Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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‘I used to think my husband was inspired about Ireland,’ said Kate doubtfully.

‘And now?’

‘Yes! Perhaps he put his wine in old, rotten bottles that wouldn’t hold it. No! — Liberty is a rotten old wine-skin. It won’t hold one’s wine of inspiration or passion any more,’ she said.

‘And Mexico!’ he said. ‘Mexico is another Ireland. Ah no, no man can be his own master. If I must serve, I will not serve an idea, which cracks and leaks like an old wine-skin. I will serve the God that gives me my manhood. There is no liberty for a man, apart from the God of his manhood. Free Mexico is a bully, and the old, colonial, ecclesiastical Mexico was another sort of bully. When man has nothing but his WILL to assert — even his good-will — it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains.’

‘Then what’s to be done?’ said Kate. ‘Just nothing?’

And with her own will, she wanted nothing to be done. Let the skies fall!

‘One is driven, at last, back to the far distance, to look for God,’ said Ramón uneasily.