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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez · English · Gutenberg #1484 · 853,664 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Author: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Translator: Charlotte Brewster Jordan


        
Release date: May 3, 2006 [eBook #1484]
                Most recently updated: November 8, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1484

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

(Los Cuatro Jinettes del Apocalipsis)

by Vicente Blasco Ibanez


Translated by Charlotte Brewster Jordan



CONTENTS

PART I

I.   THE TRYST--IN THE GARDEN OF THE EXPIATORY CHAPEL
II.  MADARIAGA, THE CENTAUR
III. THE DESNOYERS FAMILY
IV.  THE COUSIN FROM BERLIN
V.   IN WHICH APPEAR THE FOUR HORSEMEN


PART II

I.   WHAT DON MARCELO ENVIED
II.  NEW LIFE
III. THE RETREAT
IV.  NEAR THE SACRED GROTTO
V.   THE INVASION
VI.  THE BANNER OF THE RED CROSS


PART III

I.   AFTER THE MARNE
II.  IN THE STUDIO
IV.  “NO ONE WILL KILL HIM”
 V.   THE BURIAL FIELDS





PART I



CHAPTER I

THE TRYST

(In the Garden of the Chapelle Expiatoire)


They were to have met in the garden of the Chapelle Expiatoire at five
o’clock in the afternoon, but Julio Desnoyers with the impatience of a
lover who hopes to advance the moment of meeting by presenting himself
before the appointed time, arrived an half hour earlier. The change of
the seasons was at this time greatly confused in his mind, and evidently
demanded some readjustment.

Five months had passed since their last interview in this square had
afforded the wandering lovers the refuge of a damp, depressing calmness
near a boulevard of continual movement close to a great railroad
station. The hour of the appointment was always five and Julio was
accustomed to see his beloved approaching by the reflection of the
recently lit street lamps, her figure enveloped in furs, and holding
her muff before her face as if it were a half-mask. Her sweet voice,
greeting him, had breathed forth a cloud of vapor, white and tenuous,
congealed by the cold. After various hesitating interviews, they had
abandoned the garden. Their love had acquired the majestic importance of
acknowledged fact, and from five to seven had taken refuge in the fifth
floor of the rue de la Pompe where Julio had an artist’s studio. The
curtains well drawn over the double glass windows, the cosy hearth-fire
sending forth its ruddy flame as the only light of the room, the
monotonous song of the samovar bubbling near the cups of tea--all
the seclusion of life isolated by an idolizing love--had dulled their
perceptions to the fact that the afternoons were growing longer, that
outside the sun was shining later and later into the pearl-covered
depths of the clouds, and that a timid and pallid Spring was beginning
to show its green finger tips in the buds of the branches suffering the
last nips of Winter--that wild, black boar who so often turned on his
tracks.

Then Julio had made his trip to Buenos Aires, encountering in the other
hemisphere the last smile of Autumn and the first icy winds from the
pampas. And just as his mind was becoming reconciled to the fact that
for him Winter was an eternal season--since it always came to meet
him in his change of domicile from one extreme of the planet to the
other--lo, Summer was unexpectedly confronting him in this dreary
garden!

A swarm of children was racing and screaming through the short avenues
around the monument. On entering the place, the first thing that Julio
encountered was a hoop which came rolling toward his legs, trundled by
a childish hand. Then he stumbled over a ball. Around the chestnut
trees was gathering the usual warm-weather crowd, seeking the blue shade
perforated with points of light. Many nurse-maids from the neighboring
houses were working and chattering here, following with indifferent
glances the rough games of the children confided to their care. Near
them were the men who had brought their papers down into the garden
under the impression that they could read them in the midst of peaceful
groves. All of the benches were full. A few women were occupying camp
stools with that feeling of superiority which ownership always confers.
The iron chairs, “pay-seats,” were serving as resting places for
various suburban dames, loaded down with packages, who were waiting for
straggling members of their families in order to take the train in the
Gare Saint Lazare. . . .

And Julio, in his special delivery letter, had proposed meeting in this
place, supposing that it would be as little frequented as in former
times. She, too, with the same thoughtlessness, had in her reply, set
the usual hour of five o’clock, believing that after passing a few
minutes in the Printemps or the Galeries on the pretext of shopping, she
would be able to slip over to the unfrequented garden without risk of
being seen by any of her numerous acquaintances.

Desnoyers was enjoying an almost forgotten sensation, that of strolling
through vast spaces, crushing as he walked the grains of sand under
his feet. For the past twenty days his rovings had been upon planks,
following with the automatic precision of a riding school the oval
promenade on the deck of a ship. His feet accustomed to insecure
ground, still were keeping on terra firma a certain sensation of elastic
unsteadiness. His goings and comings were not awakening the curiosity of
the people seated in the open, for a common preoccupation seemed to
be monopolizing all the men and women. The groups were exchanging
impressions. Those who happened to have a paper in their hands, saw
their neighbors approaching them with a smile of interrogation. There
had suddenly disappeared that distrust and suspicion which impels the
inhabitants of large cities mutually to ignore one another, taking each
other’s measure at a glance as though they were enemies.

“They are talking about the war,” said Desnoyers to himself. “At this
time, all Paris speaks of nothing but the possibility of war.”

Outside of the garden he could see also the same anxiety which was
making those around him so fraternal and sociable. The venders of
newspapers were passing through the boulevard crying the evening
editions, their furious speed repeatedly slackened by the eager hands
of the passers-by contending for the papers. Every reader was instantly
surrounded by a group begging for news or trying to decipher over his
shoulder the great headlines at the top of the sheet. In the rue des
Mathurins, on the other side of the square, a circle of workmen under
the awning of a tavern were listening to the comments of a friend who
accompanied his words with oratorical gestures and wavings of the paper.
The traffic in the streets, the general bustle of the city was the same
as in other days, but it seemed to Julio that the vehicles were whirling
past more rapidly, that there was a feverish agitation in the air and
that people were speaking and smiling in a different way. The women of
the garden were looking even at him as if they had seen him in former
days. He was able to approach them and begin a conversation without
experiencing the slightest strangeness.

“They are talking of the war,” he said again but with the commiseration
of a superior intelligence which foresees the future and feels above the
impressions of the vulgar crowd.

He knew exactly what course he was going to follow. He had disembarked
at ten o’clock the night before, and as it was not yet twenty-four hours
since he had touched land, his mentality was still that of a man who
comes from afar, across oceanic immensities, from boundless horizons,
and is surprised at finding himself in touch with the preoccupations
which govern human communities. After disembarking he had spent two
hours in a cafe in Boulogne, listlessly watching the middle-class
families who passed their time in the monotonous placidity of a life
without dangers. Then the special train for the passengers from South
America had brought him to Paris, leaving him at four in the morning
on a platform of the Gare du Nord in the embrace of Pepe Argensola, the
young Spaniard whom he sometimes called “my secretary” or “my valet”
 because it was difficult to define exactly the relationship between
them. In reality, he was a mixture of friend and parasite, the poor
comrade, complacent and capable in his companionship with a rich youth
on bad terms with his family, sharing with him the ups and downs
of fortune, picking up the crumbs of prosperous days, or inventing
expedients to keep up appearances in the hours of poverty.

“What about the war?” Argensola had asked him before inquiring about the
result of his trip. “You have come a long ways and should know much.”

Soon he was sound asleep in his dear old bed while his “secretary” was
pacing up and down the studio talking of Servia, Russia and the Kaiser.
This youth, too, skeptical as he generally was about everything not
connected with his own interests, appeared infected by the general
excitement.

When Desnoyers awoke he found her note awaiting him, setting their
meeting at five that afternoon and also containing a few words about the
threatened danger which was claiming the attention of all Paris. Upon
going out in search of lunch the concierge, on the pretext of welcoming
him back, had asked him the war news. And in the restaurant, the cafe
and the street, always war . . . the possibility of war with
Germany. . . .

Julio was an optimist. What did all this restlessness signify to a man
who had just been living more than twenty days among Germans, crossing
the Atlantic under the flag of the Empire?

He had sailed from Buenos Aires in a steamer of the Hamburg line, the
Koenig Frederic August. The world was in blessed tranquillity when
the boat left port. Only the whites and half-breeds of Mexico were
exterminating each other in conflicts in order that nobody might believe
that man is an animal degenerated by peace. On the rest of the
planet, the people were displaying unusual prudence. Even aboard the
transatlantic liner, the little world of passengers of most diverse
nationalities appeared a fragment of future society implanted by way of
experiment in modern times--a sketch of the hereafter, without frontiers
or race antagonisms.

One morning the ship band which every Sunday had sounded the Choral of
Luther, awoke those sleeping in the first-class cabins with the most
unheard-of serenade. Desnoyers rubbed his eyes believing himself
under the hallucinations of a dream. The German horns were playing the
Marseillaise through the corridors and decks. The steward, smiling at
his astonishment, said, “The fourteenth of July!” On the German steamers
they celebrate as their own the great festivals of all the nations
represented by their cargo and passengers. Their captains are careful
to observe scrupulously the rites of this religion of the flag and its
historic commemoration. The most insignificant republic saw the ship
decked in its honor, affording one more diversion to help combat the
monotony of the voyage and further the lofty ends of the Germanic
propaganda. For the first time the great festival of France was being
celebrated on a German vessel, and whilst the musicians continued
escorting a racy Marseillaise in double quick time through the different
floors, the morning groups were commenting on the event.

“What finesse!” exclaimed the South American ladies. “These Germans are
not so phlegmatic as they seem. It is an attention . . . something very
distinguished. . . . And is it possible that some still believe that
they and the French might come to blows?”

The very few Frenchmen who were travelling on the steamer found
themselves admired as though they had increased immeasurably in public
esteem. There were only three;--an old jeweller who had been visiting
his branch shops in America, and two demi-mondaines from the rue de
la Paix, the most timid and well-behaved persons aboard, vestals with
bright eyes and disdainful noses who held themselves stiffly aloof in
this uncongenial atmosphere.

At night there was a gala banquet in the dining room at the end of which
the French flag and that of the Empire formed a flaunting, conspicuous
drapery. All the German passengers were in dress suits, and their wives
were wearing low-necked gowns. The uniforms of the attendants were as
resplendent as on a day of a grand review.

During dessert the tapping of a knife upon a glass reduced the table
to sudden silence. The Commandant was going to speak. And this brave
mariner who united to his nautical functions the obligation of making
harangues at banquets and opening the dance with the lady of most
importance, began unrolling a string of words like the noise of clappers
between long intervals of silence. Desnoyers knew a little German as
a souvenir of a visit to some relatives in Berlin, and so was able
to catch a few words. The Commandant was repeating every few minutes
“peace” and “friends.” A table neighbor, a commercial commissioner,
offered his services as interpreter to Julio, with that obsequiousness
which lives on advertisement.

“The Commandant asks God to maintain peace between Germany and France
and hopes that the two peoples will become increasingly friendly.”

Another orator arose at the same table. He was the most influential of
the German passengers, a rich manufacturer from Dusseldorf who had just
been visiting his agents in America. He was never mentioned by name. He
bore the title of Commercial Counsellor, and among his countrymen was
always Herr Comerzienrath and his wife was entitled Frau Rath. The
Counsellor’s Lady, much younger than her important husband, had from
the first attracted the attention of Desnoyers. She, too, had made an
exception in favor of this young Argentinian, abdicating her title from
their first conversation. “Call me Bertha,” she said as condescendingly
as a duchess of Versailles might have spoken to a handsome abbot seated
at her feet. Her husband, also protested upon hearing Desnoyers call him
“Counsellor,” like his compatriots.

“My friends,” he said, “call me ‘Captain.’ I command a company of the
Landsturm.” And the air with which the manufacturer accompanied these
words, revealed the melancholy of an unappreciated man scorning the
honors he has in order to think only of those he does not possess.

While he was delivering his discourse, Julio was examining his small
head and thick neck which gave him a certain resemblance to a bull dog.
In imagination he saw the high and oppressive collar of a uniform making
a double roll of fat above its stiff edge. The waxed, upright moustaches
were bristling aggressively. His voice was sharp and dry as though
he were shaking out his words. . . . Thus the Emperor would utter his
harangues, so the martial burgher, with instinctive imitation, was
contracting his left arm, supporting his hand upon the hilt of an
invisible sword.

In spite of his fierce and oratorical gesture of command, all the
listening Germans laughed uproariously at his first words, like men who
knew how to appreciate the sacrifice of a Herr Comerzienrath when he
deigns to divert a festivity.

“He is saying very witty things about the French,” volunteered the
interpreter in a low voice, “but they are not offensive.”

Julio had guessed as much upon hearing repeatedly the word Franzosen.
He almost understood what the orator was saying--“Franzosen--great
children, light-hearted, amusing, improvident. The things that they
might do together if they would only forget past grudges!” The attentive
Germans were no longer laughing. The Counsellor was laying aside his
irony, that grandiloquent, crushing irony, weighing many tons, as
enormous as a ship. Then he began unrolling the serious part of his
harangue, so that he himself, was also greatly affected.

“He says, sir,” reported Julio’s neighbor, “that he wishes France
to become a very great nation so that some day we may march together
against other enemies . . . against OTHERS!”

And he winked one eye, smiling maliciously with that smile of common
intelligence which this allusion to the mysterious enemy always
awakened.

Finally the Captain-Counsellor raised his glass in a toast to France.
“Hoch!” he yelled as though he were commanding an evolution of his
soldierly Reserves. Three times he sounded the cry and all the German
contingent springing to their feet, responded with a lusty Hoch while
the band in the corridor blared forth the Marseillaise.

Desnoyers was greatly moved. Thrills of enthusiasm were coursing up
and down his spine. His eyes became so moist that, when drinking his
champagne, he almost believed that he had swallowed some tears. He
bore a French name. He had French blood in his veins, and this that the
gringoes were doing--although generally they seemed to him ridiculous
and ordinary--was really worth acknowledging. The subjects of the Kaiser
celebrating the great date of the Revolution! He believed that he was
witnessing a great historic event.

“Very well done!” he said to the other South Americans at the near
tables. “We must admit that they have done the handsome thing.”

Then with the vehemence of his twenty-seven years, he accosted the
jeweller in the passage way, reproaching him for his silence. He was
the only French citizen aboard. He should have made a few words of
acknowledgment. The fiesta was ending awkwardly through his fault.

“And why have you not spoken as a son of France?” retorted the jeweller.

“I am an Argentinian citizen,” replied Julio.

And he left the older man believing that he ought to have spoken and
making explanations to those around him. It was a very dangerous thing,
he protested, to meddle in diplomatic affairs. Furthermore, he had not
instructions from his government. And for a few hours he believed that
he had been on the point of playing a great role in history.

Desnoyers passed the rest of the evening in the smoking room attracted
thither by the presence of the Counsellor’s Lady. The Captain of the
Landsturm, sticking a preposterous cigar between his moustachios, was
playing poker with his countrymen ranking next to him in dignity and
riches. His wife stayed beside him most of the time, watching the goings
and comings of the stewards carrying great bocks, without daring to
share in this tremendous consumption of beer. Her special preoccupation
was to keep vacant near her a seat which Desnoyers might occupy. She
considered him the most distinguished man on board because he was
accustomed to taking champagne with all his meals. He was of medium
height, a decided brunette, with a small foot, which obliged her to tuck
hers under her skirts, and a triangular face under two masses of hair,
straight, black and glossy as lacquer, the very opposite of the type of
men about her. Besides, he was living in Paris, in the city which she
had never seen after numerous trips in both hemispheres.

“Oh, Paris! Paris!” she sighed, opening her eyes and pursing her lips
in order to express her admiration when she was speaking alone to the
Argentinian. “How I should love to go there!”

And in order that he might feel free to tell her things about Paris, she
permitted herself certain confidences about the pleasures of Berlin, but
with a blushing modesty, admitting in advance that in the world there
was more--much more--that she wished to become acquainted with.

While pacing around the Chapelle Expiatoire, Julio recalled with a
certain remorse the wife of Counsellor Erckmann. He who had made the
trip to America for a woman’s sake, in order to collect money and marry
her! Then he immediately began making excuses for his conduct. Nobody
was going to know. Furthermore he did not pretend to be an ascetic, and
Bertha Erckmann was certainly a tempting adventure in mid ocean. Upon
recalling her, his imagination always saw a race horse--large, spare,
roan colored, and with a long stride. She was an up-to-date German who
admitted no defect in her country except the excessive weight of its
women, combating in her person this national menace with every known
system of dieting. For her every meal was a species of torment, and
the procession of bocks in the smoking room a tantalizing agony.
The slenderness achieved and maintained by will power only made more
prominent the size of her frame, the powerful skeleton with heavy jaws
and large teeth, strong and dazzling, which perhaps suggested Desnoyers’
disrespectful comparison. “She is thin, but enormous, nevertheless!” was
always his conclusion.

But then, he considered her, notwithstanding, the most distinguished
woman on board--distinguished for the sea--elegant in the style of
Munich, with clothes of indescribable colors that suggested Persian art
and the vignettes of mediaeval manuscripts. The husband admired Bertha’s
elegance, lamenting her childlessness in secret, almost as though it
were a crime of high treason. Germany was magnificent because of the
fertility of its women. The Kaiser, with his artistic hyperbole, had
proclaimed that the true German beauty should have a waist measure of at
least a yard and a half.

When Desnoyers entered into the smoking room in order to take the
seat which Bertha had reserved for him, her husband and his wealthy
hangers-on had their pack of cards lying idle upon the green felt. Herr
Rath was continuing his discourse and his listeners, taking their cigars
from their mouths, were emitting grunts of approbation. The arrival of
Julio provoked a general smile of amiability. Here was France coming
to fraternize with them. They knew that his father was French, and
that fact made him as welcome as though he came in direct line from the
palace of the Quai d’Orsay, representing the highest diplomacy of the
Republic. The craze for proselyting made them all promptly concede to
him unlimited importance.

“We,” continued the Counsellor looking fixedly at Desnoyers as if he
were expecting a solemn declaration from him, “we wish to live on good
terms with France.”

The youth nodded his head so as not to appear inattentive. It appeared
to him a very good thing that these peoples should not be enemies, and
as far as he was concerned, they might affirm this relationship as often
as they wished: the only thing that was interesting him just at
that time was a certain knee that was seeking his under the table,
transmitting its gentle warmth through a double curtain of silk.

“But France,” complained the manufacturer, “is most unresponsive towards
us. For many years past, our Emperor has been holding out his hand with
noble loyalty, but she pretends not to see it. . . . That, you must
admit, is not as it should be.”

Just here Desnoyers believed that he ought to say something in order
that the spokesman might not divine his more engrossing occupation.

“Perhaps you are not doing enough. If, first of all, you would return
that which you took away from France!” . . .

Stupefied silence followed this remark, as if the alarm signal had
sounded through the boat. Some of those who were about putting their
cigars in their mouths, remained with hands immovable within two inches
of their lips, their eyes almost popping out of their heads. But the
Captain of the Landsturm was there to formulate their mute protest.

“Return!” he said in a voice almost extinguished by the sudden swelling
of his neck. “We have nothing to return, for we have taken nothing. That
which we possess, we acquire by our heroism.”

The hidden knee with its agreeable friction made itself more
insinuating, as though counselling the youth to greater prudence.

“Do not say such things,” breathed Bertha, “thus only the republicans,
corrupted by Paris, talk. A youth so distinguished who has been in
Berlin, and has relatives in Germany!” . . .

But Desnoyers felt a hereditary impulse of aggressiveness before each
of her husband’s statements, enunciated in haughty tones, and responded
coldly:--

“It is as if I should take your watch and then propose that we should be
friends, forgetting the occurrence. Although you might forget, the first
thing for me to do would be to return the watch.”

Counsellor Erckmann wished to retort with so many things at once that he
stuttered horribly, leaping from one idea to the other. To compare the
reconquest of Alsace to a robbery. A German country! The race . . . the
language . . . the history! . . .

“But when did they announce their wish to be German?” asked the youth
without losing his calmness. “When have you consulted their opinion?”

The Counsellor hesitated, not knowing whether to argue with this
insolent fellow or crush him with his scorn.

“Young man, you do not know what you are talking about,” he finally
blustered with withering contempt. “You are an Argentinian and do not
understand the affairs of Europe.”

And the others agreed, suddenly repudiating the citizenship which
they had attributed to him a little while before. The Counsellor, with
military rudeness, brusquely turned his back upon him, and taking up
the pack, distributed the cards. The game was renewed. Desnoyers, seeing
himself isolated by the scornful silence, felt greatly tempted to break
up the playing by violence; but the hidden knee continued counselling
self-control, and an invisible hand had sought his right, pressing
it sweetly. That was enough to make him recover his serenity. The
Counsellor’s Lady seemed to be absorbed in the progress of the game. He
also looked on, a malignant smile contracting slightly the lines of his
mouth as he was mentally ejaculating by way of consolation, “Captain,
Captain! . . . You little know what is awaiting you!”

On terra firma, he would never again have approached these men; but life
on a transatlantic liner, with its inevitable promiscuousness, obliges
forgetfulness. The following day the Counsellor and his friends came in
search of him, flattering his sensibilities by erasing every irritating
memory. He was a distinguished youth belonging to a wealthy family, and
all of them had shops and business in his country. The only thing was
that he should be careful not to mention his French origin. He was an
Argentinian; and thereupon, the entire chorus interested itself in the
grandeur of his country and all the nations of South America where they
had agencies or investments--exaggerating its importance as though its
petty republics were great powers, commenting with gravity upon the
deeds and words of its political leaders and giving him to understand
that in Germany there was no one who was not concerned about the
future of South America, predicting for all its divisions most glorious
prosperity--a reflex of the Empire, always, provided, of course, that
they kept under Germanic influence.

In spite of these flatteries, Desnoyers was no longer presenting himself
with his former assiduity at the hour of poker. The Counsellor’s wife
was retiring to her stateroom earlier than usual--their approach to the
Equator inducing such an irresistible desire for sleep, that she had
to abandon her husband to his card playing. Julio also had mysterious
occupations which prevented his appearance on deck until after midnight.
With the precipitation of a man who desires to be seen in order to avoid
suspicion, he was accustomed to enter the smoking room talking loudly as
he seated himself near the husband and his boon companions.

The game had ended, and an orgy of beer and fat cigars from Hamburg
was celebrating the success of the winners. It was the hour of Teutonic
expansion, of intimacy among men, of heavy, sluggish jokes, of off-color
stories. The Counsellor was presiding with much majesty over the
diableries of his chums, prudent business men from the Hanseatic ports
who had big accounts in the Deutsche Bank or were shopkeepers installed
in the republic of the La Plata, with an innumerable family. He was a
warrior, a captain, and on applauding every heavy jest with a laugh that
distended his fat neck, he fancied that he was among his comrades at
arms.

In honor of the South Americans who, tired of pacing the deck, had
dropped in to hear what the gringoes were saying, they were turning into
Spanish the witticisms and licentious anecdotes awakened in the memory
by a superabundance of beer. Julio was marvelling at the ready laugh of
all these men. While the foreigners were remaining unmoved, they would
break forth into loud horse-laughs throwing themselves back in their
seats. And when the German audience was growing cold, the story-teller
would resort to an infallible expedient to remedy his lack of success:--

“They told this yarn to the Kaiser, and when the Kaiser heard it he
laughed heartily.”

It was not necessary to say more. They all laughed then. Ha, ha, ha!
with a spontaneous roar but a short one, a laugh in three blows, since
to prolong it, might be interpreted as a lack of respect to His Majesty.

As they neared Europe, a batch of news came to meet the boat. The
employees in the wireless telegraphy office were working incessantly.
One night, on entering the smoking room, Desnoyers saw the German
notables gesticulating with animated countenances. They were no longer
drinking beer. They had had bottles of champagne uncorked, and the
Counsellor’s Lady, much impressed, had not retired to her stateroom.
Captain Erckmann, spying the young Argentinian, offered him a glass.

“It is war,” he shouted with enthusiasm. “War at last. . . . The hour
has come!”

Desnoyers made a gesture of astonishment. War! . . . What war? . . .
Like all the others, he had read on the news bulletin outside
a radiogram stating that the Austrian government had just sent an
ultimatum to Servia; but it made not the slightest impression on him,
for he was not at all interested in the Balkan affairs. Those were but
the quarrels of a miserable little nation monopolizing the attention of
the world, distracting it from more worthwhile matters. How could this
event concern the martial Counsellor? The two nations would soon come to
an understanding. Diplomacy sometimes amounted to something.

“No,” insisted the German ferociously. “It is war, blessed war. Russia
will sustain Servia, and we will support our ally. . . . What will
France do? Do you know what France will do?” . . .

Julio shrugged his shoulders testily as though asking to be left out of
all international discussions.

“It is war,” asserted the Counsellor, “the preventive war that we need.
Russia is growing too fast, and is preparing to fight us. Four years
more of peace and she will have finished her strategic railroads, and
her military power, united to that of her allies, will be worth as much
as ours. It is better to strike a powerful blow now. It is necessary to
take advantage of this opportunity. . . . War. Preventive war!”

All his clan were listening in silence. Some did not appear to feel the
contagion of his enthusiasm. War! . . . In imagination they saw their
business paralyzed, their agencies bankrupt, the banks cutting down
credit . . . a catastrophe more frightful to them than the slaughters
of battles. But they applauded with nods and grunts all of Erckmann’s
ferocious demonstrations. He was a Herr Rath, and an officer besides.
He must be in the secrets of the destiny of his country, and that was
enough to make them drink silently to the success of the war.

Julio thought that the Counsellor and his admirers must be drunk. “Look
here, Captain,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “what you say lacks
logic. How could war possibly be acceptable to industrial Germany? Every
moment its business is increasing, every month it conquers a new
market and every year its commercial balance soars upward in unheard of
proportions. Sixty years ago, it had to man its boats with Berlin
hack drivers arrested by the police. Now its commercial fleets and war
vessels cross all oceans, and there is no port where the German merchant
marine does not occupy the greatest part of the docks. It would only be
necessary to continue living in this way, to put yourselves beyond the
exigencies of war! Twenty years more of peace, and the Germans would be
lords of the world’s commerce, conquering England, the former mistress
of the seas, in a bloodless struggle. And are they going to risk all
this--like a gambler who stakes his entire fortune on a single card--in
a struggle that might result unfavorably?” . . .

“No, war,” insisted the Counsellor furiously, “preventive war. We live
surrounded by our enemies, and this state of things cannot go on. It is
best to end it at once. Either they or we! Germany feels herself strong
enough to challenge the world. We’ve got to put an end to this Russian
menace! And if France doesn’t keep herself quiet, so much the worse for
her! . . . And if anyone else . . . ANYONE dares to come in against us,
so much the worse for him! When I set up a new machine in my shops, it
is to make it produce unceasingly. We possess the finest army in the
world, and it is necessary to give it exercise that it may not rust
out.”

He then continued with heavy emphasis, “They have put a band of iron
around us in order to throttle us. But Germany has a strong chest and
has only to expand in order to burst its bands. We must awake before
they manacle us in our sleep. Woe to those who then oppose us! . . .”

Desnoyers felt obliged to reply to this arrogance. He had never seen
the iron circle of which the Germans were complaining. The nations were
merely unwilling to continue living, unsuspecting and inactive,
before boundless German ambition. They were simply preparing to defend
themselves against an almost certain attack. They wished to maintain
their dignity, repeatedly violated under most absurd pretexts.

“I wonder if it is not the others,” he concluded, “who are obliged to
defend themselves because you represent a menace to the world!”

An invisible hand sought his under the table, as it had some nights
before, to recommend prudence; but now he clasped it forcibly with the
authority of a right acquired.

“Oh, sir!” sighed the sweet Bertha, “to talk like that, a youth so
distinguished who has . . .”

She was not able to finish, for her husband interrupted. They were no
longer in American waters, and the Counsellor expressed himself with the
rudeness of a master of his house.

“I have the honor to inform you, young man,” he said, imitating the
cutting coldness of the diplomats, “that you are merely a South American
and know nothing of the affairs of Europe.”

He did not call him an “Indian,” but Julio heard the implication as
though he had used the word itself. Ah, if that hidden handclasp had not
held him with its sentimental thrills! . . . But this contact kept him
calm and even made him smile. “Thanks, Captain,” he said to himself. “It
is the least you can do to get even with me!”

Here his relations with the German and his clientele came to an end. The
merchants, as they approached nearer and nearer to their native land,
began casting off that servile desire of ingratiating themselves which
they had assumed in all their trips to the new world. They now had more
important things to occupy them. The telegraphic service was working
without cessation. The Commandant of the vessel was conferring in his
apartment with the Counsellor as his compatriot of most importance.
His friends were hunting out the most obscure places in order to
talk confidentially with one another. Even Bertha commenced to avoid
Desnoyers. She was still smiling distantly at him, but that smile was
more of a souvenir than a reality.

Between Lisbon and the coast of England, Julio spoke with her husband
for the last time. Every morning was appearing on the bulletin board the
alarming news transmitted by radiograph. The Empire was arming itself
against its enemies. God would punish them, making all manner of
troubles fall upon them. Desnoyers was motionless with astonishment
before the last piece of news--“Three hundred thousand revolutionists
are now besieging Paris. The suburbs are beginning to burn. The horrors
of the Commune have broken out again.”

“My, but these Germans have gone mad!” exclaimed the disgusted youth to
the curious group surrounding the radio-sheet. “We are going to lose
the little sense that we have left! . . . What revolutionists are they
talking about? How could a revolution break out in Paris if the men of
the government are not reactionary?”

A gruff voice sounded behind him, rude, authoritative, as if trying to
banish the doubts of the audience. It was the Herr Comerzienrath who was
speaking.

“Young man, these notices are sent us by the first agencies of Germany
. . . and Germany never lies.”

After this affirmation, he turned his back upon them and they saw him no
more.

On the following morning, the last day of the voyage. Desnoyers’ steward
awoke him in great excitement. “Herr, come up on deck! a most beautiful
spectacle!”

The sea was veiled by the fog, but behind its hazy curtains could be
distinguished some silhouettes like islands with great towers and sharp,
pointed minarets. The islands were advancing over the oily waters slowly
and majestically, with impressive dignity. Julio counted eighteen. They
appeared to fill the ocean. It was the Channel Fleet which had just left
the English coast by Government order, sailing around simply to show
its strength. Seeing this procession of dreadnoughts for the first
time, Desnoyers was reminded of a flock of marine monsters, and gained
a better idea of the British power. The German ship passed among them,
shrinking, humiliated, quickening its speed. “One might suppose,” mused
the youth, “that she had an uneasy conscience and wished to scud to
safety.” A South American passenger near him was jesting with one of
the Germans, “What if they have already declared war! . . . What if they
should make us prisoners!”

After midday, they entered Southampton roads. The Frederic August
hurried to get away as soon as possible, and transacted business with
dizzying celerity. The cargo of passengers and baggage was enormous.
Two launches approached the transatlantic and discharged an avalanche of
Germans residents in England who invaded the decks with the joy of those
who tread friendly soil, desiring to see Hamburg as soon as possible.
Then the boat sailed through the Channel with a speed most unusual in
these places.

The people, leaning on the railing, were commenting on the extraordinary
encounters in this marine boulevard, usually frequented by ships of
peace. Certain smoke lines on the horizon were from the French squadron
carrying President Poincare who was returning from Russia. The European
alarm had interrupted his trip. Then they saw more English vessels
patrolling the coast line like aggressive and vigilant dogs. Two North
American battleships could be distinguished by their mast-heads in the
form of baskets. Then a Russian battleship, white and glistening, passed
at full steam on its way to the Baltic. “Bad!” said the South American
passengers regretfully. “Very bad! It looks this time as if it were
going to be serious!” and they glanced uneasily at the neighboring
coasts on both sides. Although they presented the usual appearance,
behind them, perhaps, a new period of history was in the making.

The transatlantic was due at Boulogne at midnight where it was supposed
to wait until daybreak to discharge its passengers comfortably. It
arrived, nevertheless, at ten, dropped anchor outside the harbor, and
the Commandant gave orders that the disembarkation should take place
in less than an hour. For this reason they had quickened their speed,
consuming a vast amount of extra coal. It was necessary to get away
as soon as possible, seeking the refuge of Hamburg. The radiographic
apparatus had evidently been working to some purpose.

By the glare of the bluish searchlights which were spreading a livid
clearness over the sea, began the unloading of passengers and baggage
for Paris, from the transatlantic into the tenders. “Hurry! Hurry!” The
seamen were pushing forward the ladies of slow step who were recounting
their valises, believing that they had lost some. The stewards loaded
themselves up with babies as though they were bundles. The general
precipitation dissipated the usual exaggerated and oily Teutonic
amiability. “They are regular bootlickers,” thought Desnoyers. “They
believe that their hour of triumph has come, and do not think it
necessary to pretend any longer.” . . .

He was soon in a launch that was bobbing up and down on the waves
near the black and immovable hulk of the great liner, dotted with many
circles of light and filled with people waving handkerchiefs. Julio
recognized Bertha who was waving her hand without seeing him, without
knowing in which tender he was, but feeling obliged to show her
gratefulness for the sweet memories that now were being lost in the
mystery of the sea and the night. “Adieu, Frau Rath!”

The distance between the departing transatlantic and the lighters was
widening. As though it had been awaiting this moment with impunity, a
stentorian voice on the upper deck shouted with a noisy guffaw, “See you
later! Soon we shall meet you in Paris!” And the marine band, the very
same band that three days before had astonished Desnoyers with its
unexpected Marseillaise, burst forth into a military march of the time
of Frederick the Great--a march of grenadiers with an accompaniment of
trumpets.

That had been the night before. Although twenty-four hours had not yet
passed by, Desnoyers was already considering it as a distant event of
shadowy reality. His thoughts, always disposed to take the opposite
side, did not share in the general alarm. The insolence of the
Counsellor now appeared to him but the boastings of a burgher turned
into a soldier. The disquietude of the people of Paris, was but the
nervous agitation of a city which lived placidly and became alarmed at
the first hint of danger to its comfort. So many times they had spoken
of an immediate war, always settling things peacefully at the last
moment! . . . Furthermore he did not want war to come because it would
upset all his plans for the future; and the man accepted as logical
and reasonable everything that suited his selfishness, placing it above
reality.

“No, there will not be war,” he repeated as he continued pacing up and
down the garden. “These people are beside themselves. How could a war
possibly break out in these days?” . . .

And after disposing of his doubts, which certainly would in a short
time come up again, he thought of the joy of the moment, consulting his
watch. Five o’clock! She might come now at any minute! He thought that
he recognized her afar off in a lady who was passing through the grating
by the rue Pasquier. She seemed to him a little different, but it
occurred to him that possibly the Summer fashions might have altered
her appearance. But soon he saw that he had made a mistake. She was not
alone, another lady was with her. They were perhaps English or North
American women who worshipped the memory of Marie Antoinette and wished
to visit the Chapelle Expiatoire, the old tomb of the executed queen.
Julio watched them as they climbed the flights of steps and crossed the
interior patio in which were interred the eight hundred Swiss soldiers
killed in the attack of the Tenth of August, with other victims of
revolutionary fury.

Disgusted at his error, he continued his tramp. His ill humor made the
monument with which the Bourbon restoration had adorned the old cemetery
of the Madeleine, appear uglier than ever to him. Time was passing, but
she did not come. Every time that he turned, he looked hungrily at the
entrances of the garden. And then it happened as in all their meetings.
She suddenly appeared as if she had fallen from the sky or risen up from
the ground, like an apparition. A cough, a slight rustling of footsteps,
and as he turned, Julio almost collided with her.

“Marguerite! Oh, Marguerite!” . . .

It was she, and yet he was slow to recognize her. He felt a certain
strangeness in seeing in full reality the countenance which had occupied
his imagination for three months, each time more spirituelle and shadowy
with the idealism of absence. But his doubts were of short duration.
Then it seemed as though time and space were eliminated, that he had
not made any voyage, and but a few hours had intervened since their last
interview.

Marguerite divined the expansion which might follow Julio’s
exclamations, the vehement hand-clasp, perhaps something more, so she
kept herself calm and serene.

“No; not here,” she said with a grimace of repugnance. “What a
ridiculous idea for us to have met here!”

They were about to seat themselves on the iron chairs, in the shadow of
some shrubbery, when she rose suddenly. Those who were passing along the
boulevard might see them by merely casting their eyes toward the
garden. At this time, many of her friends might be passing through the
neighborhood because of its proximity to the big shops. . . . They,
therefore, sought refuge at a corner of the monument, placing themselves
between it and the rue des Mathurins. Desnoyers brought two chairs near
the hedge, so that when seated they were invisible to those passing on
the other side of the railing. But this was not solitude. A few steps
away, a fat, nearsighted man was reading his paper, and a group of
women were chatting and embroidering. A woman with a red wig and two
dogs--some housekeeper who had come down into the garden in order to
give her pets an airing--passed several times near the amorous pair,
smiling discreetly.

“How annoying!” groaned Marguerite. “Why did we ever come to this
place!”

The two scrutinized each other carefully, wishing to see exactly what
transformation Time had wrought.

“You are darker than ever,” she said. “You look like a man of the sea.”

Julio was finding her even lovelier than before, and felt sure that
possessing her was well worth all the contrarieties which had brought
about his trip to South America. She was taller than he, with an
elegantly proportioned slenderness. “She has the musical step,”
 Desnoyers had told himself, when seeing her in his imagination; and now,
on beholding her again, the first thing that he admired was her rhythmic
tread, light and graceful as she passed through the garden seeking
another seat. Her features were not regular but they had a piquant
fascination--a true Parisian face. Everything that had been invented for
the embellishment of feminine charm was used about her person with the
most exquisite fastidiousness. She had always lived for herself. Only
a few months before had she abdicated a part of this sweet selfishness,
sacrificing reunions, teas, and calls in order to give Desnoyers some of
the afternoon hours.

Stylish and painted like a priceless doll, with no loftier ambition
than to be a model, interpreting with personal elegance the latest
confections of the modistes, she was at last experiencing the same
preoccupations and joys as other women, creating for herself an inner
life. The nucleus of this new life, hidden under her former frivolity,
was Desnoyers. Just as she was imagining that she had reorganized
her existence--adjusting the satisfactions of worldly elegance to the
delights of love in intimate secrecy--a fulminating catastrophe (the
intervention of her husband whose possible appearance she seemed to
have overlooked) had disturbed her thoughtless happiness. She who was
accustomed to think herself the centre of the universe, imagining that
events ought to revolve around her desires and tastes, had suffered this
cruel surprise with more astonishment than grief.

“And you, how do you think I look?” Marguerite queried.

“I must tell you that the fashion has changed. The sheath skirt has
passed away. Now it is worn short and with more fullness.”

Desnoyers had to interest himself in her apparel with the same devotion,
mixing his appreciation of the latest freak of the fashion-monger with
his eulogies of Marguerite’s beauty.

“Have you thought much about me?” she continued. “You have not been
unfaithful to me a single time? Not even once? . . . Tell me the truth;
you know I can always tell when you are lying.”

“I have always thought of you,” he said putting his hand on his heart,
as if he were swearing before a judge.

And he said it roundly, with an accent of truth, since in his
infidelities--now completely forgotten--the memory of Marguerite had
always been present.

“But let us talk about you!” added Julio. “What have you been doing all
the time?”

He had brought his chair nearer to hers, and their knees touched. He
took one of her hands, patting it and putting his finger in the glove
opening. Oh, that accursed garden which would not permit greater
intimacy and obliged them to speak in a low tone, after three months’
absence! . . . In spite of his discretion, the man who was reading his
paper raised his head and looked irritably at them over his spectacles
as though a fly were distracting him with its buzzing. . . . The very
idea of talking love-nonsense in a public garden when all Europe was
threatened with calamity!

Repelling the audacious hand, Marguerite spoke tranquilly of her
existence during the last months.

“I have passed my life the best I could, but I have been greatly bored.
You know that I am now living with mama, and mama is a lady of the old
regime who does not understand our tastes. I have been to the theatres
with my brother. I have made many calls on the lawyer in order to learn
the progress of my divorce and hurry it along . . . and nothing else.”

“And your husband?”

“Don’t let’s talk about him. Do you want to? I pity the poor man!
So good . . . so correct. The lawyer assures me that he agrees to
everything and will not impose any obstacles. They tell me that he does
not come to Paris, that he lives in his factory. Our old home is closed.
There are times when I feel remorseful over the way I have treated him.”

“And I?” queried Julio, withdrawing his hand.

“You are right,” she returned smiling. “You are Life. It is cruel but
it is human. We have to live our lives without taking others into
consideration. It is necessary to be selfish in order to be happy.”

The two remained silent. The remembrance of the husband had swept across
them like a glacial blast. Julio was the first to brighten up.

“And you have not danced in all this time?”

“No, how could I? The very idea, a woman in divorce proceedings! . . .
I have not been to a single chic party since you went away. I wanted to
preserve a certain decorous mourning fiesta. How horrible it was! . . .
It needed you, the Master!”

They had again clasped hands and were smiling. Memories of the previous
months were passing before their eyes, visions of their life from five
to seven in the afternoon, dancing in the hotels of the Champs Elysees
where the tango had been inexorably associated with a cup of tea.

She appeared to tear herself away from these recollections, impelled
by a tenacious obsession which had slipped from her mind in the first
moments of their meeting.

“Do you know much about what’s happening? Tell me all. People talk so
much. . . . Do you really believe that there will be war? Don’t you
think that it will all end in some kind of settlement?”

Desnoyers comforted her with his optimism. He did not believe in the
possibility of a war. That was ridiculous.

“I say so, too! Ours is not the epoch of savages. I have known some
Germans, chic and well-educated persons who surely must think exactly as
we do. An old professor who comes to the house was explaining yesterday
to mama that wars are no longer possible in these progressive times. In
two months’ time, there would scarcely be any men left, in three, the
world would find itself without money to continue the struggle. I do not
recall exactly how it was, but he explained it all very clearly, in a
manner most delightful to hear.”

She reflected in silence, trying to co-ordinate her confused
recollections, but dismayed by the effort required, added on her own
account.

“Just imagine what war would mean--how horrible! Society life paralyzed.
No more parties, nor clothes, nor theatres! Why, it is even possible
that they might not design any more fashions! All the women in mourning.
Can you imagine it? . . . And Paris deserted. . . . How beautiful it
seemed as I came to meet you this afternoon! . . . No, no, it cannot
be! Next month, you know, we go to Vichy. Mama needs the waters. Then to
Biarritz. After that, I shall go to a castle on the Loire. And besides
there are our affairs, my divorce, our marriage which may take place the
next year. . . . And is war to hinder and cut short all this! No, no,
it is not possible. My brother and others like him are foolish enough
to dream of danger from Germany. I am sure that my husband, too, who is
only interested in serious and bothersome matters, is among those
who believe that war is imminent and prepare to take part in it. What
nonsense! Tell me that it is all nonsense. I need to hear you say it.”

Tranquilized by the affirmations of her lover, she then changed the
trend of the conversation. The possibility of their approaching marriage
brought to mind the object of the voyage which Desnoyers had just made.
There had not been time for them to write to each other during their
brief separation.

“Did you succeed in getting the money? The joy of seeing you made me
forget all about such things. . . .”

Adopting the air of a business expert, he replied that he had brought
back less than he expected, for he had found the country in the throes
of one of its periodical panics; but still he had managed to get
together about four hundred thousand francs. In his purse he had a check
for that amount. Later on, they would send him further remittances.
A ranchman in Argentina, a sort of relative, was looking after his
affairs. Marguerite appeared satisfied, and in spite of her frivolity,
adopted the air of a serious woman.

“Money, money!” she exclaimed sententiously. “And yet there is no
happiness without it! With your four hundred thousand and what I have,
we shall be able to get along. . . . I told you that my husband wishes
to give me back my dowry. He has told my brother so. But the state of
his business, and the increased size of his factory do not permit him to
return it as quickly as he would like. I can’t help but feel sorry for
the poor man . . . so honorable and so upright in every way. If he only
were not so commonplace! . . .”

Again Marguerite seemed to regret these tardy spontaneous eulogies which
were chilling their interview. So again she changed the trend of her
chatter.

“And your family? Have you seen them?” . . .

Desnoyers had been to his father’s home before starting for the Chapelle
Expiatoire. A stealthy entrance into the great house on the avenue
Victor Hugo, and then up to the first floor like a tradesman. Then he
had slipt into the kitchen like a soldier sweetheart of the maids.
His mother had come there to embrace him, poor Dona Luisa, weeping and
kissing him frantically as though she had feared to lose him forever.
Close behind her mother had come Luisita, nicknamed Chichi, who always
surveyed him with sympathetic curiosity as if she wished to know better
a brother so bad and adorable who had led decent women from the paths
of virtue, and committed all kinds of follies. Then Desnoyers had been
greatly surprised to see entering the kitchen with the air of a tragedy
queen, a noble mother of the drama, his Aunt Elena, the one who had
married a German and was living in Berlin surrounded with innumerable
children.

“She has been in Paris a month. She is going to make a little visit to
our castle. And it appears that her eldest son--my cousin, ‘The Sage,’
whom I have not seen for years--is also coming here.”

The home interview had several times been interrupted by fear. “Your
father is at home, be careful,” his mother had said to him each time
that he had spoken above a whisper. And his Aunt Elena had stationed
herself at the door with a dramatic air, like a stage heroine resolved
to plunge a dagger into the tyrant who should dare to cross the
threshold. The entire family was accustomed to submit to the rigid
authority of Don Marcelo Desnoyers. “Oh, that old man!” exclaimed Julio,
referring to his father. “He may live many years yet, but how he weighs
upon us all!”

His mother, who had never wearied of looking at him, finally had to
bring the interview to an end, frightened by certain approaching sounds.
“Go, he might surprise us, and he would be furious.” So Julio had fled
the paternal home, caressed by the tears of the two ladies and the
admiring glances of Chichi, by turns ashamed and proud of a brother who
had caused such enthusiasm and scandal among her friends.

Marguerite also spoke of Senor Desnoyers. A terrible tyrant of the old
school with whom they could never come to an understanding.

The two remained silent, looking fixedly at each other. Now that they
had said the things of greatest urgency, present interests became more
absorbing. More immediate things, unspoken, seemed to well up in their
timid and vacillating eyes, before escaping in the form of words.
They did not dare to talk like lovers here. Every minute the cloud of
witnesses seemed increasing around them. The woman with the dogs and the
red wig was passing with greater frequency, shortening her turns through
the square in order to greet them with a smile of complicity. The
reader of the daily paper was now exchanging views with a friend on a
neighboring bench regarding the possibilities of war. The garden
had become a thoroughfare. The modistes upon going out from their
establishments, and the ladies returning from shopping, were crossing
through the square in order to shorten their walk. The little avenue was
a popular short-cut. All the pedestrians were casting curious glances at
the elegant lady and her companion seated in the shadow of the shrubbery
with the timid yet would-be natural look of those who desire to hide
themselves, yet at the same time feign a casual air.

“How exasperating!” sighed Marguerite. “They are going to find us out!”

A girl looked at her so searchingly that she thought she recognized in
her an employee of a celebrated modiste. Besides, some of her personal
friends who had met her in the crowded shops but an hour ago might be
returning home by way of the garden.

“Let us go,” she said rising hurriedly. “If they should spy us here
together, just think what they might say! . . . and just when they are
becoming a little forgetful!”

Desnoyers protested crossly. Go away? . . . Paris had become a shrunken
place for them nowadays because Marguerite refused to go to a single
place where there was a possibility of their being surprised. In another
square, in a restaurant, wherever they might go--they would run the same
risk of being recognized. She would only consider meetings in public
places, and yet at the same time, dreaded the curiosity of the people.
If Marguerite would like to go to his studio of such sweet
memories! . . .

“To your home? No! no indeed!” she replied emphatically “I cannot forget
the last time I was there.”

But Julio insisted, foreseeing a break in that firm negative. Where
could they be more comfortable? Besides, weren’t they going to marry as
soon as possible? . . .

“I tell you no,” she repeated. “Who knows but my husband may be watching
me! What a complication for my divorce if he should surprise us in your
house!”

Now it was he who eulogized the husband, insisting that such
watchfulness was incompatible with his character. The engineer had
accepted the facts, considering them irreparable and was now thinking
only of reconstructing his life.

“No, it is better for us to separate,” she continued. “Tomorrow we shall
see each other again. You will hunt a more favorable place. Think it
over, and you will find a solution for it all.”

But he wished an immediate solution. They had abandoned their seats,
going slowly toward the rue des Mathurins. Julio was speaking with a
trembling and persuasive eloquence. To-morrow? No, now. They had only to
call a taxicab. It would be only a matter of a few minutes, and then the
isolation, the mystery, the return to a sweet past--to that intimacy
in the studio where they had passed their happiest hours. They would
believe that no time had elapsed since their first meetings.

“No,” she faltered with a weakening accent, seeking a last resistance.
“Besides, your secretary might be there, that Spaniard who lives with
you. How ashamed I would be to meet him again!”

Julio laughed. . . . Argensola! How could that comrade who knew all
about their past be an obstacle? If they should happen to meet him in
the house, he would be sure to leave immediately. More than once, he had
had to go out so as not to be in the way. His discretion was such that
he had foreseen events. Probably he had already left, conjecturing that
a near visit would be the most logical thing. His chum would simply go
wandering through the streets in search of news.

Marguerite was silent, as though yielding on seeing her pretexts
exhausted. Desnoyers was silent, too, construing her stillness as
assent. They had left the garden and she was looking around uneasily,
terrified to find herself in the open street beside her lover, and
seeking a hiding-place. Suddenly she saw before her the little red door
of an automobile, opened by the hand of her adorer.

“Get in,” ordered Julio.

And she climbed in hastily, anxious to hide herself as soon as possible.
The vehicle started at great speed. Marguerite immediately pulled down
the shade of the window on her side, but, before she had finished and
could turn her head, she felt a hungry mouth kissing the nape of her
neck.

“No, not here,” she said in a pleading tone. “Let us be sensible!”

And while he, rebellious at these exhortations, persisted in his
advances, the voice of Marguerite again sounded above the noise of the
rattling machinery of the automobile as it bounded over the pavement.

“Do you really believe that there will be no war? Do you believe that we
will be able to marry? . . . Tell me again. I want you to encourage me
. . . I need to hear it from your lips.”



CHAPTER II

MADARIAGA, THE CENTAUR


In 1870 Marcelo Desnoyers was nineteen years old. He was born in the
suburbs of Paris, an only child; his father, interested in little
building speculations, maintained his family in modest comfort. The
mason wished to make an architect of his son, and Marcelo was in the
midst of his preparatory studies when his father suddenly died, leaving
his affairs greatly involved. In a few months, he and his mother
descended the slopes of ruin, and were obliged to give up their snug,
middle-class quarters and live like laborers.

When the fourteen-year-old boy had to choose a trade, he learned wood
carving. This craft was an art related to the tastes awakened in Marcelo
by his abandoned studies. His mother retired to the country, living with
some relatives while the lad advanced rapidly in the shops, aiding his
master in all the important orders which he received from the provinces.
The first news of the war with Prussia surprised him in Marseilles,
working on the decorations of a theatre.

Marcelo was opposed to the Empire like all the youths of his generation.
He was also much influenced by the older workmen who had taken part in
the Republic of ‘48, and who still retained vivid recollections of the
Coup d’Etat of the second of December.

One day he saw in the streets of Marseilles a popular manifestation in
favor of peace which was practically a protest against the government.
The old republicans in their implacable struggle with the Emperor, the
companies of the International which had just been organized, and a
great number of Italians and Spaniards who had fled their countries on
account of recent insurrections, composed the procession. A long-haired,
consumptive student was carrying the flag. “It is peace that we want--a
peace which may unite all mankind,” chanted the paraders. But on this
earth, the noblest propositions are seldom heard, since Destiny amuses
herself in perverting them and turning them aside.

Scarcely had the friends of peace entered the rue Cannebiere with their
hymn and standard, when war came to meet them, obliging them to resort
to fist and club. The day before, some battalions of Zouaves from
Algiers had disembarked in order to reinforce the army on the
frontier, and these veterans, accustomed to colonial existence and
undiscriminating as to the cause of disturbances, seized the opportunity
to intervene in this manifestation, some with bayonets and others with
ungirded belts. “Hurrah for War!” and a rain of lashes and blows
fell upon the unarmed singers. Marcelo saw the innocent student, the
standard-bearer of peace, knocked down wrapped in his flag, by the
merry kicks of the Zouaves. Then he knew no more, since he had received
various blows with a leather strap, and a knife thrust in his shoulder;
he had to run the same as the others.

That day developed for the first time, his fiery, stubborn character,
irritable before contradiction, even to the point of adopting the most
extreme resolution. “Down with War!” Since it was not possible for him
to protest in any other way, he would leave the country. The Emperor
might arrange his affairs as best he could. The struggle was going to
be long and disastrous, according to the enemies of the Empire. If he
stayed, he would in a few months be drawn for the soldiery. Desnoyers
renounced the honor of serving the Emperor. He hesitated a little when
he thought of his mother. But his country relatives would not turn her
out, and he planned to work very hard and send her money. Who knew what
riches might be waiting for him, on the other side of the sea! . . .
Good-bye, France!

Thanks to his savings, a harbor official found it to his interest to
offer him the choice of three boats. One was sailing to Egypt, another
to Australia, another to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, which made the
strongest appeal to him? . . . Desnoyers, remembering his readings,
wished to consult the wind and follow the course that it indicated, as
he had seen various heroes of novels do. But that day the wind blew from
the sea toward France. He also wished to toss up a coin in order to test
his fate. Finally he decided upon the vessel sailing first. Not until,
with his scanty baggage, he was actually on the deck of the next boat
to anchor, did he take any interest in its course--“For the Rio de la
Plata.” . . . And he accepted these words with a fatalistic shrug. “Very
well, let it be South America!” The country was not distasteful to him,
since he knew it by certain travel publications whose illustrations
represented herds of cattle at liberty, half-naked, plumed Indians, and
hairy cowboys whirling over their heads serpentine lassos tipped with
balls.

The millionaire Desnoyers never forgot that trip to America--forty-three
days navigating in a little worn-out steamer that rattled like a heap
of old iron, groaned in all its joints at the slightest roughness of the
sea, and had to stop four times for repairs, at the mercy of the winds
and waves.

In Montevideo, he learned of the reverses suffered by his country and
that the French Empire no longer existed. He felt a little ashamed
when he heard that the nation was now self-governing, defending itself
gallantly behind the walls of Paris. And he had fled! . . . Months
afterwards, the events of the Commune consoled him for his flight. If
he had remained, wrath at the national downfall, his relations with his
co-laborers, the air in which he lived--everything would surely have
dragged him along to revolt. In that case, he would have been shot or
consigned to a colonial prison like so many of his former comrades.

So his determination crystallized, and he stopped thinking about the
affairs of his mother-country. The necessities of existence in a foreign
land whose language he was beginning to pick up made him think only
of himself. The turbulent and adventurous life of these new nations
compelled him to most absurd expedients and varied occupations. Yet he
felt himself strong with an audacity and self-reliance which he never
had in the old world. “I am equal to everything,” he said, “if they
only give me time to prove it!” Although he had fled from his country
in order not to take up arms, he even led a soldier’s life for a
brief period in his adopted land, receiving a wound in one of the many
hostilities between the whites and reds in the unsettled districts.

In Buenos Aires, he again worked as a woodcarver. The city was beginning
to expand, breaking its shell as a large village. Desnoyers spent many
years ornamenting salons and facades. It was a laborious existence,
sedentary and remunerative. But one day he became tired of this slow
saving which could only bring him a mediocre fortune after a long time.
He had gone to the new world to become rich like so many others. And
at twenty-seven, he started forth again, a full-fledged adventurer,
avoiding the cities, wishing to snatch money from untapped, natural
sources. He worked farms in the forests of the North, but the locusts
obliterated his crops in a few hours. He was a cattle-driver, with the
aid of only two peons, driving a herd of oxen and mules over the snowy
solitudes of the Andes to Bolivia and Chile. In this life, making
journeys of many months’ duration, across interminable plains, he lost
exact account of time and space. Just as he thought himself on the verge
of winning a fortune, he lost it all by an unfortunate speculation.
And in a moment of failure and despair, being now thirty years old, he
became an employee of Julio Madariaga.

He knew of this rustic millionaire through his purchases of flocks--a
Spaniard who had come to the country when very young, adapting himself
very easily to its customs, and living like a cowboy after he had
acquired enormous properties. The country folk, wishing to put a title
of respect before his name, called him Don Madariaga.

“Comrade,” he said to Desnoyers one day when he happened to be in a good
humor--a very rare thing for him--“you must have passed through many ups
and downs. Your lack of silver may be smelled a long ways off. Why lead
such a dog’s life? Trust in me, Frenchy, and remain here! I am growing
old, and I need a man.”

After the Frenchman had arranged to stay with Madariaga, every landed
proprietor living within fifteen or twenty leagues of the ranch, stopped
the new employee on the road to prophesy all sorts of misfortune.

“You will not stay long. Nobody can get along with Don Madariaga. We
have lost count of his overseers. He is a man who must be killed or
deserted. Soon you will go, too!”

Desnoyers did not doubt but that there was some truth in all this.
Madariaga was an impossible character, but feeling a certain sympathy
with the Frenchman, had tried not to annoy him with his irritability.

“He’s a regular pearl, this Frenchy,” said the plainsman as though
trying to excuse himself for his considerate treatment of his latest
acquisition. “I like him because he is very serious. . . . That is the
way I like a man.”

Desnoyers did not know exactly what this much-admired seriousness could
be, but he felt a secret pride in seeing him aggressive with everybody
else, even his family, whilst he took with him a tone of paternal
bluffness.

The family consisted of his wife Misia Petrona (whom he always called
the China) and two grown daughters who had gone to school in Buenos
Aires, but on returning to the ranch had reverted somewhat to their
original rusticity.

Madariaga’s fortune was enormous. He had lived in the field since his
arrival in America, when the white race had not dared to settle outside
the towns for fear of the Indians. He had gained his first money as a
fearless trader, taking merchandise in a cart from fort to fort. He had
killed Indians, was twice wounded by them, and for a while had lived as
a captive with an Indian chief whom he finally succeeded in making his
staunch friend. With his earnings, he had bought land, much land, almost
worthless because of its insecurity, devoting it to the raising of
cattle that he had to defend, gun in hand, from the pirates of the
plains.

Then he had married his China, a young half-breed who was running around
barefoot, but owned many of her forefathers’ fields. They had lived in
an almost savage poverty on their property which would have taken many a
day’s journey to go around. Afterwards, when the government was pushing
the Indians towards the frontiers, and offering the abandoned lands
for sale, considering it a patriotic sacrifice on the part of any one
wishing to acquire them, Madariaga bought and bought at the lowest
figure and longest terms. To get possession of vast tracts and populate
it with blooded stock became the mission of his life. At times,
galloping with Desnoyers through his boundless fields, he was not able
to repress his pride.

“Tell me something, Frenchy! They say that further up the country, there
are some nations about the size of my ranches. Is that so?” . . .

The Frenchman agreed. . . . The lands of Madariaga were indeed greater
than many principalities. This put the old plainsman in rare good humor
and he exclaimed in the cowboy vernacular which had become second nature
to him--“Then it wouldn’t be absurd to proclaim myself king some day?
Just imagine it, Frenchy;--Don Madariaga, the First. . . . The worst of
it all is that I would also be the last, for the China will not give me
a son. . . . She is a weak cow!”

The fame of his vast territories and his wealth in stock reached even to
Buenos Aires. Every one knew of Madariaga by name, although very few had
seen him. When he went to the Capital, he passed unnoticed because of
his country aspect--the same leggings that he was used to wearing in the
fields, his poncho wrapped around him like a muffler above which rose
the aggressive points of a necktie, a tormenting ornament imposed by his
daughters, who in vain arranged it with loving hands that he might look
a little more respectable.

One day he entered the office of the richest merchant of the capital.

“Sir, I know that you need some young bulls for the European market, and
I have come to sell you a few.”

The man of affairs looked haughtily at the poor cowboy. He might explain
his errand to one of the employees, he could not waste his time on such
small matters. But the malicious grin on the rustic’s face awoke his
curiosity.

“And how many are you able to sell, my good man?”

“About thirty thousand, sir.”

It was not necessary to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from
his desk, and obsequiously offered him a seat.

“You can be no other than Don Madariaga.”

“At the service of God and yourself, sir,” he responded in the manner of
a Spanish countryman.

That was the most glorious moment of his existence.

In the outer office of the Directors of the Bank, the clerks offered him
a seat until the personage the other side of the door should deign to
receive him. But scarcely was his name announced than that same director
ran to admit him, and the employee was stupefied to hear the ranchman
say, by way of greeting, “I have come to draw out three hundred thousand
dollars. I have abundant pasturage, and I wish to buy a ranch or two in
order to stock them.”

His arbitrary and contradictory character weighed upon the inhabitants
of his lands with both cruel and good-natured tyranny. No vagabond ever
passed by the ranch without being rudely assailed by its owner from the
outset.

“Don’t tell me any of your hard-luck stories, friend,” he would yell as
if he were going to beat him. “Under the shed is a skinned beast;
cut and eat as much as you wish and so help yourself to continue your
journey. . . . But no more of your yarns!”

And he would turn his back upon the tramp, after giving him a few
dollars.

One day he became infuriated because a peon was nailing the wire fencing
too deliberately on the posts. Everybody was robbing him! The following
day he spoke of a large sum of money that he would have to pay for
having endorsed the note of an acquaintance, completely bankrupt. “Poor
fellow! His luck is worse than mine!”

Upon finding in the road the skeleton of a recently killed sheep, he was
beside himself with indignation. It was not because of the loss of the
meat. “Hunger knows no law, and God has made meat for mankind to eat.
But they might at least have left the skin!” . . . And he would rage
against such wickedness, always repeating, “Lack of religion and good
habits!” The next time, the bandits stripped the flesh off of three
cows, leaving the skins in full view, and the ranchman said, smiling,
“That is the way I like people, honorable and doing no wrong.”

His vigor as a tireless centaur had helped him powerfully in his task
of populating his lands. He was capricious, despotic and with the
same paternal instincts as his compatriots who, centuries before when
conquering the new world, had clarified its native blood. Like the
Castilian conquistadors, he had a fancy for copper-colored beauty with
oblique eyes and straight hair. When Desnoyers saw him going off on some
sudden pretext, putting his horse at full gallop toward a neighboring
ranch, he would say to himself, smilingly, “He is going in search of a
new peon who will help work his land fifteen years from now.”

The personnel of the ranch often used to comment on the resemblance of
certain youths laboring here the same as the others, galloping from the
first streak of dawn over the fields, attending to the various duties
of pasturing. The overseer, Celedonio, a half-breed thirty years old,
generally detested for his hard and avaricious character, also bore a
distant resemblance to the patron.

Almost every year, some woman from a great distance, dirty and
bad-faced, presented herself at the ranch, leading by the hand a little
mongrel with eyes like live coals. She would ask to speak with the
proprietor alone, and upon being confronted with her, he usually
recalled a trip made ten or twelve years before in order to buy a herd
of cattle.

“You remember, Patron, that you passed the night on my ranch because the
river had risen?”

The Patron did not remember anything about it. But a vague instinct
warned him that the woman was probably telling the truth. “Well, what of
it?”

“Patron, here he is. . . . It is better for him to grow to manhood by
your side than in any other place.”

And she presented him with the little hybrid. One more, and offered with
such simplicity! . . . “Lack of religion and good habits!” Then with
sudden modesty, he doubted the woman’s veracity. Why must it necessarily
be his? . . . But his wavering was generally short-lived.

“If it’s mine, put it with the others.”

The mother went away tranquilly, seeing the youngster’s future assured,
because this man so lavish in violence was equally so in generosity.
In time there would be a bit of land and a good flock of sheep for the
urchin.

These adoptions at first aroused in Misia Petrona a little
rebellion--the only ones of her life; but the centaur soon reduced her
to terrified silence.

“And you dare to complain of me, you weak cow! . . . A woman who has
only given me daughters. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The same hand that negligently extracted from his pocket a wad of bills
rolled into a ball, giving them away capriciously without knowing just
how much, also wore a lash hanging from the wrist. It was supposed to be
for his horse, but it was used with equal facility when any of his peons
incurred his wrath.

“I strike because I can,” he would say to pacify himself.

One day, the man receiving the blow, took a step backward, hunting for
the knife in his belt.

“You are not going to beat me, Patron. I was not born in these parts.
. . . I come from Corrientes.”

The Patron remained with upraised thong. “Is it true that you were not
born here? . . . Then you are right; I cannot beat you. Here are five
dollars for you.”

When Desnoyers came on the place, Madariaga was beginning to lose count
of those who were under his dominion in the old Latin sense, and could
take his blows. There were so many that confusion often reigned.

The Frenchman admired the Patron’s expert eye for his business. It was
enough for him to contemplate for a few moments a herd of cattle, to
know its exact number. He would go galloping along with an indifferent
air, around an immense group of horned and stamping beasts, and
then would suddenly begin to separate the different animals. He had
discovered that they were sick. With a buyer like Madariaga, all the
tricks and sharp practice of the drovers came to naught.

His serenity before trouble was also admirable. A drought suddenly
strewed his plains with dead cattle, making the land seem like an
abandoned battlefield. Everywhere great black hulks. In the air, great
spirals of crows coming from leagues away. At other times, it was the
cold; an unexpected drop in the thermometer would cover the ground with
dead bodies. Ten thousand animals, fifteen thousand, perhaps more, all
perished!

“WHAT a knock-out!” Madariaga would exclaim with resignation. “Without
such troubles, this earth would be a paradise. . . . Now, the thing to
do is to save the skins!”

And he would rail against the false pride of the emigrants, against the
new customs among the poor which prevented his securing enough hands to
strip the victims quickly, so that thousands of hides had to be lost.
Their bones whitened the earth like heaps of snow. The peoncitos (little
peons) went around putting the skulls of cows with crumpled horns on
the posts of the wire fences--a rustic decoration which suggested a
procession of Grecian lyres.

“It is lucky that the land is left, anyway!” added the ranchman.

He loved to race around his immense fields when they were beginning to
turn green in the late rains. He had been among the first to convert
these virgin wastes into rich meadow-lands, supplementing the natural
pasturage with alfalfa. Where one beast had found sustenance before, he
now had three. “The table is set,” he would chuckle, “we must now go
in search of the guests.” And he kept on buying, at ridiculous prices,
herds dying of hunger in others’ uncultivated fields, constantly
increasing his opulent lands and stock.

One morning Desnoyers saved his life. The old ranchman had raised his
lash against a recently arrived peon who returned the attack, knife in
hand. Madariaga was defending himself as best he could, convinced
from one minute to another that he was going to receive the deadly
knife-thrust--when Desnoyers arrived and, drawing his revolver, overcame
and disarmed the adversary.

“Thanks, Frenchy,” said the ranchman, much touched. “You are an
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 did not know just what this familiar talk might amount to,
for his employer was so peculiar. Certain personal favors, nevertheless,
immediately began to improve his position. He was no longer allowed to
eat in the administration building, the proprietor insisting imperiously
that henceforth Desnoyers should sit at his own table, and thus he was
admitted into the intimate life of the Madariaga family.

The wife was always silent when her husband was present. She was used to
rising in the middle of the night in order to oversee the breakfasts
of the peons, the distribution of biscuit, and the boiling of the great
black kettles of coffee or shrub tea. She looked after the chattering
and lazy maids who so easily managed to get lost in the nearby groves.
In the kitchen, too, she made her authority felt like a regular
house-mistress, but the minute that she heard her husband’s voice she
shrank into a respectful and timorous silence. Upon sitting down at
table, the China would look at him with devoted submission, her great,
round eyes fixed on him, like an owl’s. Desnoyers felt that in this mute
admiration was mingled great astonishment at the energy with which the
ranchman, already over seventy, was continuing to bring new occupants to
live on his demesne.

The two daughters, Luisa and Elena, accepted with enthusiasm the new
arrival who came to enliven the monotonous conversations in the dining
room, so often cut short by their father’s wrathful outbursts. Besides,
he was from Paris. “Paris!” sighed Elena, the younger one, rolling her
eyes. And Desnoyers was henceforth consulted in all matters of style
every time they ordered any “confections” from the shops of Buenos
Aires.

The interior of the house reflected the different tastes of the two
generations. The girls had a parlor with a few handsome pieces of
furniture placed against the cracked walls, and some showy lamps that
were never lighted. The father, with his boorishness, often invaded this
room so cherished and admired by the two sisters, making the carpets
look shabby and faded under his muddy boot-tracks. Upon the gilt
centre-table, he loved to lay his lash. Samples of maize scattered
its grains over a silk sofa which the young ladies tried to keep very
choice, as though they feared it might break.

Near the entrance to the dining room was a weighing machine, and
Madariaga became furious when his daughters asked him to remove it to
the offices. He was not going to trouble himself to go outside every
time that he wanted to know the weight of a leather skin! . . . A piano
came into the ranch, and Elena passed the hours practising exercises
with desperate good will. “Heavens and earth! She might at least play
the Jota or the Perican, or some other lively Spanish dance!” And
the irate father, at the hour of siesta, betook himself to the nearby
eucalyptus trees, to sleep upon his poncho.

This younger daughter whom he dubbed La Romantica, was the special
victim of his wrath and ridicule. Where had she picked up so many tastes
which he and his good China never had had? Music books were piled on the
piano. In a corner of the absurd parlor were some wooden boxes that had
held preserves, which the ranch carpenter had been made to press into
service as a bookcase.

“Look here, Frenchy,” scoffed Madariaga. “All these are novels and
poems! Pure lies! . . . Hot air!”

He had his private library, vastly more important and glorious, and
occupying less space. In his desk, adorned with guns, thongs, and chaps
studded with silver, was a little compartment containing deeds and
various legal documents which the ranchman surveyed with great pride.

“Pay attention, now and hear marvellous things,” announced the master to
Desnoyers, as he took out one of his memorandum books.

This volume contained the pedigree of the famous animals which had
improved his breeds of stock, the genealogical trees, the patents of
nobility of his aristocratic beasts. He would have to read its contents
to him since he did not permit even his family to touch these records.
And with his spectacles on the end of his nose, he would spell out the
credentials of each animal celebrity. “Diamond III, grandson of Diamond
I, owned by the King of England, son of Diamond II, winner in the
races.” His Diamond had cost him many thousands, but the finest horses
on the ranch, those which brought the most marvellous prices, were his
descendants.

“That horse had more sense than most people. He only lacked the power
to talk. He’s the one that’s stuffed, near the door of the parlor. The
girls wanted him thrown out. . . . Just let them dare to touch him! I’d
chuck them out first!”

Then he would continue reading the history of a dynasty of bulls
with distinctive names and a succession of Roman numbers, the same as
kings--animals acquired by the stubborn ranchman in the great cattle
fairs of England. He had never been there, but he had used the cable in
order to compete in pounds sterling with the British owners who wished
to keep such valuable stock in their own country. Thanks to these
blue-blooded sires that had crossed the ocean with all the luxury of
millionaire passengers, he had been able to exhibit in the concourses
of Buenos Aires animals which were veritable towers of meat, edible
elephants with their sides as fit and sleek as a table.

“That book amounts to something! Don’t you think so, Frenchy? It is
worth more than all those pictures of moons, lakes, lovers and other
gewgaws that my Romantica puts on the walls to catch the dust.”

And he would point out, in contrast, the precious diplomas which were
adorning his desk, the metal vases and other trophies won in the fairs
by the descendants of his blooded stock.

Luisa, the elder daughter, called Chicha, in the South American fashion,
was much more respected by her father. “She is my poor China right over
again,” he said, “the same good nature, and the same faculty for work,
but more of a lady.” Desnoyers entirely agreed with him, and yet the
father’s description seemed to him weak and incomplete. He could not
admit that the pale, modest girl with the great black eyes and smile
of childish mischief bore the slightest resemblance to the respectable
matron who had brought her into existence.

The great fiesta for Chicha was the Sunday mass. It represented a
journey of three leagues to the nearest village, a weekly contact with
people unlike those of the ranch. A carriage drawn by four horses took
the senora and the two senoritas in the latest suits and hats arrived,
via Buenos Aires, from Europe. At the suggestion of Chicha, Desnoyers
accompanied them in the capacity of driver.

The father remained at home, taking advantage of this opportunity
to survey his fields in their Sunday solitude, thus keeping a
closer oversight on the shiftlessness of his hands. He was very
religious--“Religion and good manners, you know.” But had he not given
thousands of dollars toward building the neighboring church? A man
of his fortune should not be submitted to the same obligations as
ragamuffins!

During the Sunday lunch the young ladies were apt to make comments upon
the persons and merits of the young men of the village and neighboring
ranches, who had lingered at the church door in order to chat with them.

“Don’t fool yourselves, girls!” observed the father shrewdly. “You
believe that they want you for your elegance, don’t you? . . . What
those shameless fellows really want are the dollars of old Madariaga,
and once they had them, they would probably give you a daily beating.”

For a while the ranch received numerous visitors. Some were young men of
the neighborhood who arrived on spirited steeds, performing all kinds of
tricks of fancy horsemanship. They wanted to see Don Julio on the most
absurd pretexts, and at the same time improved the opportunity to chat
with Chicha and Luisa. At other times they were youths from Buenos Aires
asking for a lodging at the ranch, as they were just passing by. Don
Madariaga would growl--

“Another good-for-nothing scamp who comes in search of the Spanish
ranchman! If he doesn’t move on soon . . . I’ll kick him out!”

But the suitor did not stand long on the order of his going, intimidated
by the ominous silence of the Patron. This silence, of late, had
persisted in an alarming manner, in spite of the fact that the ranch was
no longer receiving visitors. Madariaga appeared abstracted, and all the
family, including Desnoyers, respected and feared this taciturnity.
He ate, scowling, with lowered head. Suddenly he would raise his eyes,
looking at Chicha, then at Desnoyers, finally fixing them upon his wife
as though asking her to give an account of things.

His Romantica simply did not exist for him. The only notice that he ever
took of her was to give an ironical snort when he happened to see
her leaning at sunset against the doorway, looking at the reddening
glow--one elbow on the door frame and her cheek in her hand, in
imitation of the posture of a certain white lady that she had seen in a
chromo, awaiting the knight of her dreams.

Desnoyers had been five years in the house when one day he entered his
master’s private office with the brusque air of a timid person who has
suddenly reached a decision.

“Don Julio, I am going to leave and I would like our accounts settled.”

Madariaga looked at him slyly. “Going to leave, eh? . . . What for?” But
in vain he repeated his questions. The Frenchman was floundering through
a series of incoherent explanations--“I’m going; I’ve got to go.”

“Ah, you thief, you false prophet!” shouted the ranchman in stentorian
tones.

But Desnoyers did not quail before the insults. He had often heard his
Patron use these same words when holding somebody up to ridicule, or
haggling with certain cattle drovers.

“Ah, you thief, you false prophet! Do you suppose that I do not know
why you are going? Do you suppose old Madariaga has not seen your
languishing looks and those of my dead fly of a daughter, clasping
each others’ hands in the presence of poor China who is blinded in her
judgment? . . . It’s not such a bad stroke, Frenchy. By it, you would be
able to get possession of half of the old Spaniard’s dollars, and then
say that you had made it in America.”

And while he was storming, or rather howling, all this, he had grasped
his lash and with the butt end kept poking his manager in the stomach
with such insistence that it might be construed in an affectionate or
hostile way.

“For this reason I have come to bid you good-bye,” said Desnoyers
haughtily. “I know that my love is absurd, and I wish to leave.”

“The gentleman would go away,” the ranchman continued spluttering. “The
gentleman believes that here one can do what one pleases! No, siree!
Here nobody commands but old Madariaga, and I order you to stay. . . .
Ah, these women! They only serve to antagonize men. And yet we can’t
live without them!” . . .

He took several turns up and down the room, as though his last words
were making him think of something very different from what he had just
been saying. Desnoyers looked uneasily at the thong which was still
hanging from his wrist. Suppose he should attempt to whip him as he did
the peons? . . . He was still undecided whether to hold his own against
a man who had always treated him with benevolence or, while his back
was turned, to take refuge in discreet flight, when the ranchman planted
himself before him.

“You really love her, really?” he asked. “Are you sure that she loves
you? Be careful what you say, for love is blind and deceitful. I, too,
when I married my China was crazy about her. Do you love her, honestly
and truly? . . . Well then, take her, you devilish Frenchy. Somebody has
to take her, and may she not turn out a weak cow like her mother! . . .
Let us have the ranch full of grandchildren!”

In voicing this stock-raiser’s wish, again appeared the great breeder of
beasts and men. And as though he considered it necessary to explain his
concession, he added--“I do all this because I like you; and I like you
because you are serious.”

Again the Frenchman was plunged in doubt, not knowing in just what this
greatly appreciated seriousness consisted.

At his wedding, Desnoyers thought much of his mother. If only the poor
old woman could witness this extraordinary stroke of good fortune! But
she had died the year before, believing her son enormously rich because
he had been sending her sixty dollars every month, taken from the wages
that he had earned on the ranch.

Desnoyers’ entrance into the family made his father-in-law pay less
attention to business.

City life, with all its untried enchantments and snares, now attracted
Madariaga, and he began to speak with contempt of country women, poorly
groomed and inspiring him with disgust. He had given up his cowboy
attire, and was displaying with childish satisfaction, the new suits
in which a tailor of the Capital was trying to disguise him. When Elena
wished to accompany him to Buenos Aires, he would wriggle out of it,
trumping up some absorbing business. “No; you go with your mother.”

The fate of his fields and flocks gave him no uneasiness. His fortune,
managed by Desnoyers, was in good hands.

“He is very serious,” again affirmed the old Spaniard to his family
assembled in the dining roam--“as serious as I am. . . . Nobody can make
a fool of him!”

And finally the Frenchman concluded that when his father-in-law spoke of
seriousness he was referring to his strength of character. According to
the spontaneous declaration of Madariaga, he had, from the very first
day that he had dealings with Desnoyers, perceived in him a nature
like his own, more hard and firm perhaps, but without splurges
of eccentricities. On this account he had treated him with such
extraordinary circumspection, foreseeing that a clash between the
two could never be adjusted. Their only disagreements were about
the expenses established by Madariaga during his regime. Since the
son-in-law was managing the ranches, the work was costing less, and
the people working more diligently;--and that, too, without yells, and
without strong words and deeds, with only his presence and brief orders.

The old man was the only one defending the capricious system of a
blow followed by a gift. He revolted against a minute and mechanical
administration, always the same, without any arbitrary extravagance or
good-natured tyranny. Very frequently some of the half-breed peons whom
a malicious public supposed to be closely related to the ranchman, would
present themselves before Desnoyers with, “Senor Manager, the old Patron
say that you are to give me five dollars.” The Senor Manager would
refuse, and soon after Madariaga would rush in in a furious temper, but
measuring his words, nevertheless, remembering that his son-in-law’s
disposition was as serious as his own.

“I like you very much, my son, but here no one overrules me. . . . Ah,
Frenchy, you are like all the rest of your countrymen! Once you get your
claws on a penny, it goes into your stocking, and nevermore sees
the light of day, even though they crucify you. . . ! Did I say five
dollars? Give him ten. I command it and that is enough.”

The Frenchman paid, shrugging his shoulders, whilst his father-in-law,
satisfied with his triumph, fled to Buenos Aires. It was a good thing to
have it well understood that the ranch still belonged to Madariaga, the
Spaniard.

From one of these trips, he returned with a companion, a young German
who, according to him, knew everything and could do everything. His
son-in-law was working too hard. This Karl Hartrott would assist him
in the bookkeeping. Desnoyers accepted the situation, and in a few days
felt increasing esteem for the new incumbent.

Although they belonged to two unfriendly nations, it didn’t matter.
There are good people everywhere, and this Karl was a subordinate worth
considering. He kept his distance from his equals, and was hard and
inflexible toward his inferiors. All his faculties seemed concentrated
in service and admiration for those above him. Scarcely would Madariaga
open his lips before the German’s head began nodding in agreement,
anticipating his words. If he said anything funny, his clerk’s laugh
would break forth in scandalous roars. With Desnoyers he appeared more
taciturn, working without stopping for hours at a time. As soon as he
saw the manager entering the office he would leap from his seat,
holding himself erect with military precision. He was always ready to
do anything whatever. Unasked, he spied on the workmen, reporting their
carelessness and mistakes. This last service did not especially please
his superior officer, but he appreciated it as a sign of interest in the
establishment.

The old man bragged triumphantly of the new acquisition, urging his
son-in-law also to rejoice.

“A very useful fellow, isn’t he? . . . These gringoes from Germany
work well, know a good many things and cost little. Then, too, so
disciplined! so servile! . . . I am sorry to praise him so to you
because you are a Frenchy, and your nation has in them a very powerful
enemy. His people are a hard-shelled race.”

Desnoyers replied with a shrug of indifference. His country was far
away, and so was Germany. Who knew if they would ever return! . . . They
were both Argentinians now, and ought to interest themselves in present
affairs and not bother about the past.

“And how little pride they have!” sneered Madariaga in an ironical tone.
“Every one of these gringoes when he is a clerk at the Capital sweeps
the shop, prepares the meals, keeps the books, sells to the customers,
works the typewriter, translates four or five languages, and dances
attendance on the proprietor’s lady friend, as though she were a grand
senora . . . all for twenty-five dollars a month. Who can compete with
such people! You, Frenchy, you are like me, very serious, and would die
of hunger before passing through certain things. But, mark my words, on
this very account they are going to become a terrible people!”

After brief reflection, the ranchman added:

“Perhaps they are not so good as they seem. Just see how they treat
those under them! It may be that they affect this simplicity without
having it, and when they grin at receiving a kick, they are saying
inside, ‘Just wait till my turn comes, and I’ll give you three!’”

Then he suddenly seemed to repent of his suspicions.

“At any rate, this Karl is a poor fellow, a mealy-mouthed simpleton who
the minute I say anything opens his jaws like a fly-catcher. He insists
that he comes of a great family, but who knows anything about these
gringoes? . . . All of us, dead with hunger when we reach America, claim
to be sons of princes.”

Madariaga had placed himself on a familiar footing with his Teutonic
treasure, not through gratitude as with Desnoyers, but in order to make
him feel his inferiority. He had also introduced him on an equal footing
in his home, but only that he might give piano lessons to his younger
daughter. The Romantica was no longer framing herself in the doorway--in
the gloaming watching the sunset reflections. When Karl had finished his
work in the office, he was now coming to the house and seating himself
beside Elena, who was tinkling away with a persistence worthy of a
better fate. At the end of the hour the German, accompanying himself on
the piano, would sing fragments from Wagner in such a way that it
put Madariaga to sleep in his armchair with his great Paraguay cigar
sticking out of his mouth.

Elena meanwhile was contemplating with increasing interest the singing
gringo. He was not the knight of her dreams awaited by the fair lady. He
was almost a servant, a blond immigrant with reddish hair, fat, heavy,
and with bovine eyes that reflected an eternal fear of disagreeing
with his chiefs. But day by day, she was finding in him something which
rather modified these impressions--his feminine fairness, except
where he was burned by the sun, the increasingly martial aspect of his
moustachios, the agility with which he mounted his horse, his air of a
troubadour, intoning with a rather weak tenor voluptuous romances whose
words she did not understand.

One night, just before supper, the impressionable girl announced with a
feverish excitement which she could no longer repress that she had made
a grand discovery.

“Papa, Karl is of noble birth! He belongs to a great family.”

The plainsman made a gesture of indifference. Other things were vexing
him in those days. But during the evening, feeling the necessity of
venting on somebody the wrath which had been gnawing at his vitals since
his last trip to Buenos Aires, he interrupted the singer.

“See here, gringo, what is all this nonsense about nobility which you
have been telling my girl?”

Karl left the piano that he might draw himself up to the approved
military position before responding. Under the influence of his recent
song, his pose suggested Lohengrin about to reveal the secret of his
life. His father had been General von Hartrott, one of the commanders
in the war of ‘70. The Emperor had rewarded his services by giving him
a title. One of his uncles was an intimate councillor of the King
of Prussia. His older brothers were conspicuous in the most select
regiments. He had carried a sword as a lieutenant.

Bored with all this grandeur, Madariaga interrupted him. “Lies . . .
nonsense . . . hot air!” The very idea of a gringo talking to him about
nobility! . . . He had left Europe when very young in order to cast in
his lot with the revolting democracies of America, and although nobility
now seemed to him something out-of-date and incomprehensible, still
he stoutly maintained that the only true nobility was that of his own
country. He would yield first place to the gringoes for the invention
of machinery and ships, and for breeding priceless animals, but all the
Counts and Marquises of Gringo-land appeared to him to be fictitious
characters.

“All tomfoolery!” he blustered. “There isn’t any nobility in your
country, nor have you five dollars all told to rub against each other.
If you had, you wouldn’t come over here to play the gallant to women who
are . . . you know what they are as well as I do.”

To the astonishment of Desnoyers, the German received this onslaught
with much humility, nodding his head in agreement with the Patron’s last
words.

“If there’s any truth in all this twaddle about titles,” continued
Madariaga implacably, “swords and uniforms, what did you come here for?
What in the devil did you do in your own country that you had to leave
it?”

Now Karl hung his head, confused and stuttering.

“Papa, papa,” pleaded Elena. “The poor little fellow! How can you
humiliate him so just because he is poor?”

And she felt a deep gratitude toward her brother-in-law when he broke
through his usual reserve in order to come to the rescue of the German.

“Oh, yes, of course, he’s a good-enough fellow,” said Madariaga,
excusing himself. “But he comes from a land that I detest.”

When Desnoyers made a trip to Buenos Aires a few days afterward, the
cause of the old man’s wrath was explained. It appeared that for some
months past Madariaga had been the financial guarantor and devoted swain
of a German prima donna stranded in South America with an Italian opera
company. It was she who had recommended Karl--an unfortunate countryman,
who after wandering through many parts of the continent, was now
living with her as a sort of gentlemanly singer. Madariaga had joyously
expended upon this courtesan many thousands of dollars. A childish
enthusiasm had accompanied him in this novel existence midst urban
dissipations until he happened to discover that his Fraulein was leading
another life during his absence, laughing at him with the parasites of
her retinue; whereupon he arose in his wrath and bade her farewell to
the accompaniment of blows and broken furniture.

The last adventure of his life! . . . Desnoyers suspected his abdication
upon hearing him admit his age, for the first time. He did not intend
to return to the capital. It was all false glitter. Existence in the
country, surrounded by all his family and doing good to the poor was
the only sure thing. And the terrible centaur expressed himself with
the idyllic tenderness and firm virtue of seventy-five years, already
insensible to temptation.

After his scene with Karl, he had increased the German’s salary, trying
as usual, to counteract the effects of his violent outbreaks with
generosity. That which he could not forget was his dependent’s nobility,
constantly making it the subject of new jests. That glorious boast had
brought to his mind the genealogical trees of the illustrious ancestry
of his prize cattle. The German was a pedigreed fellow, and thenceforth
he called him by that nickname.

Seated on summer nights under the awning, he surveyed his family around
him with a sort of patriarchal ecstasy. In the evening hush could be
heard the buzzing of insects and the croaking of the frogs. From the
distant ranches floated the songs of the peons as they prepared their
suppers. It was harvest time, and great bands of immigrants were
encamped in the fields for the extra work.

Madariaga had known many of the hard old days of wars and violence. Upon
his arrival in South America, he had witnessed the last years of the
tyranny of Rosas. He loved to enumerate the different provincial and
national revolutions in which he had taken part. But all this had
disappeared and would never return. These were the times of peace, work
and abundance.

“Just think of it, Frenchy,” he said, driving away the mosquitoes with
the puffs of his cigar. “I am Spanish, you French, Karl German, my
daughters Argentinians, the cook Russian, his assistant Greek, the
stable boy English, the kitchen servants Chinas (natives), Galicians or
Italians, and among the peons there are many castes and laws. . . . And
yet we all live in peace. In Europe, we would have probably been in a
grand fight by this time, but here we are all friends.”

He took much pleasure in listening to the music of the laborers--laments
from Italian songs to the accompaniment of the accordion, Spanish
guitars and Creole choruses, wild voices chanting of love and death.

“This is a regular Noah’s ark,” exulted the vainglorious patriarch.

“He means the tower of Babel,” thought Desnoyers to himself, “but it’s
all the same thing to the old man.”

“I believe,” he rambled on, “that we live thus because in this part
of the world there are no kings and a very small army--and mankind is
thinking only of enjoying itself as much as possible, thanks to its
work. But I also believe that we live so peacefully because there is
such abundance that everyone gets his share. . . . How quickly we would
spring to arms if the rations were less than the people!”

Again he fell into reflective silence, shortly after announcing the
result of his meditations.

“Be that as it may be, we must recognize that here life is more tranquil
than in the other world. Men are taken for what they are worth, and
mingle together without thinking whether they came from one country or
another. Over here, fellows do not come in droves to kill other fellows
whom they do not know and whose only crime is that they were born in an
unfriendly country. . . . Man is a bad beast everywhere, I know that;
but here he eats, owns more land than he needs so that he can stretch
himself, and he is good with the goodness of a well-fed dog. Over there,
there are too many; they live in heaps getting in each other’s way, and
easily run amuck. Hurrah for Peace, Frenchy, and the simple life! Where
a man can live comfortably and runs no danger of being killed for things
he doesn’t understand--there is his real homeland!”

And as though an echo of the rustic’s reflections, Karl seated at the
piano, began chanting in a low voice one of Beethoven’s hymns--

     “We sing the joy of life,
          We sing of liberty,
     We’ll ne’er betray our fellow-man,
          Though great the guerdon be.”

Peace! . . . A few days afterward Desnoyers recalled bitterly the old
man’s illusion, for war--domestic war--broke loose in this idyllic
stage-setting of ranch life.

“Run, Senor Manager, the old Patron has unsheathed his knife and is
going to kill the German!” And Desnoyers had hurried from his office,
warned by the peon’s summons. Madariaga was chasing Karl, knife in hand,
stumbling over everything that blocked his way. Only his son-in-law
dared to stop him and disarm him.

“That shameless pedigreed fellow!” bellowed the livid old man as he
writhed in Desnoyers’ firm clutch. “Half famished, all he thinks he has
to do is to come to my house and take away my daughters and dollars.
. . . Let me go, I tell you! Let me loose that I may kill him.”

And in order to free himself from Desnoyers, he tried further to explain
the difficulty. He had accepted the Frenchman as a husband for his
daughter because he was to his liking, modest, honest . . . and serious.
But this singing Pedigreed Fellow, with all his airs! . . . He was a man
that he had gotten from . . . well, he didn’t wish to say just where!
And the Frenchman, though knowing perfectly well what his introduction
to Karl had been, pretended not to understand him.

As the German had, by this time, made good his escape, the ranchman
consented to being pushed toward his house, talking all the time about
giving a beating to the Romantica and another to the China for not
having informed him of the courtship. He had surprised his daughter
and the Gringo holding hands and exchanging kisses in a grove near the
house.

“He’s after my dollars,” howled the irate father. “He wants America to
enrich him quickly at the expense of the old Spaniard, and that is
the reason for so much truckling, so much psalm-singing and so much
nobility! Imposter! . . . Musician!”

And he repeated the word “musician” with contempt, as though it were the
sum and substance of everything vile.

Very firmly and with few words, Desnoyers brought the wrangling to an
end. While her brother-in-law protected her retreat, the Romantica,
clinging to her mother, had taken refuge in the top of the house,
sobbing and moaning, “Oh, the poor little fellow! Everybody against
him!” Her sister meanwhile was exerting all the powers of a discreet
daughter with the rampageous old man in the office, and Desnoyers had
gone in search of Karl. Finding that he had not yet recovered from the
shock of his terrible surprise, he gave him a horse, advising him to
betake himself as quickly as possible to the nearest railway station.

Although the German was soon far from the ranch, he did not long remain
alone. In a few days, the Romantica followed him. . . . Iseult of the
white hands went in search of Tristan, the knight.

This event did not cause Madariaga’s desperation to break out as
violently as his son-in-law had expected. For the first time, he saw him
weep. His gay and robust old age had suddenly fallen from him, the news
having clapped ten years on to his four score. Like a child, whimpering
and tremulous, he threw his arms around Desnoyers, moistening his neck
with tears.

“He has taken her away! That son of a great flea . . . has taken her
away!”

This time he did not lay all the blame on his China. He wept with her,
and as if trying to console her by a public confession, kept saying over
and over:

“It is my fault. . . . It has all been because of my very, very great
sins.”

Now began for Desnoyers a period of difficulties and conflicts. The
fugitives, on one of his visits to the Capital, threw themselves on his
mercy, imploring his protection. The Romantica wept, declaring that only
her brother-in-law, “the most knightly man in the world,” could save
her. Karl gazed at him like a faithful hound trusting in his master.
These trying interviews were repeated on all his trips. Then, on
returning to the ranch, he would find the old man ill-humored, moody,
looking fixedly ahead of him as though seeing invisible power and
wailing, “It is my punishment--the punishment for my sins.”

The memory of the discreditable circumstances under which he had made
Karl’s acquaintance, before bringing him into his home, tormented
the old centaur with remorse. Some afternoons, he would have a horse
saddled, going full gallop toward the neighboring village. But he was
no longer hunting hospitable ranches. He needed to pass some time in
the church, speaking alone with the images that were there only for
him--since he had footed the bills for them. . . . “Through my sin,
through my very great sin!”

But in spite of his self-reproach, Desnoyers had to work very hard
to get any kind of a settlement out of the old penitent. Whenever he
suggested legalizing the situation and making the necessary arrangements
for their marriage, the old tyrant would not let him go on. “Do what you
think best, but don’t say anything to me about it.”

Several months passed by. One day the Frenchman approached him with a
certain air of mystery. “Elena has a son and has named him ‘Julio’ after
you.”

“And you, you great useless hulk,” stormed the ranchman, “and that weak
cow of a wife of yours, you dare to live tranquilly on without giving
me a grandson! . . . Ah, Frenchy, that is why the Germans will finally
overwhelm you. You see it, right here. That bandit has a son, while you,
after four years of marriage . . . nothing. I want a grandson!--do you
understand THAT?”

And in order to console himself for this lack of little ones around his
own hearth, he betook himself to the ranch of his overseer, Celedonio,
where a band of little half-breeds gathered tremblingly and hopefully
about him.

Suddenly China died. The poor Misia Petrona passed away as discreetly as
she had lived, trying even in her last hours to avoid all annoyance for
her husband, asking his pardon with an imploring look for any trouble
which her death might cause him. Elena came to the ranch in order to see
her mother’s body for the last time, and Desnoyers who for more than
a year had been supporting them behind his father-in-law’s back, took
advantage of this occasion to overcome the old man’s resentment.

“Well, I’ll forgive her,” said the ranchman finally. “I’ll do it for the
sake of my poor wife and for you. She may remain on the ranch, and that
shameless gringo may come with her.”

But he would have nothing to do with him. The German was to be an
employee under Desnoyers, and they could live in the office building as
though they did not belong to the family. He would never say a word to
Karl.

But scarcely had the German returned before he began giving him orders
rudely as though he were a perfect stranger. At other times he would
pass by him as though he did not know him. Upon finding Elena in the
house with his older daughter, he would go on without speaking to her.

In vain his Romantica transfigured by maternity, improved all
opportunities for putting her child in his way, calling him loudly by
name: “Julio . . . Julio!”

“They want that brat of a singing gringo, that carrot top with a face
like a skinned kid to be my grandson? . . . I prefer Celedonio’s.”

And by way of emphasizing his protest, he entered the dwelling of his
overseer, scattering among his dusky brood handfuls of dollars.

After seven years of marriage, the wife of Desnoyers found that she,
too, was going to become a mother. Her sister already had three sons.
But what were they worth to Madariaga compared to the grandson that was
going to come? “It will be a boy,” he announced positively, “because I
need one so. It shall be named Julio, and I hope that it will look like
my poor dead wife.”

Since the death of his wife he no longer called her the China, feeling
something of a posthumous love for the poor woman who in her lifetime
had endured so much, so timidly and silently. Now “my poor dead wife”
 cropped out every other instant in the conversation of the remorseful
ranchman.

His desires were fulfilled. Luisa gave birth to a boy who bore the name
of Julio, and although he did not show in his somewhat sketchy features
any striking resemblance to his grandmother, still he had the black
hair and eyes and olive skin of a brunette. Welcome! . . . This WAS a
grandson!

In the generosity of his joy, he even permitted the German to enter the
house for the baptismal ceremony.

When Julio Desnoyers was two years old, his grandfather made the rounds
of his estates, holding him on the saddle in front of him. He went from
ranch to ranch in order to show him to the copper-colored populace, like
an ancient monarch presenting his heir. Later on, when the child was
able to say a few words, he entertained himself for hours at a time
talking with the tot under the shade of the eucalyptus tree. A certain
mental failing was beginning to be noticed in the old man. Although not
exactly in his dotage, his aggressiveness was becoming very childish.
Even in his most affectionate moments, he used to contradict everybody,
and hunt up ways of annoying his relatives.

“Come here, you false prophet,” he would say to Julio. “You are a
Frenchy.”

The grandchild protested as though he had been insulted. His mother had
taught him that he was an Argentinian, and his father had suggested that
she also add Spanish, in order to please the grandfather.

“Very well, then; if you are not a Frenchy, shout, ‘Down with
Napoleon!’”

And he looked around him to see if Desnoyers might be near, believing
that this would displease him greatly. But his son-in-law pursued the
even tenor of his way, shrugging his shoulders.

“Down with Napoleon!” repeated Julio.

And he instantly held out his hand while his grandfather went through
his pockets.

Karl’s sons, now four in number, used to circle around their grandparent
like a humble chorus kept at a distance, and stare enviously at these
gifts. In order to win his favor, they one day when they saw him alone,
came boldly up to him, shouting in unison, “Down with Napoleon!”

“You insolent gringoes!” ranted the old man. “That’s what that shameless
father has taught you! If you say that again, I’ll chase you with a
cat-o-nine-tails. . . . The very idea of insulting a great man in that
way!”

While he tolerated this blond brood, he never would permit the slightest
intimacy. Desnoyers and his wife often had to come to their rescue,
accusing the grandfather of injustice. And in order to pour the vials of
his wrath out on someone, the old plainsman would hunt up Celedonio, the
best of his listeners, who invariably replied, “Yes, Patron. That’s so,
Patron.”

“They’re not to blame,” agreed the old man, “but I can’t abide them!
Besides, they are so like their father, so fair, with hair like a
shredded carrot, and the two oldest wearing specs as if they were court
clerks! . . . They don’t seem like folks with those glasses; they look
like sharks.”

Madariaga had never seen any sharks, but he imagined them, without
knowing why, with round, glassy eyes, like the bottoms of bottles.

By the time he was eight years old, Julio was a famous little
equestrian. “To horse, peoncito,” his grandfather would cry, and away
they would race, streaking like lightning across the fields, midst
thousands and thousands of horned herds. The “peoncito,” proud of his
title, obeyed the master in everything, and so learned to whirl the
lasso over the steers, leaving them bound and conquered. Upon making
his pony take a deep ditch or creep along the edge of the cliffs, he
sometimes fell under his mount, but clambered up gamely.

“Ah, fine cowboy!” exclaimed the grandfather bursting with pride in his
exploits. “Here are five dollars for you to give a handkerchief to some
china.”

The old man, in his increasing mental confusion, did not gauge his gifts
exactly with the lad’s years; and the infantile horseman, while keeping
the money, was wondering what china was referred to, and why he should
make her a present.

Desnoyers finally had to drag his son away from the baleful teachings
of his grandfather. It was simply useless to have masters come to the
house, or to send Julio to the country school. Madariaga would always
steal his grandson away, and then they would scour the plains together.
So when the boy was eleven years old, his father placed him in a big
school in the Capital.

The grandfather then turned his attention to Julio’s three-year-old
sister, exhibiting her before him as he had her brother, as he took her
from ranch to ranch. Everybody called Chicha’s little girl Chichi, but
the grandfather bestowed on her the same nickname that he had given her
brother, the “peoncito.” And Chichi, who was growing up wild, vigorous
and wilful, breakfasting on meat and talking in her sleep of roast beef,
readily fell in with the old man’s tastes. She was dressed like a boy,
rode astride like a man, and in order to win her grandfather’s praises
as “fine cowboy,” carried a knife in the back of her belt. The two raced
the fields from sun to sun, Madariaga following the flying pigtail of
the little Amazon as though it were a flag. When nine years old she,
too, could lasso the cattle with much dexterity.

What most irritated the ranchman was that his family would remember his
age. He received as insults his son-in-law’s counsels to remain quietly
at home, becoming more aggressive and reckless as he advanced in years,
exaggerating his activity, as if he wished to drive Death away. He
accepted no help except from his harum-scarum “Peoncito.” When Karl’s
children, great hulking youngsters, hastened to his assistance and
offered to hold his stirrup, he would repel them with snorts of
indignation.

“So you think I am no longer able to help myself, eh! . . . There’s
still enough life in me to make those who are waiting for me to die, so
as to grab my dollars, chew their disappointment a long while yet!”

Since the German and his wife were kept pointedly apart from the family
life, they had to put up with these allusions in silence. Karl,
needing protection, constantly shadowed the Frenchman, improving every
opportunity to overwhelm him with his eulogies. He never could thank him
enough for all that he had done for him. He was his only champion. He
longed for a chance to prove his gratitude, to die for him if necessary.
His wife admired him with enthusiasm as “the most gifted knight in the
world.” And Desnoyers received their devotion in gratified silence,
accepting the German as an excellent comrade. As he controlled
absolutely the family fortune, he aided Karl very generously without
arousing the resentment of the old man. He also took the initiative in
bringing about the realization of Karl’s pet ambition--a visit to the
Fatherland. So many years in America! . . . For the very reason that
Desnoyers himself had no desire to return to Europe, he wished to
facilitate Karl’s trip, and gave him the means to make the journey with
his entire family. The father-in-law had no curiosity as to who paid the
expenses. “Let them go!” he said gleefully, “and may they never return!”

Their absence was not a very long one, for they spent their year’s
allowance in three months. Karl, who had apprised his parents of the
great fortune which his marriage had brought him, wished to make an
impression as a millionaire, in full enjoyment of his riches. Elena
returned radiant, speaking with pride of her relatives--of the baron,
Colonel of Hussars, of the Captain of the Guard, of the Councillor
at Court--asserting that all countries were most insignificant when
compared with her husband’s. She even affected a certain condescension
toward Desnoyers, praising him as “a very worthy man, but without
ancient lineage or distinguished family--and French, besides.”

Karl, on the other hand, showed the same devotion as before, keeping
himself submissively in the background when with his brother-in-law
who had the keys of the cash box and was his only defense against the
browbeating old Patron. . . . He had left his two older sons in a school
in Germany. Years afterwards they reached an equal footing with the
other grandchildren of the Spaniard who always begrudged them their
existence, “perfect frights, with carroty hair, and eyes like a shark.”

Suddenly the old man became very lonely, for they had also carried off
his second “Peoncito.” The good Chicha could not tolerate her daughter’s
growing up like a boy, parading ‘round on horseback all the time, and
glibly repeating her grandfather’s vulgarities. So she was now in a
convent in the Capital, where the Sisters had to battle valiantly in
order to tame the mischievous rebellion of their wild little pupil.

When Julio and Chichi returned to the ranch for their vacations, the
grandfather again concentrated his fondness on the first, as though the
girl had merely been a substitute. Desnoyers was becoming indignant
at his son’s dissipated life. He was no longer at college, and his
existence was that of a student in a rich family who makes up for
parental parsimony with all sorts of imprudent borrowings.

But Madariaga came to the defense of his grandson. “Ah, the fine
cowboy!” . . . Seeing him again on the ranch, he admired the dash of the
good looking youth, testing his muscles in order to convince himself
of their strength, and making him to recount his nightly escapades as
ringleader of a band of toughs in the Capital. He longed to go to Buenos
Aires himself, just to see the youngster in the midst of this gay, wild
life. But alas! he was not seventeen like his grandson; he had already
passed eighty.

“Come here, you false prophet! Tell me how many children you have. . . .
You must have a great many children, you know!”

“Father!” protested Chicha who was always hanging around, fearing her
parent’s bad teachings.

“Stop nagging at me!” yelled the irate old fellow in a towering temper.
“I know what I’m saying.”

Paternity figured largely in all his amorous fancies. He was almost
blind, and the loss of his sight was accompanied by an increasing mental
upset. His crazy senility took on a lewd character, expressing itself in
language which scandalized or amused the community.

“Oh, you rascal, what a pretty fellow you are!” he said, leering at
Julio with eyes which could no longer distinguish things except in a
shadowy way. “You are the living image of my poor dead wife. . . . Have
a good time, for Grandpa is always here with his money! If you could
only count on what your father gives you, you would live like a hermit.
These Frenchies are a close-fisted lot! But I am looking out for you.
Peoncito! Spend and enjoy yourself--that’s what your Granddaddy has
piled up the silver for!”

When the Desnoyers children returned to the Capital, he spent his
lonesome hours in going from ranch to ranch. A young half-breed would
set the water for his shrub-tea to boiling on the hearth, and the old
man would wonder confusedly if she were his daughter. Another, fifteen
years old, would offer him a gourd filled with the bitter liquid and a
silver pipe with which to sip it. . . . A grandchild, perhaps--he wasn’t
sure. And so he passed the afternoons, silent and sluggish, drinking
gourd after gourd of shrub tea, surrounded by families who stared at him
with admiration and fear.

Every time he mounted his horse for these excursions, his older daughter
would protest. “At eighty-four years! Would it not be better for him to
remain quietly at home. . . .” Some day something terrible would happen.
. . . And the terrible thing did happen. One evening the Patron’s
horse came slowly home without its rider. The old man had fallen on the
sloping highway, and when they found him, he was dead. Thus died the
centaur as he had lived, with the lash hanging from his wrist, with his
legs bowed by the saddle.

A Spanish notary, almost as old as he, produced the will. The family
was somewhat alarmed at seeing what a voluminous document it was. What
terrible bequests had Madariaga dictated? The reading of the first part
tranquilized Karl and Elena. The old father had left considerable more
to the wife of Desnoyers, but there still remained an enormous share for
the Romantica and her children. “I do this,” he said, “in memory of my
poor dead wife, and so that people won’t talk.”

After this, came eighty-six legacies. Eighty-five dark-hued individuals
(women and men), who had lived on the ranch for many years as tenants
and retainers, were to receive the last paternal munificence of the old
patriarch. At the head of these was Celedonio whom Madariaga had greatly
enriched in his lifetime for no heavier work than listening to him and
repeating, “That’s so, Patron, that’s true!” More than a million dollars
were represented by these bequests in lands and herds. The one who
completed the list of beneficiaries was Julio Desnoyers. The grandfather
had made special mention of this namesake, leaving him a plantation “to
meet his private expenses, making up for that which his father would not
give him.”

“But that represents hundreds of thousands of dollars!” protested Karl,
who had been making himself almost obnoxious in his efforts to assure
himself that his wife had not been overlooked in the will.

The days following the reading of this will were very trying ones for
the family. Elena and her children kept looking at the other group as
though they had just waked up, contemplating them in an entirely new
light. They seemed to forget what they were going to receive in their
envy of the much larger share of their relatives.

Desnoyers, benevolent and conciliatory, had a plan. An expert in
administrative affairs, he realized that the distribution among the
heirs was going to double the expenses without increasing the income. He
was calculating, besides, the complications and disbursements necessary
for a judicial division of nine immense ranches, hundreds of thousands
of cattle, deposits in the banks, houses in the city, and debts to
collect. Would it not be better for them all to continue living as
before? . . . Had they not lived most peaceably as a united family? . . .

The German received this suggestion by drawing himself up haughtily.
No; to each one should be given what was his. Let each live in his own
sphere. He wished to establish himself in Europe, spending his wealth
freely there. It was necessary for him to return to “his world.”

As they looked squarely at each other, Desnoyers saw an unknown Karl,
a Karl whose existence he had never suspected when he was under his
protection, timid and servile. The Frenchman, too, was beginning to see
things in a new light.

“Very well,” he assented. “Let each take his own. That seems fair to
me.”



CHAPTER III

THE DESNOYERS FAMILY


The “Madariagan succession,” as it was called in the language of
the legal men interested in prolonging it in order to augment their
fees--was divided into two groups, separated by the ocean. The Desnoyers
moved to Buenos Aires. The Hartrotts moved to Berlin as soon as Karl
could sell all the legacy, to re-invest it in lands and industrial
enterprises in his own country.

Desnoyers no longer cared to live in the country. For twenty years,
now, he had been the head of an enormous agricultural and stock raising
business, overseeing hundreds of men in the various ranches. The
parcelling out of the old man’s fortune among Elena and the other
legatees had considerably constricted the radius of his authority,
and it angered him to see established on the neighboring lands so many
foreigners, almost all Germans, who had bought of Karl. Furthermore,
he was getting old, his wife’s inheritance amounted to about twenty
millions of dollars, and perhaps his brother-in-law was showing the
better judgment in returning to Europe.

So he leased some of the plantations, handed over the superintendence
of others to those mentioned in the will who considered themselves
left-handed members of the family--of which Desnoyers as the Patron
received their submissive allegiance--and moved to Buenos Aires.

By this move, he was able to keep an eye on his son who continued living
a dissipated life without making any headway in his engineering studies.
Then, too, Chichi was now almost a woman--her robust development making
her look older than she was--and it was not expedient to keep her on the
estate to become a rustic senorita like her mother.

Dona Luisa had also tired of ranch life, the social triumphs of her
sister making her a little restless. She was incapable of feeling
jealous, but material ambitions made her anxious that her children
should not bring up the rear of the procession in which the other
grandchildren were cutting such a dashing figure.

During the year, most wonderful reports from Germany were finding their
way to the Desnoyers home in the Capital. “The aunt from Berlin,” as the
children called her, kept sending long letters filled with accounts
of dances, dinners, hunting parties and titles--many high-sounding and
military titles;--“our brother, the Colonel,” “our cousin, the Baron,”
 “our uncle, the Intimate Councillor,” “our great-uncle, the Truly
Intimate.” All the extravagances of the German social ladder, which
incessantly manufactures new titles in order to satisfy the thirst for
honors of a people divided into castes, were enumerated with delight by
the old Romantica. She even mentioned her husband’s secretary (a nobody)
who, through working in the public offices, had acquired the title of
Rechnungarath, Councillor of Calculations. She also referred with much
pride to the retired Oberpedell which she had in her house, explaining
that that meant “Superior Porter.”

The news about her children was no less glorious. The oldest was the
wise one of the family. He was devoted to philology and the historical
sciences, but his sight was growing weaker all the time because of his
omnivorous reading. Soon he would be a Doctor, and before he was
thirty, a Herr Professor. The mother lamented that he had not military
aspirations, considering that his tastes had somewhat distorted the
lofty destinies of the family. Professorships, sciences and literature
were more properly the perquisites of the Jews, unable, because of their
race, to obtain preferment in the army; but she was trying to console
herself by keeping in mind that a celebrated professor could, in time,
acquire a social rank almost equal to that of a colonel.

Her other four sons would become officers. Their father was preparing
the ground so that they might enter the Guard or some aristocratic
regiment without any of the members being able to vote against their
admission. The two daughters would surely marry, when they had reached
a suitable age with officers of the Hussars whose names bore the magic
“von” of petty nobility, haughty and charming gentlemen about whom the
daughter of Misia Petrona waxed most enthusiastic.

The establishment of the Hartrotts was in keeping with these new
relationships. In the home in Berlin, the servants wore knee-breeches
and white wigs on the nights of great banquets. Karl had bought an old
castle with pointed towers, ghosts in the cellars, and various legends
of assassinations, assaults and abductions which enlivened its history
in an interesting way. An architect, decorated with many foreign orders,
and bearing the title of “Councillor of Construction,” was engaged
to modernize the mediaeval edifice without sacrificing its terrifying
aspect. The Romantica described in anticipation the receptions in the
gloomy salon, the light diffused by electricity, simulating torches,
the crackling of the emblazoned hearth with its imitation logs bristling
with flames of gas, all the splendor of modern luxury combined with the
souvenirs of an epoch of omnipotent nobility--the best, according to
her, in history. And the hunting parties, the future hunting parties!
. . . in an annex of sandy and loose soil with pine woods--in no way
comparable to the rich ground of their native ranch, but which had the
honor of being trodden centuries ago by the Princes of Brandenburg,
founders of the reigning house of Prussia. And all this advancement in a
single year! . . .

They had, of course, to compete with other oversea families who had
amassed enormous fortunes in the United States, Brazil or the Pacific
coast; but these were Germans “without lineage,” coarse plebeians who
were struggling in vain to force themselves into the great world by
making donations to the imperial works. With all their millions, the
very most that they could ever hope to attain would be to marry their
daughters with ordinary soldiers. Whilst Karl! . . . The relatives of
Karl! . . . and the Romantica let her pen run on, glorifying a family in
whose bosom she fancied she had been born.

From time to time were enclosed with Elena’s effusions brief, crisp
notes directed to Desnoyers. The brother-in-law continued giving an
account of his operations the same as when living on the ranch under
his protection. But with this deference was now mixed a badly concealed
pride, an evident desire to retaliate for his times of voluntary
humiliation. Everything that he was doing was grand and glorious. He had
invested his millions in the industrial enterprises of modern Germany.
He was stockholder of munition factories as big as towns, and of
navigation companies launching a ship every half year. The Emperor was
interesting himself in these works, looking benevolently on all those
who wished to aid him. Besides this, Karl was buying land. At first
sight, it seemed foolish to have sold the fertile fields of their
inheritance in order to acquire sandy Prussian wastes that yielded only
to much artificial fertilizing; but by becoming a land owner, he now
belonged to the “Agrarian Party,” the aristocratic and conservative
group par excellence, and thus he was living in two different but
equally distinguished worlds--that of the great industrial friends
of the Emperor, and that of the Junkers, knights of the countryside,
guardians of the old traditions and the supply-source of the officials
of the King of Prussia.

On hearing of these social strides, Desnoyers could not but think of the
pecuniary sacrifices which they must represent. He knew Karl’s past,
for on the ranch, under an impulse of gratitude, the German had one day
revealed to the Frenchman the cause of his coming to America. He was
a former officer in the German army, but the desire of living
ostentatiously without other resources than his salary, had dragged him
into committing such reprehensible acts as abstracting funds belonging
to the regiment, incurring debts of honor and paying for them with
forged signatures. These crimes had not been officially prosecuted
through consideration of his father’s memory, but the members of his
division had submitted him to a tribunal of honor. His brothers and
friends had advised him to shoot himself as the only remedy; but
he loved life and had fled to South America where, in spite of
humiliations, he had finally triumphed.

Wealth effaces the spots of the past even more rapidly than Time. The
news of his fortune on the other side of the ocean made his family give
him a warm reception on his first voyage home; introducing him again
into their world. Nobody could remember shameful stories about a few
hundred marks concerning a man who was talking about his father-in-law’s
lands, more extensive than many German principalities. Now, upon
installing himself definitely in his country, all was forgotten. But,
oh, the contributions levied upon his vanity . . . Desnoyers shrewdly
guessed at the thousands of marks poured with both hands into the
charitable works of the Empress, into the imperialistic propagandas,
into the societies of veterans, into the clubs of aggression and
expansion organized by German ambition.

The frugal Frenchman, thrifty in his expenditures and free from social
ambitions, smiled at the grandeurs of his brother-in-law. He considered
Karl an excellent companion although of a childish pride. He recalled
with satisfaction the years that they had passed together in the
country. He could not forget the German who was always hovering around
him, affectionate and submissive as a younger brother. When his family
commented with a somewhat envious vivacity upon the glories of their
Berlin relatives, Desnoyers would say smilingly, “Leave them in peace;
they are paying very dear for their whistle.”

But the enthusiasm which the letters from Germany breathed finally
created an atmosphere of disquietude and rebellion. Chichi led the
attack. Why were they not going to Europe like other folks? all their
friends had been there. Even the Italian and Spanish shopkeepers were
making the voyage, while she, the daughter of a Frenchman, had never
seen Paris! . . . Oh, Paris. The doctors in attendance on melancholy
ladies were announcing the existence of a new and terrible disease, “the
mania for Paris.” Dona Luisa supported her daughter. Why had she not
gone to live in Europe like her sister, since she was the richer of the
two? Even Julio gravely declared that in the old world he could study to
better advantage. America is not the land of the learned.

Infected by the general unrest, the father finally began to wonder
why the idea of going to Europe had not occurred to him long before.
Thirty-four years without going to that country which was not his!
. . . It was high time to start! He was living too near to his business. In
vain the retired ranchman had tried to keep himself indifferent to the
money market. Everybody was coining money around him. In the club, in
the theatre, wherever he went, the people were talking about purchases
of lands, of sales of stock, of quick negotiations with a triple profit,
of portentous balances. The amount of money that he was keeping idle in
the banks was beginning to weigh upon him. He finally ended by involving
himself in some speculation; like a gambler who cannot see the roulette
wheel without putting his hand in his pocket.

His family was right. “To Paris!” For in the Desnoyers’ mind, to go to
Europe meant, of course, to go to Paris. Let the “aunt from Berlin” keep
on chanting the glories of her husband’s country! “It’s sheer nonsense!”
 exclaimed Julio who had made grave geographical and ethnic comparisons
in his nightly forays. “There is no place but Paris!” Chichi saluted
with an ironical smile the slightest doubt of it--“Perhaps they make as
elegant fashions in Germany as in Paris? . . . Bah!” Dona Luisa took up
her children’s cry. “Paris!” . . . Never had it even occurred to her to
go to a Lutheran land to be protected by her sister.

“Let it be Paris, then!” said the Frenchman, as though he were speaking
of an unknown city.

He had accustomed himself to believe that he would never return to it.
During the first years of his life in America, the trip would have been
an impossibility because of the military service which he had evaded.
Then he had vague news of different amnesties. After the time for
conscription had long since passed, an inertness of will had made him
consider a return to his country as somewhat absurd and useless. On the
other side, nothing remained to attract him. He had even lost track of
those country relatives with whom his mother had lived. In his heaviest
hours he had tried to occupy his activity by planning an enormous
mausoleum, all of marble, in La Recoleta, the cemetery of the rich,
in order to move thither the remains of Madariaga as founder of the
dynasty, following him with all his own when their hour should come.
He was beginning to feel the weight of age. He was nearly seventy years
old, and the rude life of the country, the horseback rides in the rain,
the rivers forded upon his swimming horse, the nights passed in the open
air, had brought on a rheumatism that was torturing his best days.

His family, however, reawakened his enthusiasm. “To Paris!” . . . He
began to fancy that he was twenty again, and forgetting his habitual
parsimony, wished his household to travel like royalty, in the most
luxurious staterooms, and with personal servants. Two copper-hued
country girls, born on the ranch and elevated to the rank of maids
to the senora and her daughter, accompanied them on the voyage, their
oblique eyes betraying not the slightest astonishment before the
greatest novelties.

Once in Paris, Desnoyers found himself quite bewildered. He confused
the names of streets, proposed visits to buildings which had long since
disappeared, and all his attempts to prove himself an expert authority
on Paris were attended with disappointment. His children, guided by
recent reading up, knew Paris better than he. He was considered
a foreigner in his own country. At first, he even felt a certain
strangeness in using his native tongue, for he had remained on the ranch
without speaking a word of his language for years at a time. He was used
to thinking in Spanish, and translating his ideas into the speech of his
ancestors spattered his French with all kinds of Creole dialect.

“Where a man makes his fortune and raises his family, there is his true
country,” he said sententiously, remembering Madariaga.

The image of that distant country dominated him with insistent obsession
as soon as the impressions of the voyage had worn off. He had no French
friends, and upon going into the street, his feet instinctively took him
to the places where the Argentinians gathered together. It was the same
with them. They had left their country only to feel, with increasing
intensity, the desire to talk about it all the time. There he read the
papers, commenting on the rising prices in the fields, on the prospects
for the next harvests and on the sales of cattle. Returning home, his
thoughts were still in America, and he chuckled with delight as he
recalled the way in which the two chinas had defied the professional
dignity of the French cook, preparing their native stews and other
dishes in Creole style.

He had settled the family in an ostentatious house in the avenida Victor
Hugo, for which he paid a rental of twenty-eight thousand francs. Dona
Luisa had to go and come many times before she could accustom herself to
the imposing aspect of the concierges--he, decorated with gold trimmings
on his black uniform and wearing white whiskers like a notary in a
comedy, she with a chain of gold upon her exuberant bosom, and receiving
the tenants in a red and gold salon. In the rooms above was ultra-modern
luxury, gilded and glacial, with white walls and glass doors with
tiny panes which exasperated Desnoyers, who longed for the complicated
carvings and rich furniture in vogue during his youth. He himself
directed the arrangement and furnishings of the various rooms which
always seemed empty.

Chichi protested against her father’s avarice when she saw him buying
slowly and with much calculation and hesitation. “Avarice, no!” he
retorted, “it is because I know the worth of things.”

Nothing pleased him that he had not acquired at one-third of its value.
Beating down those who overcharged but proved the superiority of the
buyer. Paris offered him one delightful spot which he could not find
anywhere else in the world--the Hotel Drouot. He would go there every
afternoon that he did not find other important auctions advertised in
the papers. For many years, there was no famous failure in Parisian
life, with its consequent liquidation, from which he did not carry
something away. The use and need of these prizes were matters of
secondary interest, the great thing was to get them for ridiculous
prices. So the trophies from the auction-rooms now began to inundate
the apartment which, at the beginning, he had been furnishing with such
desperate slowness.

His daughter now complained that the home was getting overcrowded. The
furnishings and ornaments were handsome, but too many . . . far too
many! The white walls seemed to scowl at the magnificent sets of chairs
and the overflowing glass cabinets. Rich and velvety carpets over
which had passed many generations, covered all the compartments. Showy
curtains, not finding a vacant frame in the salons, adorned the doors
leading into the kitchen. The wall mouldings gradually disappeared
under an overlay of pictures, placed close together like the scales of
a cuirass. Who now could accuse Desnoyers of avarice? . . . He was
investing far more than a fashionable contractor would have dreamed of
spending.

The underlying idea still was to acquire all this for a fourth of its
price--an exciting bait which lured the economical man into continuous
dissipation. He could sleep well only when he had driven a good bargain
during the day. He bought at auction thousands of bottles of wine
consigned by bankrupt firms, and he who scarcely ever drank, packed his
wine cellars to overflowing, advising his family to use the champagne as
freely as ordinary wine. The failure of a furrier induced him to buy for
fourteen thousand francs pelts worth ninety thousand. In consequence,
the entire Desnoyers family seemed suddenly to be suffering as
frightfully from cold as though a polar iceberg had invaded the avenida
Victor Hugo. The father kept only one fur coat for himself but ordered
three for his son. Chichi and Dona Luisa appeared arrayed in all kinds
of silky and luxurious skins--one day chinchilla, other days blue fox,
marten or seal.

The enraptured buyer would permit no one but himself to adorn the
walls with his new acquisitions, using the hammer from the top of a
step-ladder in order to save the expense of a professional picture
hanger. He wished to set his children the example of economy. In his
idle hours, he would change the position of the heaviest pieces of
furniture, trying every kind of combination. This employment reminded
him of those happy days when he handled great sacks of wheat and bundles
of hides on the ranch. Whenever his son noticed that he was looking
thoughtfully at a monumental sideboard or heavy piece, he prudently
betook himself to other haunts.

Desnoyers stood a little in awe of the two house-men, very solemn,
correct creatures always in dress suit, who could not hide their
astonishment at seeing a man with an income of more than a million
francs engaged in such work. Finally it was the two coppery maids
who aided their Patron, the three working contentedly together like
companions in exile.

Four automobiles completed the luxuriousness of the family. The children
would have been more content with one--small and dashing, in the very
latest style. But Desnoyers was not the man to let a bargain slip past
him, so one after the other, he had picked up the four, tempted by the
price. They were as enormous and majestic as coaches of state. Their
entrance into a street made the passers-by turn and stare. The chauffeur
needed two assistants to help him keep this flock of mastodons in order,
but the proud owner thought only of the skill with which he had gotten
the best of the salesmen, anxious to get such monuments out of their
sight.

To his children he was always recommending simplicity and economy. “We
are not as rich as you suppose. We own a good deal of property, but it
produces a scanty income.”

And then, after refusing a domestic expenditure of two hundred francs,
he would put five thousand into an unnecessary purchase just because
it would mean a great loss to the seller. Julio and his sister kept
protesting to their mother, Dona Luisa--Chichi even going so far as to
announce that she would never marry a man like her father.

“Hush, hush!” exclaimed the scandalized Creole. “He has his little
peculiarities, but he is very good. Never has he given me any cause for
complaint. I only hope that you may be lucky enough to find his equal.”

Her husband’s quarrelsomeness, his irritable character and his masterful
will all sank into insignificance when she thought of his unvarying
fidelity. In so many years of married life . . . nothing! His
faithfulness had been unexceptional even in the country where many,
surrounded by beasts, and intent on increasing their flocks, had seemed
to become contaminated by the general animalism. She remembered her
father only too well! . . . Even her sister was obliged to live
in apparent calmness with the vainglorious Karl, quite capable of
disloyalty not because of any special lust, but just to imitate the
doings of his superiors.

Desnoyers and his wife were plodding through life in a routine
affection, reminding Dona Luisa, in her limited imagination, of the
yokes of oxen on the ranch who refused to budge whenever another animal
was substituted for the regular companion. Her husband certainly was
quick tempered, holding her responsible for all the whims with which he
exasperated his children, yet he could never bear to have her out of his
sight. The afternoons at the hotel Drouot would be most insipid for him
unless she was at his side, the confidante of his plans and wrathful
outbursts.

“To-day there is to be a sale of jewels; shall we go?”

He would make this proposition in such a gentle and coaxing voice--the
voice that Dona Luisa remembered in their first talks around the old
home. And so they would go together, but by different routes;--she in
one of the monumental vehicles because, accustomed to the leisurely
carriage rides of the ranch, she no longer cared to walk; and
Desnoyers--although owner of the four automobiles, heartily abominating
them because he was conservative and uneasy with the complications of
new machinery--on foot under the pretext that, through lack of work, his
body needed the exercise. When they met in the crowded salesrooms, they
proceeded to examine the jewels together, fixing beforehand, the price
they would offer. But he, quick to become exasperated by opposition,
always went further, hurling numbers at his competitors as though they
were blows. After such excursions, the senora would appear as majestic
and dazzling as a basilica of Byzantium--ears and neck decorated
with great pearls, her bosom a constellation of brilliants, her hands
radiating points of light of all colors of the rainbow.

“Too much, mama,” Chichi would protest. “They will take you for a
pawnbroker’s lady!” But the Creole, satisfied with her splendor, the
crowning glory of a humble life, attributed her daughter’s faultfinding
to envy. Chichi was only a girl now, but later on she would thank her
for having collected all these gems for her.

Already the home was unable to accommodate so many purchases. In
the cellars were piled up enough paintings, furniture, statues, and
draperies to equip several other dwellings. Don Marcelo began to
complain of the cramped space in an apartment costing twenty-eight
thousand francs a year--in reality large enough for a family four times
the size of his. He was beginning to deplore being obliged to renounce
some very tempting furniture bargains when a real estate agent smelled
out the foreigner and relieved him of his embarrassment. Why not buy a
castle? . . .

The entire family was delighted with the idea. An historic castle, the
most historic that could be found, would supplement their luxurious
establishment. Chichi paled with pride. Some of her friends had castles.
Others, of old colonial family, who were accustomed to look down upon
her for her country bringing up, would now cry with envy upon learning
of this acquisition which was almost a patent of nobility. The mother
smiled in the hope of months in the country which would recall the
simple and happy life of her youth. Julio was less enthusiastic. The
“old man” would expect him to spend much time away from Paris, but he
consoled himself by reflecting that the suburban place would provide
excuse for frequent automobile trips.

Desnoyers thought of the relatives in Berlin. Why should he not have
his castle like the others? . . . The bargains were alluring. Historic
mansions by the dozen were offered him. Their owners, exhausted by
the expense of maintaining them, were more than anxious to sell. So he
bought the castle of Villeblanche-sur-Marne, built in the time of
the religious wars--a mixture of palace and fortress with an Italian
Renaissance facade, gloomy towers with pointed hoods, and moats in which
swans were swimming.

He could now live with some tracts of land over which to exercise his
authority, struggling again with the resistance of men and things.
Besides, the vast proportions of the rooms of the castle were very
tempting and bare of furniture. This opportunity for placing the
overflow from his cellars plunged him again into buying. With this
atmosphere of lordly gloom, the antiques would harmonize beautifully,
without that cry of protest which they always seemed to make when placed
in contact with the glaring white walls of modern habitations. The
historic residence required an endless outlay; on that account it had
changed owners so many times.

But he and the land understood each other beautifully. . . . So at the
same time that he was filling the salons, he was going to begin farming
and stock-raising in the extensive parks--a reproduction in miniature
of his enterprises in South America. The property ought to be made
self-supporting. Not that he had any fear of the expenses, but he did
not intend to lose money on the proposition.

The acquisition of the castle brought Desnoyers a true friendship--the
chief advantage in the transaction. He became acquainted with a
neighbor, Senator Lacour, who twice had been Minister of State, and was
now vegetating in the senate, silent during its sessions, but restless
and voluble in the corridors in order to maintain his influence. He was
a prominent figure of the republican nobility, an aristocrat of the new
regime that had sprung from the agitations of the Revolution, just
as the titled nobility had won their spurs in the Crusades. His
great-grandfather had belonged to the Convention. His father had figured
in the Republic of 1848. He, as the son of an exile who had died in
banishment, had when very young marched behind the grandiloquent figure
of Gambetta, and always spoke in glowing terms of the Master, in the
hope that some of his rays might be reflected on his disciple. His son
Rene, a pupil of the Ecole Centrale regarded his father as “a rare
old sport,” laughing a little at his romantic and humanitarian
republicanism. He, nevertheless, was counting much on that same official
protection treasured by four generations of Lacours dedicated to the
service of the Republic, to assist him when he became an engineer.

Don Marcelo who used to look uneasily upon any new friendship, fearing a
demand for a loan, gave himself up with enthusiasm to intimacy with this
“grand man.” The personage admired riches and recognized, besides,
a certain genius in this millionaire from the other side of the sea
accustomed to speaking of limitless pastures and immense herds.
Their intercourse was more than the mere friendliness of a country
neighborhood, and continued on after their return to Paris. Finally Rene
visited the home on the avenida Victor Hugo as though it were his own.

The only disappointments in Desnoyers’ new life came from his children.
Chichi irritated him because of the independence of her tastes. She did
not like antiques, no matter how substantial and magnificent they might
be, much preferring the frivolities of the latest fashion. She accepted
all her father’s gifts with great indifference. Before an exquisite
blonde piece of lace, centuries old, picked up at auction, she made
a wry face, saying, “I would much rather have had a new dress costing
three hundred francs.” She and her brother were solidly opposed to
everything old.

Now that his daughter was already a woman, he had confided her
absolutely to the care of Dona Luisa. But the former “Peoncito” was not
showing much respect for the advice and commands of the good natured
Creole. She had taken up roller-skating with enthusiasm, regarding it as
the most elegant of diversions. She would go every afternoon to the Ice
Palace, Dona Luisa chaperoning her, although to do this she was obliged
to give up accompanying her husband to his sales. Oh, the hours of
deadly weariness before that frozen oval ring, watching the white circle
of balancing human monkeys gliding by on runners to the sound of an
organ! . . . Her daughter would pass and repass before her tired eyes,
rosy from the exercise, spirals of hair escaped from her hat, streaming
out behind, the folds of her skirt swinging above her skates--handsome,
athletic and Amazonian, with the rude health of a child who, according
to her father, “had been weaned on beefsteaks.”

Finally Dona Luisa rebelled against this troublesome vigilance,
preferring to accompany her husband on his hunt for underpriced riches.
Chichi went to the skating rink with one of the dark-skinned maids,
passing the afternoons with her sporty friends of the new world.
Together they ventilated their ideas under the glare of the easy life
of Paris, freed from the scruples and conventions of their native land.
They all thought themselves older than they were, delighting to discover
in each other unsuspected charms. The change from the other hemisphere
had altered their sense of values. Some were even writing verses in
French. And Desnoyers became alarmed, giving free rein to his bad humor,
when Chichi of evenings, would bring forth as aphorisms that which she
and her friends had been discussing, as a summary of their readings and
observations.--“Life is life, and one must live! . . . I will marry the
man I love, no matter who he may be. . . .”

But the daughter’s independence was as nothing compared to the worry
which the other child gave the Desnoyers. Ay, that other one! . . .
Julio, upon arriving in Paris, had changed the bent of his aspirations.
He no longer thought of becoming an engineer; he wished to become
an artist. Don Marcelo objected in great consternation, but finally
yielded. Let it be painting! The important thing was to have some
regular profession. The father, while he considered property and wealth
as sacred rights, felt that no one should enjoy them who had not worked
to acquire them.

Recalling his apprenticeship as a wood carver, he began to hope that the
artistic instincts which poverty had extinguished in him were, perhaps,
reappearing in his son. What if this lazy boy, this lively genius,
hesitating before taking up his walk in life, should turn out to be
a famous painter, after all! . . . So he agreed to all of Julio’s
caprices, the budding artist insisting that for his first efforts in
drawing and coloring, he needed a separate apartment where he could work
with more freedom. His father, therefore, established him near his home,
in the rue de la Pompe in the former studio of a well-known foreign
painter. The workroom and its annexes were far too large for an amateur,
but the owner had died, and Desnoyers improved the opportunity offered
by the heirs, and bought at a remarkable bargain, the entire plant,
pictures and furnishings.

Dona Luisa at first visited the studio daily like a good mother, caring
for the well-being of her son that he may work to better advantage.
Taking off her gloves, she emptied the brass trays filled with cigar
stubs and dusted the furniture powdered with the ashes fallen from the
pipes. Julio’s visitors, long-haired young men who spoke of things
that she could not understand, seemed to her rather careless in their
manners. . . . Later on she also met there women, very lightly clad, and
was received with scowls by her son. Wasn’t his mother ever going to let
him work in peace? . . . So the poor lady, starting out in the morning
toward the rue de la Pompe, stopped midway and went instead to the
church of Saint Honore d’Eylau.

The father displayed more prudence. A man of his years could not expect
to mingle with the chums of a young artist. In a few months’ time, Julio
passed entire weeks without going to sleep under the paternal roof.
Finally he installed himself permanently in his studio, occasionally
making a flying trip home that his family might know that he was still
in existence. . . . Some mornings, Desnoyers would arrive at the rue de
la Pompe in order to ask a few questions of the concierge. It was ten
o’clock; the artist was sleeping. Upon returning at midday, he learned
that the heavy sleep still continued. Soon after lunch, another visit
to get better news. It was two o’clock, the young gentleman was just
arising. So the father would retire, muttering stormily--“But when does
this painter ever paint?” . . .

At first Julio had tried to win renown with his brush, believing that
it would prove an easy task. In true artist fashion, he collected his
friends around him, South American boys with nothing to do but enjoy
life, scattering money ostentatiously so that everybody might know
of their generosity. With serene audacity, the young canvas-dauber
undertook to paint portraits. He loved good painting, “distinctive”
 painting, with the cloying sweetness of a romance, that copied only the
forms of women. He had money, a good studio, his father was standing
behind him ready to help--why shouldn’t he accomplish as much as many
others who lacked his opportunities? . . .

So he began his work by coloring a canvas entitled, “The Dance of the
Hours,” a mere pretext for copying pretty girls and selecting buxom
models. These he would sketch at a mad speed, filling in the outlines
with blobs of multi-colored paint, and up to this point all went well.
Then he would begin to vacillate, remaining idle before the picture only
to put it in the corner in hope of later inspiration. It was the same
way with his various studies of feminine heads. Finding that he was
never able to finish anything, he soon became resigned, like one
who pants with fatigue before an obstacle waiting for a providential
interposition to save him. The important thing was to be a painter . . .
even though he might not paint anything. This afforded him the
opportunity, on the plea of lofty aestheticism, of sending out cards
of invitation and asking light women to his studio. He lived during
the night. Don Marcelo, upon investigating the artist’s work, could not
contain his indignation. Every morning the two Desnoyers were accustomed
to greet the first hours of dawn--the father leaping from his bed, the
son, on his way home to his studio to throw himself upon his couch not
to wake till midday.

The credulous Dona Luisa would invent the most absurd explanations to
defend her son. Who could tell? Perhaps he had the habit of painting
during the night, utilizing it for original work. Men resort to so many
devilish things! . . .

Desnoyers knew very well what these nocturnal gusts of genius were
amounting to--scandals in the restaurants of Montmartre, and scrimmages,
many scrimmages. He and his gang, who believed that at seven a full
dress or Tuxedo was indispensable, were like a band of Indians, bringing
to Paris the wild customs of the plains. Champagne always made them
quarrelsome. So they broke and paid, but their generosities were almost
invariably followed by a scuffle. No one could surpass Julio in the
quick slap and the ready card. His father heard with a heavy heart the
news brought him by some friends thinking to flatter his vanity--his
son was always victorious in these gentlemanly encounters; he it was who
always scratched the enemy’s skin. The painter knew more about fencing
than art. He was a champion with various weapons; he could box, and was
even skilled in the favorite blows of the prize fighters of the slums.
“Useless as a drone, and as dangerous, too,” fretted his father. And
yet in the back of his troubled mind fluttered an irresistible
satisfaction--an animal pride in the thought that this hare-brained
terror was his own.

For a while, he thought that he had hit upon a way of withdrawing his
son from such an existence. The relatives in Berlin had visited
the Desnoyers in their castle of Villeblanche. With good-natured
superiority, Karl von Hartrott had appreciated the rich and rather
absurd accumulations of his brother-in-law. They were not bad; he
admitted that they gave a certain cachet to the home in Paris and to the
castle. They smacked of the possessions of titled nobility. But Germany!
. . . The comforts and luxuries in his country! . . . He just wished his
brother-in-law to admire the way he lived and the noble friendships that
embellished his opulence. And so he insisted in his letters that the
Desnoyers family should return their visit. This change of environment
might tone Julio down a little. Perhaps his ambition might waken on
seeing the diligence of his cousins, each with a career. The Frenchman
had, besides, an underlying belief in the more corrupt influence of
Paris as compared with the purity of the customs in Patriarchal Germany.

They were there four months. In a little while Desnoyers felt ready to
retreat. Each to his own kind; he would never be able to understand
such people. Exceedingly amiable, with an abject amiability and evident
desire to please, but constantly blundering through a tactless desire to
make their grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized
their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and
mischievous child inspires, needing protection. And they would accompany
their affability with all manner of inopportune memories of the wars in
which France had been conquered. Everything in Germany--a monument, a
railroad station, a simple dining-room device, instantly gave rise to
glorious comparisons. “In France, you do not have this,” “Of course, you
never saw anything like this in America.”

Don Marcelo came away fatigued by so much condescension, and his wife
and daughter refused to be convinced that the elegance of Berlin could
be superior to Paris. Chichi, with audacious sacrilege, scandalized her
cousins by declaring that she could not abide the corseted officers with
immovable monocle, who bowed to the women with such automatic rigidity,
blending their gallantries with an air of superiority.

Julio, guided by his cousins, was saturated in the virtuous atmosphere
of Berlin. With the oldest, “The Sage,” he had nothing to do. He was a
poor creature devoted to his books who patronized all the family with
a protecting air. It was the others, the sub-lieutenants or military
students, who proudly showed him the rounds of German joy.

Julio was accordingly introduced to all the night
restaurants--imitations of those in Paris, but on a much larger scale.
The women who in Paris might be counted by the dozens appeared here
in hundreds. The scandalous drunkenness here never came by chance,
but always by design as an indispensable part of the gaiety. All was
grandiose, glittering, colossal. The libertines diverted themselves
in platoons, the public got drunk in companies, the harlots presented
themselves in regiments. He felt a sensation of disgust before these
timid and servile females, accustomed to blows, who were so eagerly
trying to reimburse themselves for the losses and exposures of their
business. For him, it was impossible to celebrate with hoarse ha-has,
like his cousins, the discomfiture of these women when they realized
that they had wasted so many hours without accomplishing more than
abundant drinking. The gross obscenity, so public and noisy, like a
parade of riches, was loathsome to Julio. “There is nothing like this
in Paris,” his cousins repeatedly exulted as they admired the stupendous
salons, the hundreds of men and women in pairs, the thousands of
tipplers. “No, there certainly was nothing like that in Paris.” He was
sick of such boundless pretension. He seemed to be attending a fiesta
of hungry mariners anxious at one swoop to make amends for all former
privations. Like his father, he longed to get away. It offended his
aesthetic sense.

Don Marcelo returned from this visit with melancholy resignation. Those
people had undoubtedly made great strides. He was not such a blind
patriot that he could not admit what was so evident. Within a few years
they had transformed their country, and their industry was astonishing
. . . but, well . . . it was simply impossible to have anything to do
with them. Each to his own, but may they never take a notion to envy
their neighbor! . . . Then he immediately repelled this last suspicion
with the optimism of a business man.

“They are going to be very rich,” he thought. “Their affairs are
prospering, and he that is rich does not hunt quarrels. That war of
which some crazy fools are always dreaming would be an impossible
thing.”

Young Desnoyers renewed his Parisian existence, living entirely in the
studio and going less and less to his father’s home. Dona Luisa began to
speak of a certain Argensola, a very learned young Spaniard, believing
that his counsels might prove most helpful to Julio. She did not know
exactly whether this new companion was friend, master or servant. The
studio habitues also had their doubts. The literary ones always spoke
of Argensola as a painter. The painters recognized only his ability as a
man of letters. He was among those who used to come up to the studio
of winter afternoons, attracted by the ruddy glow of the stove and the
wines secretly provided by the mother, holding forth authoritatively
before the often-renewed bottle and the box of cigars lying open on the
table. One night, he slept on the divan, as he had no regular quarters.
After that first night, he lived entirely in the studio.

Julio soon discovered in him an admirable reflex of his own personality.
He knew that Argensola had come third-class from Madrid with twenty
francs in his pocket, in order to “capture glory,” to use his own words.
Upon observing that the Spaniard was painting with as much difficulty
as himself, with the same wooden and childish strokes, which are so
characteristic of the make-believe artists and pot-boilers, the routine
workers concerned themselves with color and other rank fads. Argensola
was a psychological artist, a painter of souls. And his disciple, felt
astonished and almost displeased on learning what a comparatively simple
thing it was to paint a soul. Upon a bloodless countenance, with a chin
as sharp as a dagger, the gifted Spaniard would trace a pair of nearly
round eyes, and at the centre of each pupil he would aim a white brush
stroke, a point of light . . . the soul. Then, planting himself
before the canvas, he would proceed to classify this soul with his
inexhaustible imagination, attributing to it almost every kind of stress
and extremity. So great was the sway of his rapture that Julio, too, was
able to see all that the artist flattered himself into believing that he
had put into the owlish eyes. He, also, would paint souls . . . souls of
women.

In spite of the ease with which he developed his psychological
creations, Argensola preferred to talk, stretched on a divan, or to
read, hugging the fire while his friend and protector was outside.
Another advantage this fondness for reading gave young Desnoyers was
that he was no longer obliged to open a volume, scanning the index and
last pages “just to get the idea.” Formerly when frequenting society
functions, he had been guilty of coolly asking an author which was his
best book--his smile of a clever man--giving the writer to understand
that he merely enquired so as not to waste time on the other volumes.
Now it was no longer necessary to do this; Argensola would read for him.
As soon as Julio would see him absorbed in a book, he would demand an
immediate share: “Tell me the story.” So the “secretary,” not only gave
him the plots of comedies and novels, but also detailed the argument of
Schopenhauer or of Nietzsche . . . Dona Luisa almost wept on hearing her
visitors--with that benevolence which wealth always inspires--speak of
her son as “a rather gay young man, but wonderfully well read!”

In exchange for his lessons, Argensola received, much the same treatment
as did the Greek slaves who taught rhetoric to the young patricians of
decadent Rome. In the midst of a dissertation, his lord and friend would
interrupt him with--“Get my dress suit ready. I am invited out this
evening.”

At other times, when the instructor was luxuriating in bodily comfort,
with a book in one hand near the roaring stove, seeing through the
windows the gray and rainy afternoon, his disciple would suddenly appear
saying, “Quick, get out! . . . There’s a woman coming!”

And Argensola, like a dog who gets up and shakes himself, would
disappear to continue his reading in some miserable little coffee house
in the neighborhood.

In his official capacity, this widely gifted man often descended from
the peaks of intellectuality to the vulgarities of everyday life. He
was the steward of the lord of the manor, the intermediary between the
pocketbook and those who appeared bill in hand. “Money!” he would say
laconically at the end of the month, and Desnoyers would break out into
complaints and curses. Where on earth was he to get it, he would like to
know. His father was as regular as a machine, and would never allow the
slightest advance upon the following month. He had to submit to a rule
of misery. Three thousand francs a month!--what could any decent person
do with that? . . . He was even trying to cut THAT down, to tighten the
band, interfering in the running of his house, so that Dona Luisa could
not make presents to her son. In vain he had appealed to the various
usurers of Paris, telling them of his property beyond the ocean. These
gentlemen had the youth of their own country in the hollow of their hand
and were not obliged to risk their capital in other lands. The same hard
luck pursued him when, with sudden demonstrations of affection, he had
tried to convince Don Marcelo that three thousand francs a month was but
a niggardly trifle.

The millionaire fairly snorted with indignation. “Three thousand francs
a trifle!” And the debts besides, that he often had to pay for his son!
. . .

“Why, when I was your age,” . . . he would begin saying--but Julio would
suddenly bring the dialogue to a close. He had heard his father’s story
too many times. Ah, the stingy old miser! What he had been giving him
all these months was no more than the interest on his grandfather’s
legacy. . . . And by the advice of Argensola he ventured to get control
of the field. He was planning to hand over the management of his land to
Celedonio, the old overseer, who was now such a grandee in his country
that Julio ironically called him “my uncle.”

Desnoyers accepted this rebellion coldly. “It appears just to me. You
are now of age!” Then he promptly reduced to extremes his oversight
of his home, forbidding Dona Luisa to handle any money. Henceforth he
regarded his son as an adversary, treating him during his lightning
apparitions at the avenue Victor Hugo with glacial courtesy as though he
were a stranger.

For a while a transitory opulence enlivened the studio. Julio had
increased his expenses, considering himself rich. But the letters from
his uncle in America soon dissipated these illusions. At first the
remittances exceeded very slightly the monthly allowance that his father
had made him. Then it began to diminish in an alarming manner. According
to Celedonio, all the calamities on earth seemed to be falling upon his
plantation. The pasture land was yielding scantily, sometimes for lack
of rain, sometimes because of floods, and the herds were perishing by
hundreds. Julio required more income, and the crafty half-breed sent him
what he asked for, but simply as a loan, reserving the return until they
should adjust their accounts.

In spite of such aid, young Desnoyers was suffering great want. He was
gambling now in an elegant circle, thinking thus to compensate for his
periodical scrimpings; but this resort was only making the remittances
from America disappear with greater rapidity. . . . That such a man as
he was should be tormented so for the lack of a few thousand francs!
What else was a millionaire father for?

If the creditors began threatening, the poor youth had to bring the
secretary into play, ordering him to see the mother immediately; he
himself wished to avoid her tears and reproaches. So Argensola would
slip like a pickpocket up the service stairway of the great house on the
avenue Victor Hugo. The place in which he transacted his ambassadorial
business was the kitchen, with great danger that the terrible Desnoyers
might happen in there, on one of his perambulations as a laboring man,
and surprise the intruder.

Dona Luisa would weep, touched by the heartrending tales of the
messenger. What could she do! She was as poor as her maids; she had
jewels, many jewels, but not a franc. Then Argensola came to the rescue
with a solution worthy of his experience. He would smooth the way for
the good mother, leaving some of her jewels at the Mont-de-Piete. He
knew the way to raise money on them. So the lady accepted his advice,
giving him, however, only jewels of medium value as she suspected that
she might never see them again. Later scruples made her at times refuse
flatly. Suppose Don Marcelo should ever find it out, what a scene! . . .
But the Spaniard deemed it unseemly to return empty-handed, and always
bore away a basket of bottles from the well-stocked wine-cellar of the
Desnoyers.

Every morning Dona Luisa went to Saint-Honore-d’Eylau to pray for her
son. She felt that this was her own church. It was a hospitable and
familiar island in the unexplored ocean of Paris. Here she could
exchange discreet salutations with her neighbors from the different
republics of the new world. She felt nearer to God and the saints when
she could hear in the vestibule conversations in her language.

It was, moreover, a sort of salon in which took place the great events
of the South American colony. One day was a wedding with flowers,
orchestra and chanting chorals. With Chichi beside her, she greeted
those she knew, congratulating the bride and groom. Another day it was
the funeral of an ex-president of some republic, or some other foreign
dignitary ending in Paris his turbulent existence. Poor President! Poor
General! . . .

Dona Luisa remembered the dead man. She had seen him many times in that
church devoutly attending mass and she was indignant at the evil tongues
which, under the cover of a funeral oration, recalled the shootings and
bank failures in his country. Such a good and religious gentleman! May
God receive his soul in glory! . . . And upon going out into the
square, she would look with tender eyes upon the young men and women on
horseback going to the Bois de Boulogne, the luxurious automobiles, the
morning radiant in the sunshine, all the primeval freshness of the early
hours--realizing what a beautiful thing it is to live.

Her devout expression of gratitude for mere existence usually included
the monument in the centre of the square, all bristling with wings as if
about to fly away from the ground. Victor Hugo! . . . It was enough
for her to have heard this name on the lips of her son to make her
contemplate the statue with a family interest. The only thing that she
knew about the poet was that he had died. Of this she was almost sure,
and she imagined that in life, he was a great friend of Julio’s because
she had so often heard her son repeat his name.

Ay, her son! . . . All her thoughts, her conjectures, her desires,
converged on him and her strong-willed husband. She longed for the men
to come to an understanding and put an end to a struggle in which she
was the principal victim. Would not God work this miracle? . . . Like
an invalid who goes from one sanitarium to another in pursuit of health,
she gave up the church on her street to attend the Spanish chapel on the
avenue Friedland. Here she considered herself even more among her own.

In the midst of the fine and elegant South American ladies who looked
as if they had just escaped from a fashion sheet, her eyes sought other
women, not so well dressed, fat, with theatrical ermine and antique
jewelry. When these high-born dames met each other in the vestibule,
they spoke with heavy voices and expressive gestures, emphasizing their
words energetically. The daughter of the ranch ventured to salute them
because she had subscribed to all their pet charities, and upon
seeing her greeting returned, she felt a satisfaction which made her
momentarily forget her woes. They belonged to those families which her
father had so greatly admired without knowing why. They came from the
“mother country,” and to the good Chicha were all Excelentisimas or
Altisimas, related to kings. She did not know whether to give them her
hand or bend the knee, as she had vaguely heard was the custom at court.
But soon she recalled her preoccupation and went forward to wrestle
in prayer with God. Ay, that he would mercifully remember her! That he
would not long forget her son! . . .

It was Glory that remembered Julio, stretching out to him her arms of
light, so that he suddenly awoke to find himself surrounded by all the
honors and advantages of celebrity. Fame cunningly surprises mankind on
the most crooked and unexpected of roads. Neither the painting of souls
nor a fitful existence full of extravagant love affairs and complicated
duels had brought Desnoyers this renown. It was Glory that put him on
his feet.

A new pleasure for the delight of humanity had come from the other side
of the seas. People were asking one another in the mysterious tones of
the initiated who wish to recognize a familiar spirit, “Do you know how
to tango? . . .” The tango had taken possession of the world. It was
the heroic hymn of a humanity that was suddenly concentrating its
aspirations on the harmonious rhythm of the thigh joints, measuring its
intelligence by the agility of its feet. An incoherent and monotonous
music of African inspiration was satisfying the artistic ideals of
a society that required nothing better. The world was dancing . . .
dancing . . . dancing.

A negro dance from Cuba introduced into South America by mariners who
shipped jerked beef to the Antilles, conquered the entire earth in a few
months, completely encircling it, bounding victoriously from nation to
nation . . . like the Marseillaise. It was even penetrating into the
most ceremonious courts, overturning all traditions of conservation and
etiquette like a song of the Revolution--the revolution of frivolity.
The Pope even had to become a master of the dance, recommending the
“Furlana” instead of the “Tango,” since all the Christian world,
regardless of sects, was united in the common desire to agitate its feet
with the tireless frenzy of the “possessed” of the Middle Ages.

Julio Desnoyers, upon meeting this dance of his childhood in full swing
in Paris, devoted himself to it with the confidence that an old love
inspires. Who could have foretold that when as a student, he was
frequenting the lowest dance halls in Buenos Aires, watched by the
police, that he was really serving an apprenticeship to Glory? . . .

From five to seven, in the salons of the Champs d’Elysees where it cost
five francs for a cup of tea and the privilege of joining in the sacred
dance, hundreds of eyes followed him with admiration. “He has the key,”
 said the women, appraising his slender elegance, medium stature, and
muscular springs. And he, in abbreviated jacket and expansive shirt
bosom, with his small, girlish feet encased in high-heeled patent
leathers with white tops, danced gravely, thoughtfully, silently, like
a mathematician working out a problem, under the lights that shed bluish
tones upon his plastered, glossy locks. Ladies asked to be presented
to him in the sweet hope that their friends might envy them when they
beheld them in the arms of the master. Invitations simply rained upon
Julio. The most exclusive salons were thrown open to him so that every
afternoon he made a dozen new acquaintances. The fashion had brought
over professors from the other side of the sea, compatriots from the
slums of Buenos Aires, haughty and confused at being applauded like
famous lecturers or tenors; but Julio triumphed over these vulgarians
who danced for money, and the incidents of his former life were
considered by the women as deeds of romantic gallantry.

“You are killing yourself,” Argensola would say. “You are dancing too
much.”

The glory of his friend and master was only making more trouble for
him. His placid readings before the fire were now subject to daily
interruptions. It was impossible to read more than a chapter. The
celebrated man was continually ordering him to betake himself to the
street. “A new lesson,” sighed the parasite. And when he was alone in
the studio numerous callers--all women, some inquisitive and aggressive,
others sad, with a deserted air--were constantly interrupting his
thoughtful pursuits.

One of them terrified the occupants of the studio with her insistence.
She was a North American of uncertain age, somewhere between thirty-two
and fifty-nine, with short skirts that whenever she sat down, seemed
to fly up as if moved by a spring. Various dances with Desnoyers and
a visit to the rue de la Pompe she seemed to consider as her sacred
rights, and she pursued the master with the desperation of an abandoned
zealot. Julio had made good his escape upon learning that this beauty
of youthful elegance--when seen from the back--had two grandchildren.
“MASTER Desnoyers has gone out,” Argensola would invariably say upon
receiving her. And, thereupon she would burst into tears and threats,
longing to kill herself then and there that her corpse might frighten
away those other women who would come to rob her of what she considered
her special privilege. Now it was Argensola who sped his companion to
the street when he wished to be alone. He had only to remark casually,
“I believe that Yankee is coming,” and the great man would beat a hasty
retreat, oftentimes in his desperate flight availing himself of the back
stairs.

At this time began to develop the most important event in Julio’s
existence. The Desnoyers family was to be united with that of Senator
Lacour. Rene, his only son, had succeeded in awakening in Chichi a
certain interest that was almost love. The dignitary enjoyed thinking
of his son allied to the boundless plains and immense herds whose
description always affected him like a marvellous tale. He was a
widower, but he enjoyed giving at his home famous banquets and parties.
Every new celebrity immediately suggested to him the idea of giving a
dinner. No illustrious person passing through Paris, polar explorer
or famous singer, could escape being exhibited in the dining room
of Lacour. The son of Desnoyers--at whom he had scarcely glanced
before--now inspired him with sudden interest. The senator was a
thoroughly up-to-date man who did not classify glory nor distinguish
reputations. It was enough for him that a name should be on everybody’s
lips for him to accept it with enthusiasm. When Julio responded to his
invitation, he presented him with pride to his friends, and came very
near to calling him “dear master.” The tango was monopolizing all
conversation nowadays. Even in the Academy they were taking it up in
order to demonstrate that the youth of ancient Athens had diverted
itself in a somewhat similar way. . . . And Lacour had dreamed all his
life of an Athenian republic.

At these reunions, Desnoyers became acquainted with the Lauriers. He was
an engineer who owned a motor-factory for automobiles in the outskirts
of Paris--a man about thirty-five, tall, rather heavy and silent, with
a deliberate air as though he wished to see deeply into men and
things. She was of a light, frivolous character, loving life for the
satisfactions and pleasures which it brought her, appearing to accept
with smiling conformity the silent and grave adoration of her husband.
She could not well do less with a man of his merits. Besides, she had
brought to the marriage a dowry of three hundred thousand francs, a
capital which had enabled the engineer to enlarge his business. The
senator had been instrumental in arranging this marriage. He was
interested in Laurier because he was the son of an old friend.

Upon Marguerite Laurier the presence of Julio flashed like a ray of
sunlight in the tiresome salon of Lacour. She was dancing the fad of the
hour and frequenting the tango teas where reigned the adored Desnoyers.
And to think that she was being entertained with this celebrated and
interesting man that the other women were raving about! . . . In order
that he might not take her for a mere middle-class woman like the other
guests at the senator’s party, she spoke of her modistes, all from the
rue de la Paix, declaring gravely that no woman who had any self-respect
could possibly walk through the streets wearing a gown costing less than
eight hundred francs, and that the hat of a thousand francs--but a few
years ago, an astonishing novelty--was nowadays a very ordinary affair.

This acquaintanceship made the “little Laurier,” as her friends called
her notwithstanding her tallness, much sought by the master of the
dance, in spite of the looks of wrath and envy hurled at her by the
others. What a triumph for the wife of a simple engineer who was used
to going everywhere in her mother’s automobile! . . . Julio at first
had supposed her like all the others who were languishing in his arms,
following the rhythmic complications of the dance, but he soon found
that she was very different. Her coquetry after the first confidential
words, but increased his admiration. He really had never before been
thrown with a woman of her class. Those of his first social period were
the habituees of the night restaurants paid for their witchery. Now
Glory was tossing into his arms ladies of high position but with an
unconfessable past, anxious for novelties although exceedingly mature.
This middle class woman who would advance so confidently toward him and
then retreat with such capricious outbursts of modesty, was a new type
for him.

The tango salons soon began to suffer a great loss. Desnoyers was
permitting himself to be seen there with less frequency, handing Glory
over to the professionals. Sometimes entire weeks slipped by without the
five-to-seven devotees being able to admire his black locks and his tiny
patent leathers twinkling under the lights in time with his graceful
movements.

Marguerite was also avoiding these places. The meetings of the two were
taking place in accordance with what she had read in the love stories
of Paris. She was going in search of Julio, fearing to be recognized,
tremulous with emotion, selecting her most inconspicuous suit, and
covering her face with a close veil--“the veil of adultery,” as her
friends called it. They had their trysts in the least-frequented squares
of the district, frequently changing the places, like timid birds
that at the slightest disturbance fly to perch a little further away.
Sometimes they would meet in the Buttes Chaumont, at others they
preferred the gardens on the left bank of the Seine, the Luxembourg, and
even the distant Parc de Montsouris. She was always in tremors of terror
lest her husband might surprise them, although she well knew that the
industrious engineer was in his factory a great distance away. Her
agitated aspect, her excessive precautions in order to slip by unseen,
only served to attract the attention of the passers-by. Although Julio
was waxing impatient with the annoyance of this wandering love affair
which only amounted to a few fugitive kisses, he finally held his peace,
dominated by Marguerite’s pleadings.

She did not wish merely to be one in the procession of his sweethearts;
it was necessary to convince herself first that this love was going to
last forever. It was her first slip and she wanted it to be the last.
Ay, her former spotless reputation! . . . What would people say! . . .
The two returned to their adolescent period, loving each other as they
had never loved before, with the confident and childish passion of
fifteen-year-olds.

Julio had leaped from childhood to libertinism, taking his initiation
into life at a single bound. She had desired marriage in order to
acquire the respect and liberty of a married woman, but feeling towards
her husband only a vague gratitude. “We end where others begin,” she had
said to Desnoyers.

Their p

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