This night Constant dreamed that it went to unearth bones on the battlefield, it had already gathered one hundred and twenty-four skulls when the moon went down and the earth turned dark, then the dog went back to sleep. Two days later, some boys playing soldiers in the fields reported to the mayor that they had found a heap of skulls in a field of wheat, and no one ever discovered how they came to be there, all gathered into a pile. But the housewives of Villalar have nothing but good to say of those Portuguese and Spaniards who came with a wagon and have already left, For price and quality they were the most honest peddlers who had ever passed this way.
...
Overcome evil with good, the ancients used to say, and with good reason, at least they put their time to good use by judging facts that were then new in the light of facts that were already old. Nowadays we make the mistake of adopting a skeptical attitude toward the lessons of antiquity. The President of the United States of America promised that the peninsula would be welcome, and Canada, as we will see, was not pleased. As the Canadians point out, Unless the peninsula changes course, it is we who will be playing host and then we'll have two Newfoundlands here instead of one, little do the people on the peninsula know, poor devils, what awaits them, biting cold, frost, the only advantage for the Portuguese is that they will be close to supplies of that cod they're so fond of. They will lose their summers but have more to eat.
The spokesman at the White House hastened to explain that the President's speech had been prompted fundamentally by humanitarian considerations without aspiring to political supremacy, especially since the countries of the peninsula had not ceased to be sovereign and independent just because they had gone floating off over the waters, they will have to come to a halt one day and be like every other country, and then added, For our part, we solemnly guarantee that the traditional good-neighbor policy between the United States and Canada will not be affected by any eventuality, and as proof of America's desire to maintain friendly relations with the great Canadian nation, we propose setting up a bilateral committee to examine the various problems arising in the context of this dramatic transformation of the world's political and strategic physiognomy, which certainly constitutes a first step toward the birth of a new international community comprising the United States, Canada, and now the Iberian countries, who will be invited to participate as observers at this meeting since they are still not physically close enough for there to be any immediate prospect of specifying the eventual form of this integration.
Canada publicly expressed its satisfaction with this explanation but let it be known that it considered an early meeting to be inopportune, arguing that any terms proposed might well offend patriotic sensitivities within Portugal and Spain, and suggesting as an alternative a quadrilateral conference to examine what measures should be taken to deal with any violent opposition once the peninsula reached the Canadian coast. The United States agreed forthwith, and its leaders silently thanked God for having created the Azores, for if the peninsula had not veered northward but had moved consistently in a straight line after breaking away from Europe, the city of Lisbon would definitely have remained with its windows facing toward Atlantic City, and after much reflection they came to the conclusion that the more it veered north the better, just imagine what it would be like if Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston were to be transformed into inland cities with the inevitable decline in the standard of living. There is no doubt that the President had been much too hasty when he made that initial statement. In a subsequent exchange of confidential diplomatic notes, followed by secret meetings of high-ranking officials, Canada and the United States agreed that the best solution would be to arrest the peninsula en route, if at all possible at a point sufficiently close for it to remain outside the European sphere of influence but sufficiently remote to avoid causing any immediate or indirect damage to Canadian and American interests, and meanwhile to set up a committee charged with amending their respective immigration laws so as to strengthen discretionary clauses and discourage the Spanish and Portuguese from thinking that they can enter the North American countries at will on the pretext that we are all close neighbors now.