, its Colonies Col-onies and dependencies, under the copyright copy-right act. by the Post Publishing Co. Boston. Mass., U. S. A. All rights re served. Trlnted by permission of, and srranKem-i with, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. 'orlzed pub." 'bar. Copy rlrht, 19 IS. rrns eighteen for a aonnet against the goTcrnment. He ha panned period of exile at Paris aad In Italy, alternating rltlt stays In prison. One of his protests pro-tests tras agnlnst the measure parsned l7 the government In suppressing- the Cuban Insurrection. He founded a republican re-publican nevrapuper, of which he wan fdltor, reporter and reviewer. lie t-stabllshed a publishing 74iouse to Introduce In-troduce to Spain the great works of European literature at popular prices j this was but one of the attempts he tins inade, sometimes at the risk of hi life, to bring; bis country Into the current cur-rent of modern thought. lie was elected elect-ed to the Cortes, and became the lender of his party. He devotes his time nt present entirely to literature. In his novels he berrnn In the usual Spanish way with pictures of loenl provincial life with ibe types and the pictures of which lie was familiar. But be deals not merely with pictures; his ttorles all have an object In which : heir strenuous author is grreatly Interested. In-terested. He locks restraint, his pas-don pas-don for independence Is without Nnitadn, he carries his admiration for the realism of Zola to limits which shock our more restrained habit of mind, hztt despite the opposition which he has encountered nt home ' and broad, the author of "The Four Horsemen Horse-men of the Apocalypae" Is rapidly bc-ponilng bc-ponilng one of the most widely read of living; writers. IN 1870 Marcelo Desnoyers was a lonely lad of nineteen years living i In Marseilles. A popular manifestation manifes-tation in favor of peace, at tire first news of war with Prussia, Influenced Influ-enced him to leave the country and he made an unforgettable trip to South America, where after many failures and a laborious existence, he became an employee of Madariaga, the centaur. cen-taur. Don Madariaga 's fortune was enormous. enor-mous. He had gained his first money as a fearless trader, and with his earnings had bought vast tracts of land, devoting them to the raising of cattle. Though he had a capricious and despotic character he nevertheless felt a certain fondness for his new French" overseer. One morning Desnoyers Des-noyers saved his life. "Thanks, Frenchy," said the ranchman, ranch-man, much touched. "You are an all-round all-round man and I am going to reward you. From this day I shall speak to you as I do to my family." Desnoyers soon married Luisa, Ma-dnriaga's Ma-dnriaga's elder daughter, while a young Geinmn, Karl Hartrott, a recent arrival at the ranch, married Elena, her younger sister. Seated under the awning on summer nights the ranchman ranch-man surveyed his family around him with a sort of patriarchal ecstasy. "Just think of It, Frenchy," he said. "I am Spanish, you French, Karl German, Ger-man, my daughters Argentinians, the cook Russian, his assistant Greek, the stable boy English, the kitchen servants serv-ants natives, Galicians, or Italians, and among the peons are many castes and laws . . . And yet all live In peace. In Europe, we would have probably been in a grand fight by this time, but here we are all friends." Julio, the son of Desnoyers, was the favorite grandchild of Madariaga. MAh, the fine cowboy! What a pretty fellow you are!" he would say. "Have a good time, for grandpa is always here with his money." One evening the patron's horse came ?Iowly home without its rider. The old man had fallen on the highway, and when they found him he was dead. The Hartrotts moved to Berlin at once and the Desnoyers went to Paris, each household In possession of an enormous fortune. Resides establishing establish-ing his family in an ostentatious house In Paris, Desnoyers bought a castle, Villeblanche-sur-Marne, a m'xture of palace and fortress, where ho could put his rapidly accumulating purchases pur-chases of paintings, furniture, statues all those things which he carried tway from the nuctl-ms which it had now become his habit to frequent. The only disappointment in Desnoyers' Desnoy-ers' new life came from his children his daughter Chichi because of her independence in-dependence and Julio because of his aimless existence. Julio has had to make a trip to Sath America In order to realize on a I- quest from his grandfather grand-father so that he might marry the fos-clnatlng fos-clnatlng and frivolous Marguerite Lau-rler. Lau-rler. with whom he had become Infatuated. In-fatuated. Suddenly the cloud of war cast its shadow over this family. The self-sufficient self-sufficient Dr. Julius von Hartrott sn!d to his cousin: "War will be declared tomorrow or the day after. Nothing can prevent It now. It is necessar-for necessar-for the welfare of humanity." On the eve of moblUzttion Tchernoff, friend of Julio's, ha a vision Ui |