SPOILERS!!!
The next part of the book focuses on Fernando Navarro alias Garrote, who we have discovered is Salvador's father. From the conversation with Doña Perpetua, we thought that the man didn't know about having a natural son. Yet, we discover that he knew about Salvador and had seen him as a child, poor and dressed in rags. He, though, decided to turn a blind eye.
Fernando has decided to join the guerilla, and he and Father Aparicio follow the young guerilla men like Carlos Navarro. The men ride out of the village, and Fernando and Father Aparicio lag behind, and Fernando tries to confess his sin but the father doesn't make the confession easy. Then they realise that distracted as they were, they have taken the wrong turning and have lost the other men. Aparicio sees a French man ahead of them, and he insists they hunt him down. The two men shoot and kill him, and minutes later Fernando and Aparicio are apprehended and taken to the French headquarters.
The two men are locked in separate rooms, and Salvador is their jailer. When Salvador appears, Fernando recognises him, and he is shocked to discover that he is a Frenchified soldier. What shocks him even more is that during the conversation Salvador swears that he believes in what the French represent, democracy, atheism and liberalism. Fernando learns that he is to be executed alongside the priest in the morning.
Salvador announces that he will be relieved now, and he leaves. Then Fernando talks to Aparicio through the flimsy walls made of wooden boxes. Fernando confesses to having taking advantage of a woman in his youth, who he got with child, and the child is Salvador. Fernando asks if he should tell Salvador the truth, but Aparicio is very lenient with Fernando and strict with Salvador, and he says that he has already atoned for his sins with the life he has led.
They hear some loud voices, and then a group of drunk French soldiers burst into the room where Aparicio are, and they start saying tha thtey are going to cut off his ears. The priest is mauled and tortured and then he is killed. Hearing about it, Salvador thinks that Don Fernando deserves a fairer death. He goes to his cell, and Fernando tells him that he is his father, but Salvador thinks that the man is unbalanced and he states that he has no father. Salvador gives Fernando a gun so that he can avoid a cruel death, and the man shoots himself.
Salvador leaves with the unit, and they realise that they are surrounded and can't move. There is a carriage which drive Doña Pepita and her husband Urbanito to France, and the woman begs Salvador not to leave them when they have to abandon the carriage.
Miguel de Baraona and his granddaughter Genara is in the area, and they run into Carlos and some members of the clergy. Carlos discovers that his father is dead, and he becomes morose and upset. Miguel hints that he should focus on life and he knows that his father and himself hoped that Carlos would link their two families. Carlos says that Genara doesn't love him, and the girl rectifies him, saying that he is wrong, and she really admires him.
Pepita appears, claiming that she happened to be in the area and is stuck with her husband and her brother, and she needs some food and water. The men don't know whether to believe her but give her the benefit of the doubt, giving her some food. Miguel tells Genara and Carlos to go with the woman to see if she is all right. Midway Carlos asks Genara to marry him, and she says yes, jumping to his arms. Then they see a man watching them, coming from the place where Pepita had headed for. It is Salvador, and Genara and Carlos realise that Pepita has lied, so they call him a liar. Salvador challenges Carlos to kill him, but the man refuses and says that there will be a time for that when they are both in the same conditions.
I love the characters in the book, and the humour that the novel is full of.
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