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Welcome to âNovels of the French Riviera,â a work that transports us to the life and landscapes of the Mediterranean coast. In this story, Vicente Blasco Ibåñez invites us to discover the passions, loves, and tragedies that unfold among the beautiful landscapes of the French Riviera. Prepare to immerse yourself in a plot full of emotion and mystery, where each character plays a crucial role in the storyâs destiny. Chapter 1. The Duchess of Pontecorvo left her car at the entrance to Roquebrune. Then, leaning on the arm of a footman, she began to climb the narrow, winding, and sloping streets of this village in the Alpes-Maritimes, paved with uneven blue flagstones, one embedded in the other. In places, these streets turned into tunnels, passing through the lower floor of a white house that obstructed the passage, just as in Muslim towns. Every clear-sky evening, the old lady would climb up from the Mediterranean shore to watch the sunset while sitting in the church garden. It was a place she had discovered a few weeks earlier and spoke of enthusiastically to her friends. A vanity equal to that of explorers of mysterious lands made her cheerfully endure the fatigue that climbing the slopes of these medieval village streets represented for her eighty years , through which no cart had ever passed and which were suitable for no other means of transportation than donkey or mule, represented. The duchess had the flaccid obesity of an old age that resists mummification , and she was only able to walk by supporting herself with a golden-knobbed Indian cane, a memento of her late husband, the Duke of Pontecorvo, a marshal under Napoleon III and hero of the Italian war against the Austrians. Despite the swelling in her legs, she moved with a certain youthful vivacity, which betrayed the impatience of a restless and nervous character. Her face retained the distant reflections of a majestic beauty: a beauty âMarie Antoinette-style,â as the flatterers of her old age would say; but the nose that had been aquiline now drooped over her mouth with a grotesque heaviness, and her blue eyes were clouded with the tears of decrepitude. From under her bonnet peeped the curls of white hair, excessively full to be natural. On her person, dressed in black with aristocratic modesty, what immediately attracted attention, what made her recognizable by all, was her necklace, a famous necklace that could only be that of the Duchess of Pontecorvo: a million and a half in pearls, according to the expertsâ estimates. It had the wide shape of a so-called âdog collar,â and while dazzling like a jewel, it served as a corset around her neck, supporting and concealing the softness of her skin. Beneath it, it attempted to conceal a bundle of stiff sinews. Over its upper edge, the dangling cheekbones spilled out , their former shade of pink now a livid purple. She entered the church, deserted at this hour, and the footman, relinquishing his arm, stood respectfully motionless beside a small side door. This opening cast a rectangle of blue shadows onto the church tiles , pierced by round sunspots resembling gold coins. The servant only went so far, for the duchess wished to remain alone in her newly discovered domain. Leaving the church through the garden gate, she followed a narrow path lined with plants, tapping her cane on the red brick pavement, uneven with time and rain. He loved the small clerical garden for the seduction that harsh contrasts exert on our lives; because it was the complete opposite of the majestic and orderly garden that surrounded his home below, next to the blue plain of the Mediterranean. On this mountain terrace attached to the small church, everything grew freely: the rosebushes tangled their branches and flowers, tangling together to form a thorny, perfumed thicket; the trees, lacking space, leaned on each other, twisting their branches. trunks; wildflowers disputed the soil with cultivated plants, with the aggressive audacity of parasites arriving at the whim of the winds; animal lifeâants, wasps, and multicolored beetlesâbuzzed or crawled in undulating rows through the narrow forest. The Duchess was imagining in advance the immense panorama that awaited her a few steps further on, behind the disordered vines that made her tilt her head and the fruit trees that extended their branches as if trying to block her way. She was going to see the sea from that natural balcony, at a height of several hundred meters; a Mediterranean more immense than the one she contemplated from her âvillaâ on the edge of the coast. She would also admire the undulating outline of the Alps as their last foothills plunged into the blue abyss, forming gulfs, peninsulas, and promontories. In the distance, the mountains of the city of Nice, invisible from there, outlined their black blocky peaks against the sky reddened by the setting sun; closer, on the seashore, rose the rock of Monaco, with the old city on its back; further on, the plateau of Monte Carlo, covered with palaces and gardens; and at its feet, forcing her to lower her eyes, the Cap Martin peninsula, with the âvilla,â among leafy pines, built by the late Marshal, Duke of Pontecorvo. On the same tree-covered peninsula, which was like a garden overlooking the sea, was the âvillaâ of her friend and protector Eugenie, former Empress of the French, and other homes of dethroned princes and monarchs. She could also see the enormous palace of the American John Baldwin, a powerful king of industry and mining, whom many considered the richest man on earth. The old lady continued forward through the branches that closed behind her. She was about to reach a small arbor covered in vines, from which she could see the marvelous panorama of the French Riviera that she had already conjured up in her imagination. She would remain there for an hour, contemplating the slow, sweet death of the afternoon. No one would come to disturb her melancholy isolation in this tranquil priestâs garden, facing the sunset, which awakens the sweetest memories of the past and evokes what was and will never be again, like a sweet, dying melody, like an almost vanished perfume. She experienced the selfish delight of a music-loving monarch who had an opera performed in a closed theater, with no other spectator but himself, lost in the depths of a box. For her, all the gentle agony of the sunâs death, and the purple mourning of the sky and the waters, in one of the most beautiful places on earth! As she was about to enter the arbor, she breathed in the scent of tobacco mingling with that of the flowers. Behind the vines, a cough sounded. A man had invaded her domain and was gazing at the immense landscape, as if it belonged to him. Moreover, he was sending puffs of smoke from his cigar toward her. The duchess made a gesture of annoyance, and even felt like protesting, as if she were the victim of a burglary. But she immediately smiled, with somewhat exaggerated kindness, upon recognizing the intruder. âOh, Mr. Baldwin! What a pleasant surprise!â Chapter 2. When, from time to time, the multimillionaire John Baldwin came to spend a few weeks at her palace in Cap Martinâbought from New York without knowing it and guided by photographsâall the attention of the French Riviera was focused on him. From Cannes to Menton, there was no winter resident greater than him, and yet several dethroned monarchs or those on vacation, and the occasional president of a Spanish-American republic who had recently fled his country in revolution, always lived in the villas and hotels along the Mediterranean coast . Authorities wrote to him requesting his support for charitable works; societies sent him commissions to greet him, asking for a subsidy in the process; concert and theater organizers sought to place themselves under his patronage. The powerful millionaire was like God, who cannot be seen, but who is He makes himself felt through his works. Those who entered his beautiful palace left without knowing him, but they were rarely greeted by one of his secretaries, who would disappear after the first few words, returning later with a check in his hand. On rare occasions, those who had managed to see Baldwin in person would point him out to others on a promenade in Nice, in one of the gambling rooms of Monte Carlo, or on a picturesque mountain path. âThatâs the millionaire Baldwin.â And people always greeted such a revelation by asking with surprise: âThat old man who looks poor?â He was dressed modestly. In his garages at Cap Martin, he had several automobiles of the most famous makes; but he almost always traveled on foot. His secretaries were gentlemen of refined elegance. The millionaire was pleased to be taken for their servant, appreciating the stately appearance of his employees and valets as a reflection of his own greatness. When people wanted to describe the power of this humble-looking man, unwilling to accept displays of public admiration, they would simply say: âHeâs the richest man on earth.â Those well-versed in business would affirm with a tremor of emotion: âHeâs a man who always has sixty million dollars tied up in his checking account, not knowing what to do with it.â And it was true. If anyone spoke to him about this idle wealth, at the few meetings he deigned to attend, he would respond with a weary expression. Money overwhelmed him: what could he do with it? It was impossible for him to invest it in businesses that were more profitable than his own. And since his industrial and mining ventures could not develop further, nor did they require new capital, the majority of his enormous profits were piling up in forced unproductivity. The Duchess of Pontecorvo had known him since she came to settle in Cap Martin, near her own âvilla.â It was the friendship of an elderly lady, once famous and now forgotten, with a wealthy man whose name was world-famous. The present times were different from those of her youth. After the last war, there were no more emperors in Europe, and kings, in order to continue living, had to imitate the democratic existence of a president of a republic. Multimillionaires like Baldwin were now the lords of the world. And she, who considered herself impoverished in her old age, having given her children the greater part of her former fortune, having to endure a âgilded povertyâ that only allowed her to leave the âvillaâ of Cap Martin very rarely, felt, like everyone else, an irresistible respect for this potentate of the present times. Hence her somewhat humble smile and her words upon recognizing Mr. Baldwin as the intruder: âWhat a pleasant surprise!â She had always encountered him in drawing rooms, at teatime, under the lighting skillfully adjusted by the owners of the house, no longer young and fearful of the harsh, indiscreet light of a sunny country. Now she could see him better outdoors, in this wild garden, which cast a greenish tinge on people and objects. He was as old as she was, or perhaps a few years older; but he seemed strong, thanks to a hard, lean, and elastic old age, on which the teeth of time barely left their mark, as if biting a well-tempered sword. He must have been tall and athletically vigorous , but the years had shrunk and thinned him, giving him that stiffness that repels the assaults of illness and delays the triumph of death. His dark blue suit was not loose, yet he moved within it as if he belonged to someone else. The thinness of his neck made his head seem even more enormous. His forehead was bulging, and his nose hung heavily, like a ripe fruit, over a mouth sunken with age. His lower jaw, prominent and powerful in youth, a testament to an energetic and overwhelming will, had grown exaggeratedly large in old age, resembling those of certain monarchs of the Austrian dynasty. His eyes were the last reminder of his physical past, resembling in this way many old women who were once beautiful and only retain a trace of their dead beauty in their gaze. It could be said that the eyes of this strong man had been aggressive in bad times, and of a fixity that disconcerted men, forcing them to lower their own. His pupils, endowed with an imperturbable tenacity, had influenced the course of events. But now, these eyes, which had often been harsh, seemed to strive to hide their past, caressing people and things with a coldly gentle gaze. Upon seeing the duchess, Baldwin stood up, throwing his thick cigar into the void. It was a Havana, battered by his fingers, its tip frayed under the incessant biting of his gold-covered teeth. As he shook the ladyâs hand, he explained his unexpected presence in this corner. I had heard the Duchess speak of the garden of the church at Roquebrune and the magnificent panorama it afforded. âIt was the other afternoon at tea for my fellow countrymen the Carletons, and today I felt compelled to see this marvel⊠Very beautiful!â They had both sat together at the rustic log railing, looking down at the sea, the coastal towns, and the last foothills of the Alps. Along the white threads of the paths glided numerous automobiles, dwarfed by the distance, almost like insects. The train bound for Paris and the one bound for Italy zipped by like escapees from a toy box. These movements of activity between the seaside towns were accompanied by no noise for the two old men seated at the top. The engines spewed steam and rolled along in absolute silence. On the other hand, the tinkling of the bells of a flock of goats grazing at the foot of the garden made the glass of the evening sky tremble with a melancholy vibration. The Mediterranean was a soft blue, dull and unreflected, sweeter to the eye than the blinding, boiling sea of ââthe sun at midday . âYes, very beautiful,â replied the Duchess. And the two fell silent, feeling themselves penetrated by the solemnity of the sunset. âIt is a misfortune,â continued Baldwin, âthat one must reach old age to know the sweeter and quieter pleasures that life has to offer. In youth, worries and ambitions blind us to many things. I remember some men who, if they could leave the cemeteries of New York right now and come here, would express amazement at seeing how old Baldwin contemplates the sea and the sky just like one of those boys, lacking the intelligence for ordinary life, who amuse themselves by composing poetry. â The Duchess nodded, though without guessing what her companion meant. âYou, perhaps, have also needed to grow older to enjoy these spectacles.â A woman is always more âpoeticâ than a man; moreover, in her youth she has more time than we do for sentimental matters. But even so, I suspect that you are more concerned with Nature now than when you were appearing at the Tuileries festivities . â The Duchess approved again, pleased that such a powerful man was interested in her. Her former pride as a courted beauty seemed to revive. The potentate Baldwin was coming up to this humble church garden, having heard him mention it at a party!⊠She began to recognize in this businessman, educated far from royal courts, a delicacy of feeling that made him superior to the men she had met in her youth. And, moved by gratitude, she spoke of her past, as if Baldwin were an old friend. Indeed: his life was not as brilliant as it once was; but it also offered its pleasures, although more sedate and sweet. âI have suffered much, Mr. Baldwin. Lives are like houses when viewed from the outside.â Only he who inhabits them knows truly what goes on inside her. She recalled her brilliant youth, and the American, although familiar with many of the events of her life, listened to her as if hearing her story for the first time. The Duchess of Pontecorvo was Spanish by birth. Related to Empress Eugenie, she had moved to Paris, appearing among the youthful beauties the sovereign gathered at the luxurious parties at the Tuileries Palace. As her family was ruined, the Empress wanted to marry her off to one of the dignitaries of her court, and the one who showed the most interest in her was a marshal who had just received the title of Duke of Pontecorvo for a victory in Napoleon IIIâs war against the Austrians. The Duchess made no secret of the disparity of tastes and characters between her and the rough soldier who had been her husband. But the elegant life of the imperial court softened the differences between them, making her new life tolerable for the Spaniard. Then came the collapse of the Empire and the dispersion of all the brilliant figures who had existed in its shadow. The Marshal died, overwhelmed by the Emperorâs ruin and the military disasters of 1870, leaving his widow with two children. These children then formed new families, taking with them the greater part of their paternal inheritance, and the old lady finally escaped from a Paris that was no longer the Paris of her youth and saddened her by reviving her melancholic memories. She had come to settle at Cap Martin with the intention of spending the rest of her years in the old winter mansion of her heyday . This would allow her to hide the decline of her wealth, while living among the people of her former world. From time to time, her protector and relative, the Empress, returned to Cap Martin, and the two, dressed in mourning, spoke of their deceased friends. Eugenie had just died, making her think of this event in the short time that old age granted her to follow her. Of her past splendor, she had kept only that famous necklace. It reminded her of her former glories, and to part with it was tantamount to a declaration of poverty. âYou say well, Mr. Baldwin,â she continued. âOld age has its pleasures and its sweetnesses. I now know something I never had in my better days: tranquility. I expect nothing, and I have reduced my desires to such an extent that I do not know for sure if I desire anything at all. Life no longer has the vehement joys of other times, but neither does it have its pains and anxieties. What we call love when we are young is unknown ; but friendship is found, which is almost always something firmer and more lasting⊠If you could only realize the anxieties a woman suffers when she is considered beautiful or inspires desire! One must live in perpetual alarm; it is dangerous to give in to trust; Every man who approaches for the first time seems like an adversary to us⊠It is the restless existence of the soldier who commands a square around which enemies constantly prowl⊠»Now I can speak and live with a confidence and abandonment I did not know in my better days. Man is no longer the enemy. In reality, at our age there are no men or women; there are only companions. As the body loses importance, all the immaterial things we carry within us and call soul become magnified . »I confess that sometimes, when I see young and elegant women, I remember my good times and feel a hint of envy. Then I regret it and say: âWhy?⊠They will be old in their turn; they will reach where I have reached.â Instead, I savor the peace of years, the tranquility of a sweetly selfish existence, in which we only care about living and feeling ourselves live, knowing gentle but unprecedented pleasures that we could never have guessed at in our youth. Believe me, Mr. Baldwin, I donât despair at seeing myself old, and perhaps you, after having worked so hard and lived such an intense life, think the same as I do. The millionaire replied melancholically: âIf only we were always old!⊠If only death didnât exist!â The Duchess, who until then had spoken with youthful vivacity, lowered her gaze, answering in an equally sad voice: âIt is true⊠Ah, death!â Chapter 3. There was a long silence. The famous Baldwin interrupted it to express aloud everything he had thought while listening to the Duchess. In his own existence, too, the contrast between the past and the present was stark, but he felt no despair when he realized his current inertia, after such an active life, which had led the greatest businessmen on earth to admire him as the perfect type of the man of action. His existence no longer had a justifying motive for continuing its development. John Baldwin had no role left in life. What more could he attempt after what he had accomplished? And yet he continued to live, because the reason for human existence is beyond the calculations and conveniences of men. âYou, Duchess, cannot fully understand what my business dealings are and how far they have gone. Like everyone else, you know that I am very rich; But the word ârichâ cannot encompass the full extent of my wealth. For me to be ruined, a cataclysm is necessary that would wipe out most of civilized humanity. I have to limit the yield of my mines and factories, because I donât want to be richer. I leave enormous capital unproductive and scorn secure businesses, because I have money to spare and I flee from it. âI have been everything, and what I was not in the past I can be tomorrow if I wish. But none of the things that tempt men can attract me now that I am old and my intelligence knows the futility of human vanities. I have no children, and my main occupation is to think about how I can invest my wealth so that it will be of use after my death.
âI have founded museums, libraries, and universities. I give my money to charitable establishments, although my reason does not allow me to believe in the efficacy of charity. But this does not matter; Since I have to invest my wealth in something, I scatter it without heeding the pretexts invoked by those who ask me for it. I am tired of buying paintings and promoting the publication of books. I am also weary of subsidizing scientific discoveries or mechanical inventions. Great things when one has the enthusiasm of youth and believes in the future! But now I am incapable of enthusiasm, and as for the future⊠The multimillionaire remained silent for a long time, and finally said in a sad and resentful voice: âYes; I am interested in the future, as I was in my youth in difficult and mysterious affairs. Many times, when I see a ragged boy selling newspapers in the middle of the street, or meet a shepherd boy on a mountain path begging me for alms, I feel an envious anger against them; I think of their few years, which are a guarantee that they will live long after I am gone. âAh, scoundrels,â I say to myself, âyou will see what I will not!â And this is enough for me to appreciate the uselessness of my wealth and the ridiculousness of the admiration it inspires in everyone. The famous John Baldwin, with his two billion dollars, cannot see what the urchin will see when he gets down on all fours to pick up the cigarette butt he threw on the sidewalk. âI sometimes remember the date of the year in which I live, and I am pleased to add twenty years to it. What are twenty years to any of the young men who surround us and are in our service? The certainty of living twenty years is calmly risked for pleasure, for joyful audacity; and I, John Baldwin, who have been sought out by the greatest sovereigns in the world; I, the king of money, who have sometimes influenced the war and peace of nations, even if I gave away all my riches, even if I gathered all the wise men in existence, I would not obtain those twenty years. â The melancholy silence was reestablished between the two old men. âI have been everything, I have had everything,â he continued, âand for that very reason life no longer offers me any vigorous charm⊠However, I want to live, and I am irritated by the certainty that I will not be able to prolong my existence despite my riches. It is the lack of occupation that makes me think about these things, seeing reality as it is. Before, I struggled, suffered setbacks, and overthrew obstacles. Poets and other dreamers have the veil of illusions before their eyes, which makes them see things differently than they really are. I, ambitious like all conquerors, once felt the thirst for power, and this distracted and excited me. Now, since I have nothing to desire, the charm has disappeared, and I see the sad framework of our existence like one who sees a skeleton through the bodies of all those around him. Years ago, I anxiously awaited news, because it represented either the triumph of my pride or my complete ruin. I have lost my fortune four times, rebuilding it again, each time larger. Now I do not experience the slightest emotion when an urgent cable arrives. I know that no news can change my work⊠After winning a fortune, one must fight a second battle, much more difficult and determined, to defend it. I am beyond these concerns: my victory is definitive. What I have conquered is so great and so powerful that it can only be defended, and I can abandon it to fate. What is left for me to do in life?⊠The duchess, accustomed to salon conversations, was going to speak to him about the charitable works that the rich should support; but she stopped herself when she remembered what the powerful American had said moments before. Baldwin did not believe in charity, although he practiced it with an absent-minded air, giving his money to all who begged for it. He also considered it inappropriate to interrupt with vulgar advice this sort of desperate confession the millionaire was making, influenced by the melancholic atmosphere of the evening. âI hope for nothing,â he continued, âI desire nothing, and yet I do not want to die. Death outrages me as something absurd. Who can explain this?â Everything in our lives is complicated, everything mysterious; simplicity is an illusion. Only the things we have at hand, the things we can grasp with our nearsighted eyes, are simple; everything beyond is complicated, for the very reason that it exists beyond our reach. What a sad thing death is!⊠We spend our lives repeating truths about it that date back thousands and thousands of years; but these words end up becoming commonplace, and we utter them mechanically, lip service, without awakening any images within us. Only when we approach death , in our old age, can we see it as it is and realize the misery of our fate. The consolation of equality in the face of death is a lie. That may be true for the majority, made up of unfortunate people who lived a miserable existence. For them, it represents the final revenge of nothingness and envy . But how can the fact that the vanquished die console me, who have triumphed and can continue to triumph?⊠It is also a lie to compare death to the sleep we need to restore our strength. He who falls asleep knows he will awaken tomorrow, and he who dies does not awaken, nor does he know for sure if there is anything after his death. Religions, great consolers of human ignorance, assure us that we will awaken; but how can this be proven palpably to those who do not possess the blindness of faith?⊠It is equally a lie to compare our old age to winter. Its cold and sad days are regularly followed by the rebirth of spring and the splendor of summer. But what is there after our winter? All hypotheses⊠All our eyes see is that the organism disintegrates and disappears, leaving a pale memory and a name that lasts only a few years⊠And then, nothingness. The old man fell silent and turned his gaze toward the sun, which was beginning to sink behind the foothills of the Alps. As it died, it scattered clouds of pinkish dust across the horizon, spreading at the same time A golden band lay across the violet sea. Some of the rocky peaks seemed to burn, as if reflecting an inner conflagration. The millionaire pointed at the sun with his cane. âHis death is also a lie. He knows he will wake up tomorrow and continue to resurrect for thousands upon thousands of centuries. That is why he dies so splendidly, surrounded by theatrical apparatus, like the great actors who feign the yearnings of death on stage in the last episode of the play, and at the same time think of the dinner they will find half an hour later⊠The terrible thing is knowing that our death is irremediable, nor can it be repeated. We die only once, and to make matters worse, we leave life at the same time that others arrive and violently jostle us with the intoxication of their youth. âMany times, when I saw the centuries-old trees in the forests, I have envied their slow and resigned death. There is no insolent youth around them to excite their envy. All the trees seem equally old and see death coming at the same time.â Human beings are less happy; everything in existence is disordered, and we old people die surrounded by young people, so that our fate seems more cruel. The Duchess continued to nod mutely, out of respect for the personage; but she began to feel annoyed by the tenacity with which he spoke of death. Couldnât they occupy themselves with more pleasant things, gossiping a bit about their friends living on the French Riviera, and about certain love affairs between young people that were the subject of discussion at tea time? It seemed to her a bad omen to talk so much about death. When one is old, one should not remember it. It tends to come alone and should not be mentioned, for it may think we are summoning it⊠But Mr. Baldwin, accustomed to speaking authoritatively at the great meetings of the capitalists who run the world, was incapable of brooking objections, and the Duchess judged it prudent to remain silent. The American continued speaking, but in a low voice and with his eyes on the ground, driven by a need to complain about fate. âOur life is like a crazy business; it seems the work of a madman or an evil power that enjoys tormenting us. Perhaps it is simply a coincidence, and that explains its absurd operation. When we are young, we work to make our way; we are seduced by the conquest of wealth or glory, and to realize our dreams, we consume the freshness of our early years and turn our backs on the finest pleasures. We only triumph when we are old, and when we finally possess wealth and glory, we wonder what good they can do usâŠâ Out of a need to arrange everything logically, the ancient man of action outlined in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, the corrections that the current order of life needed. Insects were happier than humans. Baldwin had seen this in books. For these animals, the decrepitude and ugliness of old age occurred at the beginning of their existence, when they looked like repugnant larvae working and saving for the final period of their lives. Instead , youth eventually arrived for them, turning them into butterflies dressed in multicolored silks, fluttering over the gardens to feed on floral nectar, and when they died it was in the midst of a springtime intoxication, in the ecstasy of love. He should have been as old as he was at present when he worked and struggled with fate to achieve wealth and power. And now that he had triumphed, he should present the same appearance he had when he was only twenty-five years old and wandered through the lower part of New York City, chasing the dollar, desperately poor, but with the freshness of youth and the undimmed vigor of a fighting man. Then he could truly enjoy his triumph. âTo think, Duchess,â he continued, âthat I spent whole years without seeing the light of day, confined to gloomy offices or smoky workshops, at the very hours when the sun shone and there were gardens in the world and the Spring for the rest of us!⊠Now I have everything; I possess the means to replace Nature in certain cases; I could raise a paradise on any of those bare peaks we see from here; I could get women just like those who made me tremble with emotion in my youth to take an interest in my decrepit person now. The power of money is so great for those who do not possess it and need it!⊠But I no longer feel desire: I began to die a long time ago. Ah, the deception of our existence!⊠Death takes us by the hand almost in the midst of youth and accompanies us for the rest of our lives, delaying its decisive blow. We begin to die at thirty, precisely when we feel our passions more intensely than in adolescence. The first tooth that falls out, the first hair that leaves us, announce that the evolution of our death has already begun. But we are blind and deaf. We possess hope, a companion who only abandons us at the moment of agony, and many times we even die convinced that we cannot die. »Everyone considers themselves immortal. They know they will die; but they never believe this can happen today; their death is only possible tomorrow, and that tomorrow prolongs it into infinity. It seems natural to us that others should die, but each of us rebels when our time comes, and imagines that this misfortune must fall to someone else. I myself, who say this, do not want to die, and I make daily plans based on the future, as if I counted on an infinite life. We are deaf to death, and yet we talk about it all the time. »The young people of today, if they were to listen to us, would not understand us. They need to be old to fully understand the misery of our existence. But when their time comes, the young people of that time will not understand them either. And so, like waves, generations and generations of this humanity will roll in, one that bases its religious beliefs on death and continues to live without wanting to convince itself that death exists as long as it is healthy. The Countess interrupted him to speak of the beneficial influence of illusion, without which life would be impossible, and the powerful fighter nodded. âThat sweet lie,â he said, âis necessary for our continued existence. We all move forward driven by an illusion; even men who seem most refractory to sentimental life. If I were to tell you, Duchess, that throughout my life there exists one of those illusions, a desire that has restored my energy in difficult times, giving me the strength to continue!⊠â
And the millionaire, as if telling the story of another man, described what he was like when he was thirty. Chapter 4. The Civil War had caused him to lose precious time for his business, for out of enthusiasm he became a soldier. Then he earned his first thousands of dollars and wanted to travel around Europe. He was in Paris during the last years of Napoleon III and visited the famous Exposition, which was like a summary of imperial glory before the catastrophe arrived. âSo, Duchess, I saw you for the first time, when all Paris was occupied with your beauty, your luxury, and your parties. â âOh, Mr. Baldwin!â interrupted the old woman, moved by this revelation. âYou should have been introduced. I would have had such pleasure in knowing you when you were young!â The greatest of the worldâs richest men smiled with an expression of incredulity. He seemed delighted by the hypothesis that he could have attended the Duchess of Pontecorvoâs parties at that time , as if this seemed highly grotesque to him. âThe Baldwin of then, though young and vigorous, was less presentable than the old man you know now. He was a poor man educating himself, and he had just fought in the war in a country whose customs have greatly improved since then. His manners were brusque; his hands were deformed by work⊠No; the John Baldwin of then would have made a poor appearance in your salons.â All she could do was stay at the edge of the sidewalk, among the crowd at the Exposition festivities, waiting for the imperial procession to pass so she could see, in a landau, behind the Empress, the Duchess of Pontecorvo, who was then at the height of her youth and beauty. âOh, Mr. Baldwin!â the old woman sighed again, looking at the ground, while the pallor of her cheeks spread to the rest of her face, replacing the pink of her former blush. The American continued. âIâve known you ever since, and Iâve never forgotten you. All of us, in order to live, need to set our sights on a height, and the more inaccessible, the better, for in this way we can preserve intact the hopes we place in it. For me, this summit was you. We are at an age, Duchess, that allows us to say everything, without the shyness of adolescence.â âDuring my time of danger and hardship, I focused all my ambition on fulfilling three wishes, as a result of my victory. I wanted to possess a palace surrounded by an immense park, and a yacht with which I could sail all the seas of the earth⊠My third wish, or rather , the first, because it is more vehement than the other two, was to obtain a woman equal to the Duchess of Pontecorvo, or herself, for life sometimes offers unexpected alms that one would never have dared to dream of. âI have palaces in different places on earth, and I could equally possess a fleet of yachts if the three that are immobilized in ports, waiting years and years for my desire to travel the world to be revived, werenât enough for me⊠The only thing John Baldwin failed to obtain during his entire triumphant life was the Duchess of Pontecorvo. â âOh, mister! Who could have imagined this?â the old womanâs moved voice repeated . âFor the same reason I couldnât realize this dream, it has always accompanied me⊠I wonât tell you, Duchess, that Iâve remembered it at all times. A man of my kind needs his time to think and direct numerous undertakings, and he has little time left for his sentimental concerns. But I swear that in those rare moments of rest, when I recalled the past and the dreams of youth, the first thing that came to mind was yours. âI, too, have lived my life. I was married and loved my wife quietly and sweetly, like a spirited companion. But you have been the dream, the unfulfilled desire, that serves as a stimulus to keep moving forward. Thatâs why I didnât want to seek you out when I felt triumphant. I was already old then, and you werenât young either. Your children had married; I had grandchildren. Why see each other? Why suppress the only dream that remained within me?â He paused for a moment, while the old woman looked at him with interest, making a mental effort to guess what the American must have been like in the distant days of his youth. âOh, Mr. Baldwin!â she repeated. âWhy didnât you make yourself known then?â But the millionaire, as if he didnât hear her, continued his thoughts , expressing them in a low voice. âI would never have sought her out. I was afraid to see her different from what she once was ⊠It doesnât matter now that we know each other. You are not the woman you were then, nor is there anything left in me of the Baldwin who lived in a miserable hotel in Paris. We are two old men who outlive each other and talk about two dead people. If you could see how I keep her portrayed in my imagination!⊠Time has not passed; fashions have not changed. Women, when they are not interesting, make one laugh with their grotesque adornments every time one sees them in an old portrait. On the other hand, we always imagine the woman we love in the dress she was wearing when we first saw her, and although fashions change later, they never seem as interesting to us as they were then.â I will always contemplate the young Duchess of Pontecorvo with her full crinoline skirt, just like Empress Eugenie and the other elegant ladies of the imperial court. I canât see her any other way. That woman who no longer exists was loved, like very few women. They were, for a poor young man who died just the same. And this love had the merit of selflessness: it was a love felt by only one of them, and which the other never knew. âOh, Mr. Baldwin!â repeated the old woman in a trembling voice, as if she were about to weep. âWhy didnât you speak then? Why didnât you tell me what youâre telling me now?â The man shrugged his shoulders. He had a more accurate notion of reality. What now seemed to the woman an unforgivable oversight on the part of the millionaire Baldwin, she would have received then as the unheard-of audacity of an unknown, poor, and rude foreigner. The sun had set. As the last vestiges of its disappearance, a pale pink stain remained on the mountaintops. Above the astral blood that purpled the horizon, an evening star began to tremble . On the Italian side, the blue of the sky appeared more intense and dark, punctured in places by the brilliance of new stars. The mountain wind had rushed from the peaks to the sea, shaking the church garden with a cold ripple. The old lady, still shocked by her companionâs words, remained insensitive to this change in temperature, which on another evening would have sent her fleeing toward her car. âWhy didnât you speak in time?â she repeated. âWhy didnât you say those interesting words to me then?â The man shrugged his shoulders again. The illusion had been dead for many years: almost a lifetime. He had only spoken out of the need to confess that we all feel at certain moments. Ever since he met the Duchess at Cap Martin, he had intended to make this revelation to her, and perhaps that was why he had sought her out in the church garden . But once the mystery was discovered, there was no reason to remember it again. Life never goes back on its course. Peace to the dead! The woman, more tenacious in her sentimentality, did not want to forget. She clung tightly to this illusion, as if by doing so she could free herself from death, which was already sweeping her away in its current. Besides, her feminine vanity had just been resurrected after a lethargy of half a century. To hear these words of love at eighty years old! And to hear them from the mouth of the most powerful man on earth! Baldwin coughed, visibly bothered by the cold wind that stirred the garden. âLetâs go. Itâs beginning to be dangerous for us to stay here.â Then he looked with hard eyes at the patch of light that still gilded the horizon. âThe sun has set. It will return tomorrow, it will always return; but for us!â The old woman had leaned on his arm and began to walk, tapping the ground with her cane at the same time. She didnât seem to understand her companionâs words, nor to notice his surroundings. He was still living in the past. âIt was so sweet to contemplate!⊠They moved away, lowering their heads before the branches of the trees, while a trembling voice repeated: âWhy did you remain silent then?⊠Why didnât you say when the time was right what you are telling me now?â The Family of Dr. Pedraza Chapter 5. âI too,â said Serrano, âknew, like some of you, Dr. RĂłmulo Pedraza. I have not always lived in Paris, spending my nights in the restaurants of Montmartre. To amass the modest fortune that allows me to lead my present existence, I traveled for many years through America, working in various trades and experiencing the harshest ups and downs of fortune. While in Argentina, I spoke with Dr. Pedraza for the first time. I did not live in Buenos Aires. I had become involved in colonization enterprises, and I was clearing lands far from that city that had been waiting since the beginning of the planet for the man who would care to make them productive. The need to acquire money forced me to frequently visit the capital of the Republic. But as the banks finally refused to give me more loans, doubting the success of my colonization, I had to seek, to continue my business, the assistance of the National Mortgage Bank. With whatever the high and mighty gave me By accepting the directors of this government-owned establishment, I could pay off most of my debts to private banks, thus regaining my financial prestige. I would also complete the land clearing work , which would increase the value of my land a hundredfold. I stayed in Buenos Aires for a long time, determined not to return to my property until I saw my claims accepted by the Mortgage Bank. It was neither an easy nor a quick undertaking. Since many of you have not been there, you are unaware of how business is conducted in most Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. Everything that has even a distant relationship with the government must be carried out slowly and after long delays. If business is resolved quickly and in a few hours, the detractors may believe that something illegal has been done to obtain enormous profits. That is why in every public office the usual response is: âCome back tomorrowâ; and this tomorrow, which will be the day the matter is resolved, takes months or years. I, a poor Spaniard, involved in important jobs with little money, lacking protectors, and not married to a local womanâan alliance that provides support similar to the solidarity of the ancient tribeâhad to hear âCome back tomorrowâ many times and wait weeks and weeks in the offices of the Mortgage Bank for my âtomorrow,â that is, the granting of the loan. During my monotonous waits in the anteroom of the president of said bank, I saw Dr. Pedraza for the first time, receiving the royal alms of his protective conversation. Another warning that I consider necessary for all those listening to me who have not been there. This Dr. Pedraza was called âdoctor,â not because he was a doctor , but because he was a lawyer. From Texas to Cape Horn, in all the republics, lawyers are as numerous as generals; and that is saying something. But in the republics of America that we can call above, they are simply called âlicenciados,â and below, in Argentina and other countries, âdoctores.â I have seen in the Archive of the Indies in Seville a plea addressed to the King of Spain by the first inhabitants of Buenos Aires asking that men of all professions be sent to the nascent city, except lawyers, as such a profession was harmful to the peace and prosperity of a country. These settlers three centuries ago predicted with prodigious foresight the future calamities of their homeland. Some claim that if on Avenida de Mayo or Florida Streetâthe most central and busiest areas of Buenos Airesâsomeone shouts âDoctor!â in the middle of the afternoon, fifty passersby will stop at once and turn their heads , believing themselves called. Some go further and claim that if the cry is repeated several times, so many people can be attracted that traffic is interrupted. But this last statement should not, in my opinion, be considered strictly accurate. After these explanations, I will tell you that Dr. Pedraza, like so many other doctors in his country, was a distinguished lawyer who had never practiced law, and when he had to go to court on personal matters, he would seek the help of a colleague with an open âoffice .â The title of doctor is like a noble distinction in that land of democratic rule, periodic crises, and constantly renewed wealth, which supplies a large part of humanity with bread rolls and steaks. Dr. Pedraza was involved in business, like many Argentines of his generation. In his early youth, he had held a law professorship at the University of La Plata as a substitute professor; later, he held various political offices in the province of Buenos Aires, finally becoming a national deputy. But his calm and majestic speech, which paused, with long pauses, to capture the most convoluted and sonorous expressions, did not aspire to parliamentary triumphs. His social position and the sumptuous needs of his family required a lot of money, and he could only earn it honestly by dedicating himself entirely to business. He bought landâmost often without knowing itâand sold it, using the sums lent to him by the banks for his enormous transactions. At the same time, he managed, from Buenos Aires, a wealthy ranch inherited from his parents and another, no less important one that his wife had provided as a dowry. He was a figure whose name appeared almost daily in the social chronicles of the Buenos Aires newspapers; âa representative exponent of the countryâs high life,â as he would say in his elaborate language. Tall, strong, and of unwavering health, he had the graceful limbs of all the men there raised on the ranches, who learn to ride before they know how to walk. At the same time as being agile, he was strong-bodied and fleshy. It couldnât be otherwise in a land where they are weaned as children on roast beef. This handsome young man, with a stately bearing, aquiline face, and long mustache, took care of his attire as he had in his youth, feeling his first amorous impulses toward the woman who later became his wife. I always saw his feet, small and arched like a womanâs, encased in shining patent leather. From the early hours of the afternoon onward, I never found him not wearing a morning coat and a pearl on his tie that looked as if it had fallen from a rajahâs turban. Never, as night fell over Buenos Aires, did I fail to find Dr. Pedraza wearing a tuxedo if he was going to dine with friends at the Jockey Club, or in tails to accompany his family to the Teatro ColĂłn. His wife and six daughters would not have permitted him to violate the rules that every gentleman must observe in one hemisphere or another of the earth. And the elegant doctor, a man of energy in his prime and fearsome in the use of weapons, was incapable of resisting the whims and commands of the women in his family. This man, who spent many thousands of pesos on his personal adornment , had not caused his enemies and envious people to gossip about the smallest passionate adventure. He dressed up for the people in his house, to please his wife, so that his daughters would admire him with that proud satisfaction that every young woman feels when she contemplates the elegance and seductions of the male gender through her father. For Dr. Pedraza, there was nothing beyond his family. It inspired in him the most extraordinary heroism⊠For you know that the man I am describing to you was a greater hero than the heroes of war or science. These die for glory, proud of their death and eager for everyone to know it. Pedraza, an obscure hero, by disappearing in a way that would not make anyone suspect his sacrifice, becomes even more admirable. You will be convinced of this if you have the patience to continue listening to me. Chapter 6. An enormous change has taken place within well-to-do families during the last fifty years; something as important as one of those revolutions that upset the political organization of a country or the form of property ownership. But since this only occurs among wealthy people, who are the minority, this revolution has gone somewhat unnoticed until now, and only those who suffer its effects are aware of it. Half a century ago, when a man ruined himself voluntarily, and not because of bad business dealings, it was almost always because of love or gambling. A so-called âartist,â or a professional woman, with her tireless little teeth, had been gnawing away at the poor gentlemanâs fortune. Meanwhile, the wife lived obscurely in her house, economizing to remedy her husbandâs follies, and the daughters, under her motherâs direction, led an existence of nun-like sobriety. Dressing modestly was a sign of social distinction. The showy jewelry, the original outfits, the extravagance, seemed a shameful privilege of âartists,â of socialites, of all the brilliant, dangerous, and ephemeral creatures kept on the fringes of high society. The decent woman, the mother of a family, had to be economical, modest, and opaque, and save at home, while her husband spent money outside. of her. Butterfly wings were for âbadâ women, for versatile and mad creatures, with no other concern than dancing around the flame that eventually burned them. The existence of many men was similar to that of the ancient citizens of Athens, faithful visitors to the fashionable hetaerae, to discuss with them love and the wonders of the arts and luxury, while the legitimate wife spun in the gyneceum, took care of the cleaning of her children, and arranged for the slaves to work. But one day the modern woman realized the inferiority of continuing to be a decent lady; the injustice with which men treated her by being economical in the home and wasteful with women found on the street or in the theater. âIf our husbands or our fathers,â many said, âwant to ruin themselves for a woman, let it be for us. Weâll wear makeup, dress, and devour money, just like the others. Thatâs easily learned.â We will know how to make them familiar, just as they do, with the refinements of an absurd luxury and the pride of paying what it costs. If they must throw away a fortune out of vanity, at least let their madness be exploited by those in the house. Let us dress up like professionals and have the same demands⊠In short, today all women dress the same, they allow themselves the same audacity in public, and one cannot distinguish, as before, the lady from the unlady. The only clue to avoid making a mistake is to consider the lady the one who least appears to be . Decent women today display the boldness of the neophyte who has just entered a new religion, the audacity of the newly freed slave. Some say that this great revolution in domestic life has come to Europe from America in the last fifty years, like the âPalaces,â like the exaggerated love of dancing, like jazz bands, and so many contemporary things. Others claim that American influence wasnât necessary for this, since wives in Europe have always ruined their husbands. But even if this were the case, it represented an exception in its historical period, and by no means something common and ordinary, as it is in our times. The fact is that now, when one asks, âHow did So-and-so become poor?â one frequently hears the same answer: âThe poor fellow was ruined by his wife and daughters.â This has a logical explanation. In the present day, my friends, women are more expensive than ever. It is a difficult undertaking to maintain the luxury of a decent lady. Laugh at the magnificence of certain famous women who appear in history. The luxury of the past was dazzling, but it consisted mainly of jewelry, that is, something lasting and representing capital kept in reserve. A man, by giving his wife ostentatious gifts back then, was actually depositing money for the future in the safe of his house. The terrible thing is todayâs luxury: the luxury of rags, lace, furs, and feathers, all things that last a couple of months, or at most a couple of years, that fade easily and can only be admired for a few days, because they lack the solid, immovable, eternal seduction of precious stones . You will have heard of Madame Recamier. All of Paris was at her feet a century ago. She was the most elegant woman of her time. Napoleonic warriors , the holy fathers of nascent Romanticism, the men of fashion, needed to go every evening to her social gathering, which was like a consecration. The divine Juliet wore a new dress every day; she wore it for only a few hours, and then gave it to her maid. 365 dresses a year! But the value of each one was equivalent, according to the testimony of the indiscreet of that time, to about three francs and fifty centimes. They were white linen or batiste tunics, over which the divine Recamier placed a sky-blue silk sash, and her blond beauty needed nothing more to lie down on a divan, topped with swan necks, to listen to the Ossianic laments of a harp or the verses recited by her friend Chateaubriand. Nowadays, a woman considered elegant is considered dishonorable if she wears dresses worth less than a thousand francs. More commonly, they cost two thousand. And the same goes for hats, shoes, etc. Besides, poor Recamier would make our friends laugh if she tried to dazzle them by changing her dress every day. One dress a day: how filthy! How backward! A chic woman now ritually changes her dress at least three times a day and must prefer death to the dishonor of being caught by her companions wearing the same clothes two days in a row. Those courtesans and comediennes, luxurious as the Queen of Sheba and devourers of millions, whom we have all met in the theater and in books describing Parisian life half a century ago, are now fantastic characters in comedies and novels. They exist only in the imagination of credulous people. Go to the jewelers on the Place VendĂŽme, the couturiers on the Rue de la Paix, and other purveyors of feminine luxury; ask them about the âartistsâ of loose manners and the celebrated socialites, who must be their best customers, and youâll see their faces twist: âThat was in the past, sir. Now people of that kind are no good to us; they only know how to get into debt. There are no longer any Russian grand dukes to protect them. The only ones left are Bolshevik agents, who come from there carrying several millions for Red propaganda and spend them on old dancing girls they admired in their youth as starving bohemians. But they are so few that this means nothing. Tell us about decent ladies; about mothers and little girls. That is the true clientele of our time. â The millionaires of America and Europe no longer spend their money except on the women of their households. Waste and folly now go hand in hand with morality. And such merchants, if they were capable of speaking with such frankness, would speak the truth. There are now marriageable girls who, before the age of twenty, present their father with bills from dressmakers and other suppliers larger than those their grandfather secretly paid when he was dedicated to protecting dancing girls or introducing the world to the talent of some young, comedienne with a beautiful face. Dr. Pedrazaâs family was of this class. The eternal concern of the Argentine nobleman was to be rich, enormously rich, so that his family, composed entirely of women, would not experience any deprivation in their desires for luxury. Every time the doctor came across accounts of aristocratic parties published in the newspapers about âthe most distinguished Mrs. Pedraza and her beautiful and interesting daughters,â he felt the same emotion of satisfied vanity, the same legitimate pride of the artist who sees his works praised. For him, his wife was the first lady of Buenos Aires, and his daughters were destined to marry the richest young men in the country. And this admiration for his wife transformed into absolute obedience to her every instruction, as if he considered her incapable of error in matters concerning the family. He, for business, to earn money; and his wife, for high society life, to spend with âdistinction.â It wasnât unusual that after twenty years of marriage he was still so in love with his wife. Doña Zoilaânames like this are not uncommon thereâ was a beautiful woman: the Argentine patrician, mother of a large family, who retains intact the beauty and grace of her early youth and still displays great feminine appeal surrounded by her granddaughters. This matron, with dark eyes and haughty stature, retained all the physical magnificence of a healthy and strong race, which adopts the enervations of luxury as a fashion, but has not yet been overcome by them. Doña Zoila was the first guest at every party. Her opinion was like a law; it indicated what was distinguished and what should be considered âdirty.â She would shudder with pride when she declared that all her clothes came from Paris and that the great couturiers there were They worried about their personal adornment, overcoming the obstacle of three thousand leagues across the ocean. When the commission agents from the Rue de la Paix arrived in Buenos Aires, barely having begun to unwrap their outfits for the coming season at the hotel , the first person they called was âMadame Pedraza.â They counted on her as a great buyer, and her tastes and recommendations were followed by many people. After her reputation as an elegant woman, what she valued most when conversing with a foreigner in salons was being able to say: âAnd as you see me, I am the mother of six young ladies.â Such a short maternity represented a humiliation for her, and she quickly added: âOne of my sisters has eighteen children, and most of them are sons. This is only natural in a sparsely populated country, which has only one inhabitant per kilometer. While the ranch owners encourage the breeding of their cattle, in the cities the wives strive to increase the number of citizens.â Furthermore, my friends, those women, who carry within them the future of their country, are healthy and prolific, with the freshness and health of a young people. Since wealth compels them to accept the whims of fashion, perhaps they resign themselves to suffering the torments of hunger in order to be extremely slim. âYou have to keep your figure.â But despite their elegant emaciation and distinguished witheredness, they cannot hide the solidity of their internal framework, the noble vigor of their ancestors, the centaurs of the Pampas. Because of their thinness, they seem to have just emerged from a besieged city or from a transatlantic ship damaged on the high seas, forcing the passengers to submit to half rations. But fashion gives them permission to eat, and they will be reborn in splendor, like wheat sprouting on the Argentine plains when it rains for a long time. I was saying, gentlemen, that Dr. Pedraza loved and admired his wife at the same time. Not once had he responded negatively to Doña Zoilaâs requests, even though the lady recognized no limits or scruples in her spending to maintain, as she put it, âthe familyâs prestige.â They lived in a large, elegant new house near Palermo Park; they invariably subscribed to one of the best boxes at the Teatro ColĂłn during the opera season, and to other boxes at various theaters. Society parties are rare in Buenos Aires , and the so-called âhigh societyâ is seen and discussed during intermissions at the so-called elegant performances. Their servants were numerous. They owned three automobiles: one, a âbusinessâ one, for the master, and two others, which the lady and the girls used for visits or excursions. Doña Zoila sent all the bills from her urban suppliers to the house where the doctor had his âdesk,â as well as those arriving from Paris and London on the days of the mail steamer. And Pedraza, without objection, filled pages and pages of his checkbook and handed them over, thus closing the matter. He was proud of his wifeâs enormous expenditures. They were a demonstration of her natural elegance and noble origins. Because the doctor believed, even more than his wife, in her aristocratic lineage. âIâm a PĂ©rez Zurrialde,â Doña Zoila would declare proudly at certain moments. And the others, when they wanted to give her full praise, after praising her elegance and good taste, would end up saying: âSheâs a PĂ©rez Zurrialde.â They all believed in the aristocratic distinction of this family, without being able to explain why they believed so. This is often seen in America. There are families that count among their ancestors famous generals, patriotic heroes, presidents of the Republic. But others, whose grandparents did nothing and were nothing, nevertheless pass for more distinguished and more aristocratic. Perhaps it is because these predecessors spoke little, stayed away from the countryâs struggles, cared only about dressing well, dedicating all their intelligence to this, and were very demanding in matters of marriage, relating only to their close associates. If a family insists on being aristocratic, if it sets its will to it for three generations and affirms it constantly, after a century everyone will end up accepting its aristocracy and believing in it. Who is going to dig up anyoneâs history beyond the grandfather or great-grandfather?⊠One hundred years ago, in all the Spanish colonies of America, the greatest sign of distinction and well-being was having an open store, a grocery or clothing establishment. The noble families of all the historic cities of those republics were founded by Spanish or Creole shopkeepers, who represented the wealth and aristocracy of the time. Agriculture and livestock farming were worthless in those days. Only those who lived behind a counter were rich. But Doña Zoila didnât want to know this: âIâm a PĂ©rez Zurrialde.â And her husband, the simple Pedraza, who had known his grandfather as a child, an emigrant from Castile, also shared this admiration for his wifeâs noble lineage, for the history of that family, which dated back almost a century and a half, which in America is equivalent to being lost in the mists of time. Furthermore, this wife, still beautiful, of generally acknowledged elegance , and who had given him the reproduction of his own person six times over, deserved gratitude for her solid conjugal virtues. With Doña Zoila, âthere was no fear of novels,â as the doctor said, and a husband could live in perpetual tranquility. Her thirst for elegant audacity did not go beyond the inventions of the couturier, the milliner, and other artists charged with beautifying women. For her, there was no other love than conjugal love. The rest of her whims and inventions were good for the âmad women of Parisâ and not for her, a lady, a married woman, and a mother. She liked men to praise her elegant dresses in salons and her wisdom in appreciating what was chic and what was not; but none of it was praise for her, none of it was expressions of amazement or admiration for her beauty, which remained fresh and alive, defying time. âBut you,â a European told her, âspend a fortune on dresses every year, and it must please you that men admire your luxury and tell you so. â Señora de Pedraza greeted these words with a disdainful gesture. That would be true back in Europe, where women only think about men. âSo,â the curious man continued, âwhy do you dress so elegantly and worry about your personal adornment?â Before answering, Doña Zoila looked at him with a certain commiseration, as if pitying his ignorance: âTo make my friends jealous and make them angry.â Chapter 7. I had been presenting myself every afternoon in the anteroom of the president of the Mortgage Bank for three weeks, to find out if my loan request would be well received by the gentlemen of the Board, when I first spoke with Dr. Pedraza. Some of you may not know what the bonds of the National Mortgage Bank are. On the European stock exchanges, they are considered to be one of those so-called âquietâ bonds; a security that the father of a family can invest his savings in without fear, and the poor widow her meager inheritance. These mortgage bonds enjoy more credit among timid people than loans issued by governments or the obligations of industrial companies, which always have something risky about them. Each bond represents a piece of mortgaged land, something solid, tangible, that cannot disappear or evaporate in a war or a catastrophe. And since the directors of this bank wish to maintain the secure and peaceful prestige of their institution, they proceeded in my time with such slowness and thoroughness in their operations as if they were still living in the colonial era. I aspired to receive money secured by my land; but they, before issuing several hundred new bonds on my property and selling them in Europe to timid people who only have America, vague ideas, needed lengthy reports and repeated explorations by its engineers so that a depreciation of the mortgage wouldnât be possible in the future. The presidentâs usher bowed as an elegantly dressed man of stately appearance entered the antechamber . He opened the door to the presidential office for me and then felt it necessary to give me an explanation so that I wouldnât feel sorry for the injustice of someone entering before me, despite my long wait. âThis is Dr. Pedraza⊠a very wealthy gentleman who has been a national deputy. I saw him again on other afternoons at the Mortgage Bank, but he was expecting the same thing I was expecting, for I have often observed that frequenting the offices does not give the applicant greater confidence, but, on the contrary, gradually takes away the prestige and the open entrance he had on his first visits.â Dr. Pedraza ended up sitting in the antechamber near me. Sometimes the president had left; other times, he didnât want to speak with him, but rather with the bankâs engineers and experts, whose report was always laborious, circumspect, and slow. A random friend introduced us to each other, and since the solitude of the room predisposed us to confidences, we talked a lot during the heavy yet optimistic hours that follow lunch, which are the time of office visits in Buenos Aires. Dr. Pedraza requested the same thing I did, although between his demands and mine lay a difference equal to that which separated my humble persona as a foreign colonizer from his opulence as a large landowner. He wanted to mortgage the ranch he inherited from his parents, a significant transaction for the Bank, as it involved a loan of many hundreds of thousands of pesos. This didnât surprise me, nor did it break the respect the doctor instilled in me as a wealthy man. In that country, one can be a great millionaire and owe enormous sums at the same time. It even seems as if wealth brings with it debts. New businesses are undertaken without fear; people buy without having the money to pay, assuming that the purchased property will be sold within a few months and at a fabulous profit. No one hesitates to borrow large sums⊠This is how that country has grown. It was beyond doubt to me that this opulent individual needed the mortgage money to undertake some considerable and secret business. Seduced by the silence with which I listened to him, Pedraza enumerated the magnificence of the estate he intended to mortgage. Besides, every Argentine is born a propagandist for his country, and becomes roused to eloquence when recounting the grandeur of his native land. The doctor, exaggerating slightly, described to me the pastures of his prairies, passing a hand across his chest to show me how tall he was. I, listening to him, imaginatively contemplated the circular gallop of the troops of mares across the vast field enclosed with barbed wire; the slow rumination of the oxen, improved by continuous selection, almost hornless, with backs as flat as a tabletop, and fleshy, as if the scaffolding of a skeleton had been removed from within. âThere have been years when Iâve sold ten thousand steers, you know, my friend?â Other afternoons he felt the nostalgic need to show me the Buenos Aires of his childhood. Low houses of monotonous colonial architecture; brick sidewalks that resembled stairs due to their numerous ups and downs; streets as deep as ravines, sometimes dusty and sometimes so full of stagnant water that you had to wade through them like streams. Very few people traveled on foot in the city. âI rode to school on horseback, and the other âwell-offâ boys arrived the same way. While the lesson was in progress, there were a few dozen âpetizoâ little horses outside the house, which amused themselves by scratching the ground with their hooves. When I was leaving school, my âpetizoâ had dug a hole about this big⊠The beggars also rode, begging from door to door. The public coachmen found it cheaper not to feed their animals, And when they starved to death, they could harness new ones. They only had to go to the outskirts of the city to buy them for what they were willing to offer. And now I sell horses on my ranch, as expensive as in Europe⊠Besides, how our Buenos Aires has changed! Itâs something to be amazed at, my friend, seeing those avenues and those houses that look like theyâre in New York⊠Sometimes I think my childhood was a dream. But the doctor cut short his patriotic enthusiasm to protect me with one of his kind glances. âAnd you, Galician, what do you plan to do with your money when those gentlemen agree to the operation?â I modestly explained my plans as a colonizer. With the proceeds from the mortgage, I would finish clearing my land; I would buy mechanical tractors and other agricultural machinery manufactured in the United States; I would create an irrigation system, and the profits from the new crop would allow me to pay the interest on the debt and finally eliminate it, selling the land in small plots. But I was ashamed of the modesty of my plans when I remembered the importance of the man listening to me. âYou, Doctor, will really do enormous things on your ranch with that fortune the Bank is going to lend you. Weâll have to see that!â And the doctor welcomed my words, shaking his head with thoughtful gravity. Then he spoke. Times were starting to get bad; the buying and selling of land was coming to a standstill; speculation was no longer a business. It would be wise to return to farming the ranches, as our parents and grandparents had done, but enlarging them, modernizing them⊠I stopped seeing him. The operation on his ranch was almost finished, and at any moment they were going to deliver the mortgage bonds, in other words, the money. For him, the techniciansâ reports seemed brief, and the ritual obstacles crumbled before him. There was a reason why Dr. Pedraza and his wife were a PĂ©rez Zurrialde. Furthermore, Doña Zoila, the Creole noblewoman, happened to be related, more or less closely, to most of the bankâs directors. As if the protection the doctor had extended to meâexpressed only until then with kind words and majestic glancesâwas beginning to exert a real influence on me, a few weeks later the powerful figures at the bank took pity on my insignificance and granted me the mortgage on my land. This represented a respite from my agonizing undertaking, a break during which I could breathe for a few months with the peace of mind that comes with an abundance of money. I would no longer have to beg for small loans from private banks. I paid off debts, undertook the projects I had planned, ordered machinery from the United States, and since the new direction of my enterprise required a delay, during which I would remain inactive, I was seized with the desire to take a short trip to Europe. I had well earned this respite in two years of bitter struggle. Furthermore, I still had some money left, several thousand pesos, which I could spend on a gift for myself, or I immediately felt what they call in Buenos Aires âthe Paris sickness.â Why couldnât I, who hoped to become a millionaire in the future, like South America, get a preview for a few weeks of what the life of such a personage is like in Europe?⊠Precisely a month ago, in Buenos Aires, the newspapers and people had been talking every day about the Cap Bojador, a German ocean liner that had made its maiden voyage from Hamburg or was about to begin its return voyage. This was before the last European war, and the Cap Bojador, which did not surpass in importance most of the ocean liners bound for the United States, was considered a marvel for its large tonnage among the vessels sailing up the River Plate. People spoke of its luxurious salons, its swimming pool, and the far-sighted innovations established in its cabins. attending to the smallest hygienic needs, the greenhouse that spread its garden of tropical flowers on the top deck. An endless crowd descended as if in procession to the dock to visit this floating marvel. Poor Cap Bojador! The Germanic organization had planned everything for it. It even kept a few disassembled cannons in the most secret of its holds so it could quickly become a privateer if a war broke out. And when the news of the war surprised it years later, while anchored in Buenos Aires, it assembled its artillery and went to sea, only to be bombarded and sunk by English cruisers near the coast of Africa. Families who weeks before hadnât even remotely thought about a trip to Europe suddenly felt the need to cross the Atlantic. It became fashionable to be a passenger on the Cap Bojador on its first voyage. It represented a great distinction. Only millionaires could afford, according to the common people, this unprecedented pleasure. I was modestly preparing my trip on another ship when I was informed that there was a small cabin available on the famous ocean liner. Someone had canceled their trip at the last minute. Why shouldnât I have the pleasure of being included, even in the last place, among the opulent passengers of the Cap Bojador, when I was going to Europe to learn how a future millionaire travels and lives? The shipâs departure was preceded by a clamorous and triumphant confusion. All the Germans of Buenos Aires had gathered on the dock to celebrate this glorious event. Music, flags, hochs!, incessant chants of the Kaiser, and chants of Ăber Alles. In addition, a large influx of Creole families, who came to admire and envy those who were leaving; bundles of flowers as huge as sheaves of wheat; boxes of chocolates that looked like suitcases; kisses; Thousands of handkerchiefs fluttering like flags⊠I passed modestly through that confusion. No one knew me, and I knew no one. When the ship pulled away from the dock, I met on one of the streets of this floating city, which glided by without the slightest movement, as if slipping along the bottom of the River Plate . Dr. Pedraza was going to Europe with his entire family. Doña Zoila and her six daughters moved about busily and confusedly, not knowing what to do with the bundles of flowers and boxes of sweets piled on various armchairs on deck: gifts from the many friends who had come to see them off. They all wore strikingly new dresses , âunique designs,â ordered, no doubt, by cable from Paris as soon as the family decided on the trip. The doctor was dressed like I imagined the Speaker of the House of Lords or the English Prime Minister would wear when going on an excursion. The illusions of those days, when we hadnât even seen Lloyd Georgeâs portraits!⊠The rich Argentinian honored me once again with his kind, refined, majestic words, and also with his protective eyes. During the course of the voyage, he often deigned to treat me as if I were his friend and even introduced me to Doña Zoila and the girls, who welcomed me with courteous indifference. It was the most important family on board, both in terms of size and luxurious accommodations. Pedraza and his wife lived in a spacious bedroom, with its own parlor and other amenities. The six girls had resigned themselves to occupying three of the most expensive cabins, each with two beds. Also on board this expedition were a pair of Spanish maids serving the young ladies; a poor relative of Doña Zoila, who deigned to perform no other work than that of escorting the girls in their motherâs absence; the doctorâs Italian valet, and an old mestiza maid who had held Mrs. Pedraza in her arms and followed the family everywhere, like a historical reminder of the noble house of PĂ©rez Zurrialde. In total, twelve people, occupying one entire side of a certain corridor of the ship where The best rooms were there. Mrs. and Mrs. Pedraza traveled âlightly,â according to their mother, as they planned to completely renew their wardrobe when they arrived in Paris. This didnât prevent numerous chests and suitcases from being piled up next to their cabin doors and obstructing the passage : a small portion of the bulk of the luggage hidden in the holds. The voyage from Buenos Aires to Boulogne was going to last approximately twenty days. A decent person must change clothes three times every twenty-four hours, and they couldnât resign themselves to the fact that the other passengers said they had worn the same clothes twice in those twenty days. In total: sixty dresses for each of them, and that was seven! The two eldest daughters had left their boyfriends in Buenos Aires, and every morning they wrote a letter, saving it to post together later at the ports where the ship stopped. His younger sisters danced in the great hall or on the deck, while the shipâs stewards became musicians, sometimes playing string instruments, sometimes brass. They also performed constant gymnastic exercises to cultivate their slimness, engaging in tenacious and heroic battles with their youthful appetites whetted by the sea air. Their meals almost always consisted of a cup of tea, and some of them even went so far as to suppress it , hoping to become more skeletal than their sisters. Dr. Pedraza, on the other hand, delighted in the abundant table on board, as well as in the consideration and respect that accompanied him on his walks around the ship. âHeâs a doctor from Buenos Aires,â some Europeans would say upon returning to their homeland, when they saw this man, âa very wealthy rancher, a âwell-to-doâ person.â What money he must have!⊠When Pedraza saw me, shortly after the ocean liner had set sail, he greeted me by slapping me on the back like a noble prince. âHere you are, little Spaniard!⊠Are you going for a trip through Europe?⊠Youâre right; not everything has to be work⊠You have to spend the money. What a pleasant and kind-hearted fellow!â He recalled our conversations during the early afternoon, sitting in the waiting room of the Mortgage Bank. Then, an absurd, implausible idea crossed my mind. It occurred to me that the money provided by the Mortgage Bank would be used mostly for this sumptuous trip. Perhaps Dr. Pedraza had mortgaged his stay to please his family, eager for a triumphant tour of the old world: a trip that would excite the envy and admiration of the friends they were leaving behind. Chapter 8. After the voyage, we saw little of each other. I couldnât live on the same level as this millionaire. Moreover, I fled from him, not because I disliked him, but out of fear of the dazzling Doña Zoila and her daughters, who seemed to shed a new light on Paris. Le Figaro, the newspaper that pays most attention to the passage of the Americans, spoke almost every day of âMadame de Pedraza, illustrious Argentine lady, and her beautiful daughters.â The family occupied a considerable part of the first floor of a certain monumental hotel near the Arc de Triomphe. Some mornings, the doctor, his wife, and the six girls would set out on horseback to gallop through the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne. This ride, which many, at first surprised, took for a parade of circus performers, served to demonstrate the familyâs opulence. Moreover, they were all excellent horsemen, having learned to ride by instinct on their native estancia, at the same time as they learned to speak. It is not known whether it was admiration or envy that invented the nickname; But the six Pedraza girls began to be nicknamed âthe Argentine Valkyries.â The success of the doctorâs daughters could not have been more flattering to their parentsâ vanity. Iâm not saying that all of Paris was concerned about them. Paris is very large and its life is divided into sectors. But in the In that fragment of the Parisian world where the Pedrazas moved, that is to say, the area between the Bois, the Avenue Kleber, and the boulevards, the popularity of the six Valkyries was ever increasing. In the establishments on the Rue de la Paix, the Champs-ĂlysĂ©es, and the Place VendĂŽme, the name of Madame de Pedraza and her demoiselles frequently resonated , the managers respectfully recommending the speedy fulfillment of orders from such wealthy clients. Many times, when I told them I came from Argentina and had my business there, I heard the same words: âNow there is in Paris a great millionaire from there, Dr. Pedraza, with his wife, a very distinguished lady, and their little girls, who look like a choir of angels. What a lot of money that family spends!â What an enormous fortune the father must have !⊠What a pearl necklace the mother has!⊠And I nodded at these expressions of astonishment and admiration⊠Whatâs the point of talking? In Europe, they have such a concept of solid, immovable, crystallized wealth that they canât imagine the shifting, restless, and constantly changing wealth of the American countries: a wealth that recedes and returns, vanishes and reconstitutes itself, making the same man see himself three or four times in his life, a millionaire like a fairy-tale prince and a visionary beggar. Furthermore, the enormous luxury of the Pedraza family, which I contemplated from afar, ended up disorienting me, making me doubt what I had seen on the other side of the ocean. In reality, all I knew of the doctor was that he had mortgaged the best of his estates; but this didnât mean anything extraordinary or fatal. In the New World, itâs not enough to ask how much a person owns; you have to add: âHow much does he owe?â Everyone, no matter how rich, has enormous debts, incurred to expand their businesses. The rapid growth of young towns requires the rich to live somewhat at random, like gamblers, trusting to their good luck and unhesitatingly taking whatever money is offered to them, in the hope of being able to repay it through new ventures. Perhaps the doctor was richer than I imagined, and his loan should be considered a temporary and unimportant transaction. The following year, a prodigious wheat harvest or one of those âfarmâ sales, where bulls came in by the thousands, which he had described to me with such enthusiasm in his conversations, would be enough to pay off his debt entirely, without having to impose any sacrifice on himself. Before I returned to Argentina, I had firsthand news of the great successes achieved in Paris by Doña Zoila and her daughters. The two eldest were resistant to all flirting and went from party to party, each time wearing a very rich dress; but grave and austere, proud of their luxury and deigning to look only at those of their own sex, just like their noble mother. âWe are very Argentine and we can only marry someone from our own country.â Both continued to write daily to their fiancĂ©s, who were in Buenos Aires. In Paris, they were only interested in the dresses and the praise of women. The other sisters, on the other hand, lived besieged by love and marriage proposals. Even the youngest, who still wore her hair short and loose, had several suitors who wanted her as a wife. The fame of these newly arrived millionairesses had spread throughout all more or less aristocratic circles, where young people stretched out in despair on a couch after having lost the last few thousand francs in the gambling room. It must also be remembered that in the years before the war, the Argentine Republic had just become fashionable, and the geographical knowledge of men eager to acquire a fortune by marrying was considerably broadened by this. Everyone had finally discovered something new: that there are two Americas, North and South. Marriage with American women from the United States was already a declining industry. Noble titles are increasingly less appreciated there. The women of that country, endowed with a practical nature and chastened by experience, reserve the management of their assets for themselves, and the husband is merely a well -fed partner, but without the right to touch his wifeâs fortune: a kind of king consort, with no say in the government. It was advisable to seek accommodation in the other America, where there are also millionaires, fewer in number, but less experienced in this kind of alliances. The very rich doctor opportunely arrived with four marriageable daughters, and all those in Paris who had hoped to save themselves through marriage forgot what English they knew to perfect their tango and smatter a few words of Spanish. Two of the Pedraza ladies began to show their distance due to an aristocratic rivalry. âI can be a duchess if I want,â said one of them, âand you are only wanted by a marquis. â âBut mine is younger than yours,â replied the other. Doña Zoila thought it appropriate to cut short such disputes with the authority of her noble background. She had nothing to say against these individuals who aspired to be her sons-in-law; but they werenât doing her any extraordinary favors by seeking entry into her family. They had a storied past, but the PĂ©rez Zurrialdes werenât just anyoneâs business back home. If they happened to marry her daughters, they wouldnât have to blush, for they were just like them. News began to circulate among the South Americans in Paris that a duke and a marquis wanted to be Dr. Pedrazaâs sons-in-law. They were in a hurry to make this union and wanted it done before the family returned to Buenos Aires. The girls, for their part, were equally in a hurry, wondering what their friends back home would say when they saw them with noble titles. I had to leave Paris during those days, but the confidences of some of the doctorâs friends gave me a rough idea of ââwhat must have happened. These noble personages who descend to seek marriage with the wealthy from across the ocean always display great disinterest when it comes to discussing the material conditions that should govern the marriage. Busy courting the young millionairess, they donât want to interrupt their love affair with vulgar financial discussions, and they send a so-called lawyer, a notary who has always served her family, or the administrator of her bankrupt estate to adjust the agreement with the parents. Dr. Pedraza, a businessman, considered these preliminary marriage negotiations unimportant. He would manipulate the two noble gentlemen who claimed to be his children as he pleased. But instead of speaking with them, he had to receive a visit from two French lawyers, with honeyed words, rough plumage, and hard beaks, like birds of prey. My friend and his noble wife expressed themselves like generous princes who cannot count the immensity of their fortune. The two pledged from the outset to give each of their daughters an annual income of three hundred thousand francs. But the envoys didnât believe in incomes that could be paid faithfully in the first year and then gradually diminished in subsequent years, until they were completely eliminated. They needed positive capital , even if the income was smaller: fields, houses, securities , something that could be converted into money at any time, giving a guarantee of wealth to its possessors. In short, these laborious conferences, in which both sides fought with fine words and perverse intentions, ended as badly as any of the diplomatic interviews governments attend for the purpose of deceiving one another. The duke and the marquis disappeared. The two girls cried a little. Not being able to mark their handkerchiefs and innermost garments with a heraldic crown , to the envy of their friends! The older sisters, who had silently suffered the noble pride of the others, believed the time had come for revenge. âWe should marry people from our own land. Here in Europe, they only seek us out for our great fortune. They would have taken your money, and then, who knows, they might have ended up beating you!â Doña Zoila echoed these words: âThere we donât wear crowns, but weâre just as noble as those here. You, besides being Pedraza, bear a great name because of your mother.â The beautiful lady now detested Paris. As she later told her friends in Buenos Aires, some young men who could almost have been her sons had dared to speak to her in the salons of âsleeping souls that must be awakened,â then mocking the vulgarity of being faithful to oneâs husband and comparing her beauty to the afternoon sun, more dazzling and ardent than that of dawn⊠To her!â To a matron respected by everyone in her country!⊠If she had silently endured such audacity, it was for fear that her husband, a man violent in his temper and a famous pistol shooter, would find out. Pedraza, sincerely repentant of the satisfaction that the possibility of being the father-in-law of such aristocratic figures had given him for a few weeks, now showed a renewed enthusiasm as an American, son of a Republic. âThose titles of nobility, _chĂ©_, may dazzle the gringos of Europe; but us?⊠In South America, that makes us laugh.â Chapter 9. A long time passed without me seeing the doctor again. I learned from the Argentine newspapers of his triumphant return from Europe. Once again, his name and those of all the women who made up his family appeared in the chronicles of high society. Doña Zoila organized charity parties; He was at the head of all the committees for the dissemination of moral principles, and at tea time his word was heard like an oracle, defining elegance and the meaning of a lack of chic. After spending a year in Paris, his authority seemed unshakeable. The doctorâs life was less happy and placid. I would see him drive down Avenida de Mayo in his luxurious automobile or get out on Reconquista Street, where the cityâs banks are located, going from one to another for his numerous and important operations. Everyone continued to regard him with respect, as an influential figure, and many envied his wealth. But from time to time , news that was disturbing to the doctorâs credit reached me . His close friends said that he had spent a million pesos more in Europe than the Mortgage Bank had lent him. At high-society gatherings, people spoke with amazement about the pearl necklace Doña Zoila had purchased in Paris, and the envious pointed out that her husband didnât have the fortune to spend so much. For a long time, I didnât think about Pedraza again, as I had enough to worry about my own fate. Argentina was going through one of those financial crises that are, in their existence, like a normal and periodic illness, recurring approximately every ten years. The rapid and extraordinarily productive businesses had been replaced by a sluggishness of money; waste, panic, selfishness, and poverty. The banks that had previously advanced capital for all kinds of businesses had not only suddenly cut off their credit, but also demanded immediate repayment of their loans. I had to struggle hard at that time to avoid emerging from the crisis completely poor. Had such a calamity not occurred, you would now be listening to a millionaire. Thank goodness I was able to save enough to retire to Paris and live here modestly. But letâs return to our doctor. His situation was similar to that of his other countrymen. He continued to be a capitalist for the people; he continued to live like a millionaire; but the bank directors and the very wealthy landowners, when they spoke of him with respect, pursed their lips as if to block out a cruel, mocking smile. His misfortune reached me in fragments, through scattered news and spaced out, like the detonations of a distant battle approaching or receding , according to the whims of the wind. The family had taken, as always, their box at the Teatro ColĂłn at the beginning of the opera season. This was only natural. Life is inconceivable in Buenos Aires without attending that theater. Rather die! But the doctor had given the impresario not a check for the box , but a ninety-day promissory note. In bad times, many pay that way in that country. One trusts in the future. No one counts only on what they have in hand, like the timid ones of the old world; everyone accepts hope as a partner. Who knows what great deals can be made in the space of ninety days!⊠Since fortune has wings, it only needs a few moments to reach us. I also learned that Pedraza had mortgaged the other estate that belonged to his wife. The two eldest daughters had just married, with a magnificence that drew all of Buenos Airesâ high society to the event. Doña Zoila made her daughtersâ weddings the scene of a historic event. Meanwhile, the poor doctor struggled from morning to night to simultaneously accomplish two seemingly conflicting things: maintain his familyâs opulent appearance without cutting back on expenses and pay off the enormous debts. The harvests from his two estates and the sale of young bulls raised in his fields only served to satisfy these debts. Pedraza, eager to avoid upsetting his wife, concealed his anguish over this situation. As soon as he saw himself at home, surrounded by a luxurious atmosphere, among his single daughters, who talked and laughed like princesses confident in their future, he needed to appear optimistic, imagining a series of marvelous business ventures that would come to bail him out of trouble the next day. I donât want to tire you out by describing in detail how Pedrazaâs ruin accelerated downward. He always needed money; The banks were unwilling to lend it at the current interest rate, and he resorted to usurious loans. Furthermore, he had to sell, at an enormous loss, the land he had acquired to speculate on its rise during the countryâs good times, when wealth was circulating vertiginously. At the same time, when speaking with his married daughters and sons-in-law, he displayed the kindly tranquility of an immensely wealthy man, who upon his death will leave a shower of wealth upon his heirs. He accepted without the slightest hint of annoyance all the requests of the daughters who lived in his house. Doña Zoila, who was vaguely aware that business was not going entirely well, sometimes seemed to hesitate when listing the family expenses to her husband, considering the possibility of some savings. One day, she even hinted that, in a pinch, she was willing to part with her jewels. But this, even though it was a mere hypothesis, seemed to cause such distress to the lady that the doctor hastened to dissuade her. It was impossible for him to accept that his noble companion was changing her ordinary existence. Besides, what would people say when they saw the familyâs luxury diminished? And it was the poor doctor who recommended that his wife avoid overly conspicuous thrift. The girls had to be married, and to that end, it was important that the house retain its appearance of secure and ostentatious abundance. When from time to time chance brought me within reach of my friendâs solemn words and protective eyes, I immediately guessed the havoc this new life of concealed poverty was wreaking on him . He was dressed as elegantly as ever; he retained his lordly appearance; but he was old, much older than his years should have been. âHow are your businesses going, little Spaniard?⊠Bad times: very bad for everyone!⊠But this canât last.â And he patted me on the back with the kindness of a superior being who knows that misfortune exists, but it is for others, for he is above the miseries of the common people. His fall was long. No one gets rich as quickly as those who live outside the business world imagine; nor, as a rule, does anyone go bankrupt in a few moments, as we often see in comedies and novels. There are lightning-fast mines, just as there are instant shipwrecks that only last a few minutes; but most people get rich slowly, or they become poorer like someone descending a ladder, step by step. The doctorâs shipwreck was like that of large sailing ships, which, after filling with water, float with their keels in the air for a long time, drifting from one place to another at the whim of the currents. In reality, I only know about Pedraza what some of his close friends told me incidentally. These stories are in the form of loose episodes and have no congruence; but I have made them all into a compact whole, uniting them with the threads of my suppositions. Using the algebra of induction, Iâve come to imagine everything that happened to the doctor. You might say that what Iâm about to tell you is largely my own invention; but there are inventions that are more true and plausible, because they are logical, than the news we receive as certain from friends and newspapers. Iâve often thought about the afternoons he must have spent alone at his âdeskâ: a rented apartment on Avenida de Mayo used for his offices. Far from home and free from the seductions exerted on him by the women in his family, forcing him to view everything optimistically , he was faced with the enigma of his situation. He was going to be ruined in a country where money is more important than in other nations and is more necessary for life. Was it possible for a RĂłmulo Pedraza to exist, protected by his friends and holding a public job humbly supporting his family? The idea that his wife and daughters would ever have to mend his dresses, leading the painful life of ruined rich people who seek the protection of more fortunate relatives, seemed as absurd and inconceivable to him as a violation of astronomical laws. Was it logical that Zoila, his wife, would ever be poor? Furthermore, he felt fear when he thought of his daughters. He knew the stories of many young ladies whose parents had become impoverished. A few managed to marry rich men, just like in novels; most resigned themselves to descent, losing the distinction of their origins, becoming secret workers who labored for ill-reward to sustain a miserable life; and some ended up serving as lovers to men who, under other circumstances, would not have dared to aspire to be their husbands. The poor doctor trembled with fear and anger at the thought that his daughters, the four daughters he had left at home, might find themselves in the same situation as some unfortunate women who attract libertines with a new charm: that of having been young, wealthy, and luxuriously educated ladies of good repute before paternal ruin forced them to become what they are. Chapter 10. Like all those who live insecurity and threatened by danger, believing they felt the earth tremble beneath their feet, the doctor superstitiously accepted the existence of mysterious forces that can protect and save mortals, fixing his eyes on them with the secret preferences of predestination. Why shouldnât fortune help him, pulling him with a maternal slap and then raising him above those miseries that forced him during the day to painful pretenses, and kept him all night between the gnawing jaws of insomnia?⊠The windows had to be opened to fate, so that it could touch him with its wings. And he became a gambler, playing on the Stock Exchange and in the aristocratic clubs, where he was one of the most respected and listened to members. He also gave orders to the people at his âdeskâ to leave entry free to anyone who came pretending to speak to him. Who knows if the humblest visitor would come to propose a saving business!⊠In young countries, with continuous immigration, that attract the For undisputed adventurers, but equally for brilliant visionaries or inventors, anything is possible. One day, a life insurance agent won him over with his pleasant conversation, getting him to sign a two hundred thousand peso policy for his wife and daughters. This would require him to pay a significant premium every year; but since he was accustomed to the enormous returns he had to deliver to his creditors, he considered the increase of one more amount insignificant ⊠The insurance agent, pleased with the commission he had earned, must have spoken to his colleagues; the door of the âofficeâ remained open, and almost everyone in Buenos Aires who worked in the same business began to visit Pedraza . At first, he tried to resist a second operation based on his death; but in the end, he began to show a certain liking for it, and since he continued to receive such visitors well, they seemed to pass the word on to one another. Rarely was a week gone by when the doctor didnât write a new policy. Despite his maturity, he remained strong. The insurance company doctors gave a resounding report on his splendid physical condition, free of all illness, and business was conducted without hindrance. Soon , Pedraza was insured with more than a dozen companies, some in Argentina, others in Europe, and the United States. He had also signed counterinsurance contracts and performed other operations recommended by agents eager to earn new premiums. In the end, he was worth more than two million pesos, as he delightedly told his friends. This was the amount the companies were supposed to give his family at the time of his death. But his friends, admiring the strength of his body, replied: âBefore you die, you will have paid a little over two million in premiums. Bad business for you! Youâre going to live a long time.â Doña Zoilaâs husband smiled, proud of his vigor, stating that he considered himself stronger than ever, and in the end, it would indeed be the insurance companies that exploited his credulity. Then he would conclude, with the nonchalance of a rich man: âThatâs expensive; but what does it matter? Itâs money Iâm saving for my family. â One morning I heard him say these same things in a bank, when several applicants for an immediate loan were gathered in the managerâs waiting room ⊠And suddenly, death, an unexpected death, which many called âstupidâ for its absurd inopportunity; as if death could ever be opportune . It was summer, and the doctorâs family was spending time on the Tigre Islands. These islands are near Buenos Aires, and are formed by the ParanĂĄ River as it flows into the estuary called the RĂo de la Plata: an intricate network of navigable channels between half- submerged lands, covered with lush, evergreen vegetation. Itâs a beautiful place, worthy of serving as the setting for a poem. The trouble is that nothing noteworthy has ever happened there. Many wealthy people in Buenos Aires, especially families of ancient origin, have a vacation home near Tigre, and Doña Zoila had deemed it essential to have a similar building to complement her luxurious hotel near Palermo Park. I believe it appropriate to mention in passing that the two noble residences were mortgaged. The doctor spent the nights with his family, accompanying the girls when they wanted to dance at the Casino del Tigre. In the morning, he took the train to Buenos Aires to attend to his business, returning at dusk. It was on one of these return trips that the doctor fell onto the tracks while moving from one car to another. No one could clearly explain how this incident occurred, which caused such excitement in the city. What is certain is that the doctorâs body was found torn to pieces between the rails. The newspapers wrote at length, censuring the railroad company for the poor condition of its equipment. Night had already fallen, and darkness must have been the true cause of this misfortune; but The company was also to blame for this, due to the age of its cars. The bridges that connected them were defective; the doors opened automatically. Undoubtedly, a man like Dr. Pedraza, constantly preoccupied with his business, distractedly passing from one car to another, had been a victim of such deficiencies. His funeral was magnificent. The newspapers published long biographies of him, considering his tragic death a national loss. âAh, doctor! Heroic doctor!â⊠Only a few of us would look at each other fixedly when his name was mentioned. We spoke to each other with our eyes, reading our shared thoughts in them; but no one dared to express it in words. Some would have liked to speak; But how could the unanimous public sentiment over the loss of an illustrious son of the country be interrupted with malicious, inopportune, and dangerous suppositions? The general mourning had served to demonstrate the numerous friendships of the late doctorâs family and the prestige of Doña Zoila in high societyâa PĂ©rez Zurrialde! The widowed Mrs. Pedraza and her daughters collected two million pesos from the insurance companies. Everyone admired the foresight of this good family man. They considered him wealthy; he left his family a great fortune, although undoubtedly somewhat diminished by the current crisis , and to such an inheritance had to be added the substantial insurance coverage for his death. Money always arrives in time, and on this occasion it would serve to ease the familyâs grief. Doña Zoila freed her properties from mortgages, and soon, luckâto which the poor doctor had uselessly opened the window for its entranceâdecided to go in search of her heirs. The national crisis passed , wealth began to circulate again; the world, which needs bread and steaks to live, bought wheat and cattle at good prices; the familyâs two estates, clear of profits, provided magnificent incomes. The widowed Mrs. Pedraza continues to be one of the countryâs leading matrons. She draws, as always, everyoneâs attention with her elegance; but now it is the elegance of a noble lady who has given up making her friends envious; an elegance based on muted colors, rich lace, and solid jewels. For a charity concert or theatrical performance to have an audience right up to the aisles, she must organize it. Merchants tremble to see her as president of a new charitable institution, knowing that this means one more tribute they will have to pay with a timid smile, or risk losing their clientele. Famous comedians, concert artists, and writers who come from Europe to give lectures are doomed to failure if they do not count on her protection. She hasnât returned to the old world; but from Buenos Aires she legislates on matters of elegance, and the fashion commissioners who arrive from Paris come to show her their new designs before the public. All her daughters have already married. Her grandchildren are beginning to tug at her skirts, and every time she feels a fleeting sympathy for any of her sons-in-law, she sighs: âMy son, I only wish that you are as good to the family as my late doctor was.â The Sun of the Dead Chapter 11. When people spoke to Montalbo of his universal fame, the famous French writer would either become thoughtful or smile melancholically. âGlory!â Someone had summed it up by saying that it is simply âa surname repeated by many.â A novelist admired by Montalbo gave it another title. âGloryâ was âThe Sun of the Dead.â All the men whose memory history preserves, famous in life and after death, or unknown while they lived and praised when they could no longer hear their praise, endured, with an immaterial existence, under the light of this sun that only illuminates those who no longer have eyes to see it. Montalbo felt a shudder of dread when he thought of the star that exists only for a few. He wished that it would illuminate his tomb for many centuries. In reality, everything he had done was to achieve this posthumous distinction. But at the same time, he imagined glory as a dull red star, with a sharp and icy light, similar to those rays decomposed in laboratories, which dazzle but emit no heat. The sun of the dead made him discover new charms in the vulgar sun of the living, a star that illuminates infinite miseries, but also brings in its impassive course many days of short happiness. And to think that, in order to obtain a ray of this sun from the tombs, men wage endless wars, oppress their fellow men, live deaf and blind to the magnificence of Nature, and give ambition the place of love!⊠The poet also recalled the eclipses and the whimsical rotation of that star, splendid and cold, which leaves the entire future in unfathomable night, illuminates only a small part of the present, and reserves its cascades of barren light for the motionless plains of the past, for the dusty fields of history, full of ruins and silent as a cemetery. Montalbo wasnât sure what he might find beyond death; he wasnât even certain of finding anything, whatever it might be; but the living considered glory, âthe sun of the dead,â to be something of indisputable reality, and he relied on this affirmation to imagine what his existence beyond the grave would be like. His body would gradually pulverize as the men still alive repeated his name and passed it on to other men, like a repository, before dying in turn. And he, for all recreationâif he continued to exist after deathâwould contemplate how that crude, icy glow of chemical light shone over his grave. As the great man was already beginning to feel old, he shuddered away these evocations of his imagination. Why concern himself in life with literary immortality, which is the most hazardous of lotteries? The sun of glory capriciously illuminated the tombs of many men it never warmed while they lived. Instead, like a fickle woman, it enveloped in the cone of shadow hanging from its back others it caressed while they existed. He cast his brilliance upon a few with such generosity that it illuminated their persons and works with their voices , while for the majority, it only touched their faces with a single ray, leaving in the shadow of oblivion everything else they produced as justification for their renown. Montalbo smiled sadly when he thought of his celebrity, which so many envied. His books, now famous, might become contemptible within fifty years. âMost of the famous works of the past,â he thought, âhave not come down to us, and we only admire them because of the testimony of a few contemporaries who affirm their excellence. Other ancient books have survived, but only a few scholars read them. The general public shuns them, while praising the author out of a traditional convention. My present fame will dissolve a few years after my death.â Perhaps if he survives and manages to emerge through the other mouth of the tunnel of the first oblivion that every deceased celebrity goes through, he will be a mere name in the dictionaries and a list of books that no one reads. In his hours of pessimism , he regarded with a certain disdain all the intellectual grandeurs of human civilization, held to be eternal and immutable. The sea level might rise a few meters, invading the land; the earthâs crust might crack with the infinite perforation of a pox of volcanoes; our planet, in a deviation from its orbit, might move away from the sun or approach it, and all human life, with its pride, its varieties, and its dreams, would disappear in a few minutes, books, paintings, and monuments disappearing into the air like ash butterflies. Glory deserved its title of âsun of the dead.â It was something negative and deceptive, like death, upon which men build so many illusions. religious. But the writer, suddenly in need of spiritual consolation, abandoned these gloomy thoughts about the hereafter, concentrating his gaze on the present. Glory was then for him something positive and pleasant, as long as the one who enjoys it lives. Montalbo felt its life-giving warmth , equal to that of the sun that illuminates the living. He could not complain about it. It had transformed his existence with the exuberant generosity of the tropical heat, which hastily develops the errant or imperceptible germ that has fallen to the ground, making it soar like a vigorous vegetal stream laden with murmuring and solid life. He remembered his painful days, the days of his early youth, when the star that in its meridian hours gives a feigned and glorious life to the dead had not yet touched him with its dawning rays. His first advances had been slow and sad. He had to make his way in France, and he had not been born there. His father belonged to an illustrious family settled in a South American republic. His grandparents had been fabulously wealthy, with properties as vast as states. The eldest son of the family was a hero of the conquest of the New World, a Spanish sea captain, Don Alonso de Montalbo, founder of the same city where the poet was born. While in Paris, his father had married a French woman, later taking her across the ocean. He had all the good and bad qualities of the old-fashioned Creole: chivalrous and wasteful; sentimental and cruel; capable of the most absurd sacrifices for the woman he loved, and equally capable of forgetting her for a mulatto woman from the countryside hours later. Upon examining himself internally, Montalbo often discovered the character of this father, whom he had never known, since the Creole died when he was only a few months old. He was assassinated in a political revolt, and having squandered the last remnants of the Montalbo estate, which had been considerably diminished from generation to generation, the widow returned to Paris. This child, who bore the Spanish name JosĂ© MarĂa and a conquistadorâs surname, stammered his first words in French. His mother always spoke to him in her own language. But at the same time, in the kitchen, little Montalbo was forced to learn Spanish to understand Bernarda, a mestizo woman with bulging lips, burning eyes, and grimaces of constant protest. He complained about the cold in Paris and the wickedness of its inhabitants, who insisted on speaking differently than other Christians; but he followed the lady in her wanderings and poverty so as not to abandon the child, who received his caresses like a mischievous and playful guinea pig. The writer forgot the privations of his childhood, the difficulty he faced in his studies, the isolation often created by his exotic name, the death of his mother as a result of so many hidden hardships, and the miseries of his first marriage, to focus on the comforts and abundance of his present existence. After the harsh initiation he had endured on the way to fame, he displayed a tireless generosity. His books were read by millions. Translators awaited them impatiently to give them the garb of a new language, and then they spread throughout the world like brilliant butterflies, whose triumphant flight was watched by people with admiring eyes. His sonnets achieved fame even in countries where they could not be read in their original form; his plays remained on the billboards, sometimes for years. In recent times, cinematography had added the charm of plasticity and movement to many of his novels. All this success had brought with it the practical consequence of well-being and abundant money. The little Creole who tried many times to move the copper-haired Bernarda with his babbling to give him a second piece of bread, without her being able to pay attention; the bohemian who had wandered the streets of Paris more than once, lacking shelter, after Once the cafĂ©s were closing, he now owned a private hotel with a vast garden in the Passy district, near the Bois de Boulogne, a luxurious residence visited with veneration by his admirers and arousing the envy of many of his literary comrades. He had also bought a historic castle on the banks of the Loire, where he spent the autumn months, and in winter he went down to the French Riviera to see the Nice carnival and the motley or interesting public of Monte Carlo. He owned two automobiles. The post office delivered him daily letters of admiration from the most remote corners of the earth. Everyone called him âdear maestro.â Most respected him as an eminent man of his time. Some discussed him to the point of slander, worrying about him constantly , which represents a new form of admiration⊠Never, not even in his moments of most exaggerated optimism, had he been able to imagine the Montalbo of his youthful years of poverty would come to be so favored with glory and material success. But man is an eternal restlessness, a constantly renewed doubt, and the novelist, accustomed to the psychological analysis of the imaginary beings who figured in his stories, often asked himself when examining himself: âAm I truly happy?â Chapter 12. After the age of twenty, when, his mother dead, he went to live in the Latin Quarter, Montalbo simultaneously experienced the anguish of a miserable youth unable to find a way to achieve together bread and renown, and the first satisfactions of love. In reality, more than love, what he savored during that time was the pride of his masculine vanity. The time had not yet arrived when men resolved to suppress their hair ornaments, abhorring beards and hair as something anachronistic and unclean. Saxon influence had not yet made the mustache trimmed short or the face completely clean-shaven fashionable. All those who aspired to literary or artistic glory, in order to distinguish themselves from the bourgeoisie, let their natural head ornaments grow , exuberantly imitating the plumes and manes that in the animal kingdom distinguish the proud, ambitious, and combative male from the other, obscure and humble beasts. Montalbo, poorly dressed and poorly fed, often managed to make elegant women, upon passing him on the street, turn their eyes with sudden interest: âWhat an artistâs head!â From his remote ancestors, the Andalusian Arabs, grandparents of the conquistador who embarked for the New World, he had a soft, black, curly beard, a nose with an energetic curve, and eyes whose pupils seemed to caress with the fineness of velvet. His face, darkly pale, was framed by two intensely black locks of hair that descended to below his ears. The girls of the Latin Quarter, Russian students, painterâs models, or simply aspirants to the conquest of numerous jewels and a luxurious hotel across the river, admired him for his âexotic beauty,â as they called it. One woman, who, by dint of visiting âstudios,â boasted a certain artistic erudition, had nicknamed him VelĂĄzquez, for finding him a certain resemblance to the Spanish knights portrayed by the master. His friends , who knew the history of his ancestors and his birthplace, called him âMontalbo the Conqueror.â It was during this time that he met Duprat and his daughter Matilde. This sculptor, already well into his years, and always prone to attribute his lack of success to the machinations and envy of famous artists who began working at the same time as him, sought the company of youth. Beginners respected him, calling him âmaster,â for his age more than for his works. They also listened with delight to his devastating verbosity, his endless declamations of a man embittered by mediocrity. At the end of an alley in Montrouge he had his poor studio: an old stable at the end of an abandoned garden. There they would meet in the In the afternoons, from the Latin Quarter or Montparnasse, many young seekers of glory and wealth along the various paths of literature, music, or the visual arts. Hatred for their predecessors who had already tasted the honey of success, the innovative zeal of enthusiasm, and the contempt for the âelders,â which was often nothing more than a twisted manifestation of envy, united them all in fraternal friendship. Furthermore, on winter evenings , the sculptor would set the stove in his studio glowing white, and this fire seemed to attract them, tired of suffering the sharp bite of the cold in their miserable hotel rooms or in their attics. Another attraction of Dupratâs studio was the presence of his daughter. The sculptorâs friends harbored no vain illusions when thinking of this modest-looking girl, concise in her words, who displayed in all her actions the calm and firm will of an excellent housewife . Many wondered how this child could have been born to such a disorderly father as Duprat. No one had ever met the mother, and most assumed Matilde was the fruit of the bohemianâs relationship with some industrious and vulgar village woman, who disappeared after his death , leaving him this living memory. Any attempt to win her over was useless. Those who came to the studio for the first time either assumed the attitude of a brilliant artist confident of their future glory or presented themselves as bewildered jokers, skilled at making a woman laugh with their words. They were soon convinced that they were wasting their time. Matilde lived among them as if she were passing through and belonging to another world. It was even impossible for her to hide a certain contempt for the ideas and customs of these young people and their father. She loved order, provision, cleanliness, a quiet home where everything proceeded methodically. She had a âdull and grayâ beauty, according to visitors to the studio, which was like a reflection of her discreet and humble soul; A beauty that was not immediately apparent, revealing itself to the observer little by little, as the days went by. The fatherâs friends wondered doubtfully if Matilda was beautiful. Finally, they acknowledged a certain beauty in her, but added: âSheâs not fit for an artist; she was born to marry a bourgeois.â The young woman tried to remain hidden in the rooms next to the studio. After spending her adolescence with some of her motherâs relatives, she had had to get used to the somewhat free conversations of the sculptor and his companions. Inconvenient words seemed to slip over her uncomprehendingly. Her grave modesty passed deaf and unmoved by this environment of violent and disorderly bohemians. Despite such immunity, she tried to stay away from it whenever she could. Only on the evenings when the sculptor treated his friends to wine or beer, eager to show them he was making money despite the envy of his famous companions, did Matilda appear in the studio to serve the guests, assuming the air of a good hostess. Montalbo became aware of the animosity with which this young woman distinguished him above all her companions. She avoided speaking to him, seemed to ignore his compliments or greeted them with visible detachment. She loathed him, no doubt, because of that exotic beauty so admired by the licentious girls of the Latin Quarter, and because of certain stories she had heard from her father and his friends commenting on the âConquerorâsâ good fortune in love . The young poet was a brilliant and unpleasant embodiment of all the disorder and boasting that she silently scorned in visitors to the studio. This muted rebuke from the young woman made Montalbo pay more attention to her, with the persistence of a wounded vanity. Without either of them knowing how it happened, one evening they looked at each other face to face. Their eyes seemed to suffer a mutual attraction, holding their gaze for a long time. They both thought they were seeing each other for the first time. He, who had always considered her an insignificant woman, suitable for Even more so for the wife of a poor clerk, he glimpsed through her calm face a beauty he hadnât suspected until that moment, fresher and more alluring than that of any other woman he had ever met. Matilde, in turn, thought she could see with her eyes the hidden recesses of the poetâs soul, and she told herself that the handsome VelĂĄzquez was an excellent young man, better than all his comrades, considering the stories attributed to him as unheard of . Nor could Montalbo, recalling his past, say who was the first of the two to reveal this sudden love in words. Perhaps it was both at the same time; perhaps it was neither, for, sensing the mutual attraction of their wills, they considered themselves bound by love before telling each other. They began to see each other outside the studio, fleeing that atmosphere of shouting, gossip, and fleeting enthusiasm, which smelled of tobacco, fever , and poverty. She, taking advantage of the freedom her father had left her, sought out Montalbo to stroll together in the Bois de Boulogne or some garden on the other side of the Seine, far from the Left Bank, where they might bump into people they knew. This healthy and serious love, which from the first moments had them talking about their impending marriageâas if it could take no other form than a calm and legal oneâgave Montalbo renewed willpower, infusing him with greater strength for his work. Following Matildaâs directions, he found it easier to navigate the paths he had previously lingered at, discouraged by the obstacles he sensed along them. The sculptorâs daughter seemed to influence his destiny, granting him modest, limited, but unremitting good fortune. It was during this period that famous magazines published his verses and his first stories, and he began to see his work rewarded with small sums. Her good sense led him to abandon the circle publications and the small-circulation magazines, read only by their own contributors and from which no money could be expected. Precisely when Montalbo was beginning to consider himself on the road to wealth because his fiancĂ©e was saving a few hundred francs he had earned, which were to be used to settle down in their future marriage, an event occurred that for the poet was almost equivalent to a tragic catastrophe. Of all the famous and wealthy artists, whom Duprat contemptuously called âthe established ones,â the only one he set aside, excluding him from his hatred and granting him only relative admiration, was the famous composer Fontana. This musician had remained his friend since his youthful poverty. Music has nothing to do with sculpture, and Fontana, a glorious master who only understood his art, treated Duprat as an equal, agreeing to consider him a misunderstood genius, since this concession could not diminish his own glory. The sculptor, for his part, reciprocated such deference by expressing his admiration for Fontanaâs work: a reasoned admiration, with numerous objections, for he was incapable of blindly venerating anyone except himself. For him, the first musicians were the Germans and the Slavs, some because they were dead, others because they lived far away; but after them, there was only Fontana in the world. When, from time to time, the famous master appeared in the sculptorâs studio, all his companions became more aggressive in their judgments and harsher in their words. It was necessary for this famous man who had âarrivedâ to be fully aware of his independence and not to believe in any possible flattery. Even the owner of the house welcomed the illustrious visitor with excessive familiarity, making him feel the privilege it represented for a celebrated artist of official standing to be received at this gathering of independent and ignored geniuses. A few hours later, the same young people would say to their cafĂ© companions : âToday I was with Fontana, the greatest of musicians after Wagner!â And they continued to invent hyperbolic praises in honor of the man who had distractedly shaken his hand, exchanging a few words with them all. The sculptor, for his part, divided his time according to his famous friendâs visits, and when recalling a domestic or external event, he would say reflectively: âThat was two days after the last evening Fontana came.â Through the indiscretion of a friend of Dupratâs, to whom Duprat communicated his financial difficulties and family affairs, Montalbo learned what was happening. Maestro Fontana was in love with Matilde and seemed eager to marry her. The poet was astonished by such news, as if it represented something improbable. Fontana was nearly sixty years old; he was older than the sculptor. His life was full of amorous episodes. As a young man, as a celebrated pianist, he had known glory in the form of applause, but also in feminine smiles and promising glances. He had abused, according to commentators on his brilliant career, that power of suggestion that orators, singers, and musicians have over women; a mysterious influence that makes them shudder, often squeezing their throats with a historical lump. Later, his graceful and melancholic operas, famous throughout the world and always dealing with love, made every foreigner passing through Paris consider it indispensable to take home a dedicated portrait of Fontana . But the composer seemed tired of his romantic love affairs, perhaps more interesting, seen by outsiders, than they had been in reality. Matilda, with her calm and reposeful beauty of a lady of the house, made him think of the vulgar delights of marriage. It was the sudden enthusiasm for the garden of his birthplace that a traveler feels when he returns from a circumnavigation of the globe, satiated with rare and distant fruits. The famous maestro wanted to marry, as his parents had, feeling a somewhat senile tenderness at seeing this young woman who reminded him of his motherâs industrious virtues. Duprat spoke enthusiastically to his confidant. âItâs truly a stroke of luck⊠just look closely. A famous man, lots of money, and when he diesâbecause he must inevitably die before my daughterâMatilde will inherit all his royalties, and you have to think that his operas are sung all over the world.â The father didnât seem to have any doubts about the imminent realization of this marriage. Montalbo didnât have any doubts either. He saw himself weak, defenseless, despicable when compared to that famous man. He thought for a moment that a minor poet, even one almost unknown, has a perfect right to kill a famous musician if he gets in his way; but his aggressiveness immediately subsided. What could he do, when Matilde would undoubtedly be the first to agree to this unexpected marriage? How could he resist the seductions of wealth and glory ? Glory also exerted its dazzling influence over him. He remembered many Sunday afternoons when he had attended famous concerts, a living drop of the human sea that surged with enthusiasm, crowding around the theaterâs circular railing. Countless times he had applauded and acclaimed this manâs works. He even remembered an argument, which almost ended in a fight, waged against several people who tried to whistle a daring work, in the so-called âlast manner,â by the maestro. In his childhood, the first opera he heard was one by Fontana. His mother, sitting at the piano, often sang, in a low voice, a love ballad, which made him think, no doubt, of the distant land of America, where she had been happy for a few years. And this ballad, which made her maternal eyes shine with the crystals of tears, was also his. How can one launch into battle with this son of glory? When he spoke to Mathilde on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, his voice was tremulous and faint: the voice of a helpless child about to cry. âI know Fontana wants to marry you. Your father celebrates this as an honor, and you will undoubtedly accept him. He has what I donât have: Glory⊠Heâs so famous! Matilda looked at him with an expression of astonishment and pity; one of those looks that women, in constant contact with men of talent, reserve to welcome the nonsense they say on certain occasions. Then she smiled. âBut Fontana is so old! He could well be my father⊠Perhaps older than my father.â She paused for a few seconds, then added forcefully: âLove me very much and donât worry about the maestro. You are the one who has what he can no longer have.â Montalboâs ears rang with emotion. At first, he felt proud of the triumph of his youth. Then he looked at Matilda with a certain pity. Very good, very sweet⊠and very womanly. He wanted her to be his wife, but at the same time he judged her vulgar and unintelligent. To speak like that of the great Fontana!⊠At last, a woman. Only men can appreciate what glory is. Chapter 13. Montalbo recalled the first years of his marriage with the same melancholy one remembers the times of misery when one is rich, or the dangerous adventures when one lives forever risk-free. He considered this period of his life very interesting; but there was no way he would agree to live it a second time. At night, he would find himself in the dining room of the apartment he and Matilde occupied, in a building inhabited by modest employees and well-paid workers. Any one of the living rooms in their current homes was larger than all the bedrooms combined in the house they were to settle in. The dining room also served as his study. Until the early hours of the morning, he would remain bent under the cone of yellowish light from the lamp, writing on the white oilcloth that served as a tablecloth. What dreams, what hopes, suddenly transformed into doubts!⊠It was then that he produced his most famous works, which went completely unnoticed when they were released to the public. A novel of his, now circulating worldwide, reaching several million copies in various languages, had remained unpublished for many years without finding more than five hundred curious readers. Plays written in that roomâsaturated by the nearby kitchen with the smells of mediocre, quickly prepared foodâ currently earned their author a substantial income, after having lain long forgotten in the archives of entrepreneurs or having been deemed inadmissible. The maestro recalled with emotion that some nights, on the other side of the table, Matilda wrote likewise. She did not do so like her husband, on large sheets of paper, but in a small notebook similar to those used by cooks. Montalbo was sure that if he searched a little in the antique furniture of his libraryâeach of which had cost him many thousands of francs, all of which now served as mementos of his days as a poor manâhe would find some of these touching notebooks. With his eyes raised, biting his pen, he would chase the rhymes of his little poems. At other times, frowning, he would move his hand with the nervous speed of enthusiasm, developing a chapter from those sentimental novels that had interested the female public of both worlds, hastening the hour of his celebrity. He would describe, with the vigor of things he had seen, the park of the luxurious castle, the gatherings of the hunting guests, the amorous intrigues of this elegant society, the drama hidden beneath friendly smiles and courteous words, the complicated and subtle psychology of the duchess, the protagonist of the fable. Meanwhile, Matilda, sitting on the other side of the table, was writing in her little notebook: âCoal, 1.50 francs; sugar, 0.35; coffee, 0.70; bread, 1.25; meat, 2.â And when he stopped writing, adding up the amounts, he would also frown, just like the novelist; but it was to make the result of the addition level out with the shortage of money Available. During these years of poverty, Matilde became a mother twice: a boy and a girl; these births brought the old sculptor to the house. The free and independent artist still held a grudge against his daughter for refusing to become the wife of the famous master. Raising the two children increased the motherâs worries. Montalbo had to go to extremes to meet the needs of a growing family. The early education of these children was almost the same as that of the children of the well-to-do workers who were their neighbors. Matilde, prematurely aged by housework and a lack of money, treated these somewhat rude but friendly neighbors with sisterly deference. They all saw in her a woman of the upper class who had fallen on hard times, and in her husband a man who might one day be one of those who write for the newspapers and end up governing the country. Montalbo felt the stirrings of a tearful tenderness and a certain vague remorse when recalling the sacrifices of his spirited companion. He cut out the wine and coffee intended for her from the household budget, claiming they were harmful to her health, and in this way managed to increase the purchase of milk for their children. He also suddenly discovered that meat was bad for her. And while he scrupulously took care of the steak and the bottle of Bordeaux for her husband, affirming that a working writer must eat well to continue his work, she feigned a lack of appetite, trusting her nutrition to the random purchases of cheap purchases or the leftovers from her husbandâs dinner. The writer made slow progress in increasing his remuneration for his work, and just when he believed himself forever condemned to haggling with publishers who scorned him, and to unsuccessfully combating the indifference of a public refractory to retaining his name in their memory, success and celebrity suddenly appeared. It was like a detonation that dazzled and deafened Montalbo. He could never determine the day he began to become truly famous; nor was it possible for him to say when wealth, which had always ignored his existence, began to bend the course of its elusiveness, rushing toward him like a metallic stream. After much searching in his memory, he finally concluded that his fame had begun the day the postman brought him piles of letters and newspapers with stamps from various countries, and his wealth when the editors, instead of making him wait in his outer office, wrote to him at home, calling him âdear maestroâ and inviting him to lunch. Afterward, his rise was rapid, dazzling, with successive triumphs, like those dreams where the tyrannies of gravity disappear and one flies with a lightness that overcomes all obstacles. The same publishers who had bought his books en masse and at a low price paid for them by the page, then by the line, and finally, foreign magazines adjusted his stories to so much per word. Translators impatiently awaited his novelistic inventions, to strip them of their original attire and cover them with the finery of new languages, sending them around the world. The most diverse and distant audiences regarded Montalbo with the same silent anxiety as the Arabs regarded the cafĂ© storyteller, capable of relating marvelous, eternally interesting stories for months on end . Around his name, the magical prestige of storytellers was growing , whose stories delighted the Roman plebs and who were called to sit at Caesarâs bedside, entertaining him with their verbal novels on sleepless nights. When Montalbo, an interesting and poetic storyteller of fables, had just passed forty, wealth began to fall upon him like a steady drizzle. Then this rain turned into a downpour, to the point that the writer said, with a contemptuous sincerity that was at bottom pure pretense: âIâm beginning to get bored of such enormous and continuous profit.â At the beginning of this wealth, Matilda left the world. They then lived A small hotel near Monceau Park. They had several servants. The automobile already existed, but was not yet in common use, and the novelist had purchased a coupe and a team of fine horses for his wifeâs use. He was able to indulge his romantic interests, largely fulfilling the dreams he had cherished in his youth, and he bought antique furniture, tapestries, old chasubles, and liturgical objects, while also building up an enormous library. His two children were educated in renowned schools. Matilda, always older than her years required, dressed modestly, and her gaunt appearance contrasted with the youthful joy of her victorious husband. She only felt the satisfaction of her emerging wealth when she thought of the charities she could provide. And suddenly, as if it were impossible for her to grow accustomed to such prosperity, she was dead. Nor could Montalbo, recalling his past, be sure to determine the true cause of this death. He had left her side forever because his presence was no longer necessary, because it was considered inopportune in this new atmosphere of triumph and sudden luxury. Perhaps the poor woman had died thinking that her great man would thus be freer to continue his glorious path. In the following years, the widower truly considered himself more relaxed and agile in following glory, which marched before him like a tireless friend. He had experienced everything that celebrity can give a man . It was no longer possible for him to acquire luxurious homes; he had substantial deposits in many banks; he could suspend his work whenever he wanted, without fear of the future. His name, when loudly announced , turned heads. Praise poured in for him from all corners of the earth; he received official honors, and at the same time, a section of the youth, impatient and iconoclastic, made an exception in his favor, looking at him with a certain sympathy, as if he were eternally young . At times, he even regretted not being the object of frequent attacks, believing some trace of shadow necessary in this glory of monotonous brilliance. Love had also come to place itself at his command like a slave of celebrity, a love less tranquil and regular than the one Matilda had introduced him to. At the height of his maturity and in the first part of the decline of his existence, Montalbo still retained that manly beauty once admired by the girls of the Latin Quarter. The former âConquerorâ had trimmed his beard and his long hair so that the shine of his gray hair would be less visible; the sad fan of wrinkles was beginning to spread around his eyes ; but the youthful brightness of his pupils, his springtime smile of a triumphant man satisfied with life, his vigorous body and his aquiline profile, inherited from soldiers and navigators, maintained the ancient interest inspired by his person. Foreign women passing through Paris found him similar to his portraits, just as they had imagined him when reading his books. At tea parties, he often met still-beautiful ladies who consulted him on spiritual problems, eventually inviting him to contemplate the sunset alone from the terrace of Saint-Germain, or to take a morning walk along some mysterious path in the Forest. Others visited him at his home, from five to seven in the evening, to reveal, behind closed doors, their psychological inner workings. What some young writers envied him most was the legend of romantic triumphs that was growing around his name. Montalbo maintained a discreet silence when someone alluded to this celebrity in his presence. At other times, he accepted with modest or enigmatic smiles the comments of his friends or the malicious insinuations of certain newspapers. He had the inexhaustible enthusiasm and easy credulity of those who arrive late to love, changing the order of the periods of their lives. After the years of quiet and methodical married community, which had been years of work and deprivation, he felt a real hunger. of passionate, disorderly, and dizzying adventures. He wanted to live novels in reality, after having fabricated so many in his imagination. When his wife disappeared, he no longer had scruples or obstacles to hold him back, and he moved forward with the bewilderment of a young man who finds new incentive in his love affairs when they are accompanied by a certain scandal, flattering to his vanity. This second existence of Montalboâs slowly alienated his family. The sculptor Duprat had died of alcoholism, after telling all those who would listen that his son-in-law lacked talent and had murdered his wife to freely dedicate himself to a life of debauchery. His children loved him, undoubtedly, but in the same way that one can love an older brother for his years and a younger one for the frivolity of his conduct. The famous man showed himself boundlessly generous toward both of them , accepting all their requests without a flicker of surprise . âMoney is an instrument of freedom,â he said, âand if I love it so much, itâs because it allows me to be independent. Only those who can give money freely are truly free.â Since his daughter seemed to have inherited his exuberant vitality and imaginative curiosity, he quickly married her off to a young, handsome soldier, and the two vegetated in distant provincial garrisons, where the name Montalbo gave the captain and his wife a reflection of literary glory. His son was an engineer, and he recalled the grave and orderly Matilda more than her vehement husband. He had no interest in literature or invented stories ; his positive nature was only attracted to the exact sciences. Wishing to get rich, he had gone to work in a French colony in Asia, and there he remained celibate and isolated, with no other desire than to obtain, through agricultural exploitation, a fortune greater than that of his illustrious father. Montalbo, the founder of a family, lived alone. Some compared him to those powerful trees that monopolize the surrounding soil with their roots and do not allow any vegetation to flourish near them. Whatever is born under their shade dies, since it cannot escape by moving to freer ground. But those who had been born near this extraordinary man were fortunately able to move, and they hastened to escape his fatal domination, unconscious, joyful, and generous. âWhat more could I wish for?â thought Montalbo in his hours of melancholy. â I lack nothing. Everything I desired has come to me; in greater or lesser quantities, but it has come. Not a single one of the reveries of my ambition and envy, when I was young, failed to come trueâŠâ And he asked himself, once again, if he could consider himself happier than other men. No; he was not happy. Chapter 14. Every morning he dispatched his mail with a secretary named Luigi Crovetto. This young writer, born in Marseille to Italian parents, served the great man more out of enthusiasm than for the benefits of the job. One day, he had introduced himself to Montalbo as an admirer, who had just arrived in Paris, eager to see and listen to him. The maestro, seduced by the simplicity of this devotion, was kind and paternal, and the novice visited frequently, eventually becoming his secretary. The affection of readers expressed in postal form was the greatest torment for the great writer. There are thousands upon thousands of men and women on earth who, upon reading an interesting book, feel the urge to write to its creator, each imagining that they are the only one who would think of such an initiative. In addition, there are albums, and as if this were not enough, the modern innovation of sending postcards for the celebrated author to sign, with a previously unpublished âthoughtâ if possible. Luigi, as Montalbo called Crovetto familiarly, due to his parentsâ origins, was the one who, with his lively Italian, occupied himself every morning with this tiring task. He knew how to imitate the signature of the teacher, and he had also invented half a dozen âthoughtsâ that made him smile. He wouldnât have dared to insert any of them in his beginnerâs works, for fear that his comrades would accuse him of idiocy. But signed by Montalbo, they thrilled many readers, who found them âbrilliant and profound.â After opening his letters, the famous man would pass them on to Crovetto for a reply. They were invitations to parties; calls for academies or philanthropic societies to care for the old age and illnesses of unfortunate writers; several dozen requests for signatures on postcards and portraits, from the most remote corners of the earth; Numerous albums of Argentine or Chilean young ladies, prepared not to leave Paris if the amiable Mr. Montalbo refused to write them âa little something,â adding, with unprecedented tranquility, that they had made the trip to Europe solely to achieve this; letters, many letters from enthusiastic readers, declaring him the greatest writer of all time, and some anonymous ones speaking of the great manâs stupidity, to which they recognized no limits, and advising him to retire forever from the cultivation of letters. In addition, bundles of newspapers in various languages: some with fresh and sincere praise, others with bittersweet praise, which seemed to give the printed word the greenish tinge of bile. Montalbo left aside the letters from editors and the proposals from abroad for the translation of his works. This belonged to âanother business,â as he called it, superior to Crovettoâs, and which was in the hands of his friend SoudrĂ©. Nor could he clearly explain when he had met this â close friend,â without whom it was impossible to conduct his business. He thought he remembered that this SoudrĂ©, talkative, authoritarian, quick to bend to circumstances, and with endless patience in discussions and bargaining, had shown up at his house one morning, claiming to read him one of his works. Montalbo could not have seen this manuscript, as the author spent the entire time talking about himself. But SoudrĂ© was a man for whom there were no doors, and he repeated his visits with such insistence that the owner of the house eventually grew accustomed to him, needing to see him as much as Crovetto. Since Montalbo consulted him, SoudrĂ© immediately considered himself superior to the secretary, speaking to the latter from then on in a protective tone. The master only knew about his new friend what the latter wanted to tell him. He spoke of his business in a small provincial capital, and Montalbo came to suspect that he had been a lawyer of the kind who hovered around the courts. He knew all too well the twists and turns of the law, as well as all the tricks of those who make a living by litigating. Finding himself a widower with an only daughter, he had surrendered himself without resistance to the demon of literature, which had been tempting him since his youth. This demon had not dared to enter his house until then for fear of his wife, who believed only those professions that could sustain a man were decent. But when SoudrĂ© was freed from this bourgeois lack of respect for literature, he had moved to Paris accompanied by several manuscripts and his daughter Faustina, an eighteen-year-old young lady with all the ambitions of her class, who knew how to hide her poverty prodigiously and dress well with little money. Perhaps she possessed, concealed by her youthful charms, the same avid and disturbing qualities as her father. Montalbo, who considered him a great psychologist and whose spirit of observation was universally admired, came to suspect this last point one day when he noticed the girlâs eyes while she remained thoughtful. Then, upon emerging from his abstraction and focusing his gaze on the teacher, he revised his opinions, considering Faustina to be like many young women he had described in his novels: simple, kind, willing to make the greatest sacrifices, and living as if sacrificed at the side of a father. that they adore: a fearsome businessman or an authoritarian ruler, capable of instilling fear with a mere gesture. The great writer could not free himself from the sympathetic influence this young woman spread before him. She was no beauty, and yet, wherever she entered and other women were present, she seemed to tower above them all. Menâs eyes converged on Faustina, forgetting the others. SoudrĂ© often took her with him on his visits to Montalbo. He recognized his daughterâs natural talent for household management, a talent comparable only to that which he had been blessed with for the management of enormous businesses, and which men failed to take advantage of, letting it be lost in lesser enterprises. The master, constantly preoccupied with his literary output, was ignorant of many things about ordinary life , and his servants took advantage of him. It was opportune for the gentle Faustina to examine the cleanliness of the rooms at the hotel in Passy, ââthe housekeeperâs expenses, the cookâs account book, the conduct of the servants and the chauffeur, while the father remained in the library advising the great man on what he should reply to his editors or translators. At other times, he asked the writer not to interfere in his own affairs, authorizing him to decide them freely. Montalbo confessed that, thanks to this friend, provided by chance, his income was increasing. For this reason, he responded generously to the occasional requests for subsidies from SoudrĂ© as tacit compensation for his work. Other admirers of the maestro, envious of the privacy of SoudrĂ©, whom they called a âparasite,â went around saying that he was receiving similar compensation from those who had employed him as an intermediary in his relations with Montalbo. During the autumn, when the great writer went to live in his Loire chateau, SoudrĂ© and his daughter were invited to accompany him on this retreat for a few weeks. The restless businessman now refrained from speaking to the maestro about his former literary ambitions. Limiting himself to his role as a brilliant financier, he would describe the great undertakings that occurred to him, for the clock never struck a new hour other than the birth of one of his ideas, which represented millions upon millions. Some mornings, from a terrace of the chateau, he would suggest to Montalbo that they cut down the centuries-old trees in the park and clear the land to plant beets. âSugar production⊠A million a year. Maybe more.â And meanwhile, Faustina and Crovetto, equal in age and youth, strolled through the garden like a couple escaped from one of the maestroâs novels, crunching under their feet the bronze carpet of dry leaves with which the autumn trees covered the avenues. In winter, the father and daughter would travel to surprise him at his âvillaâ on the French Riviera, and for the rest of the year, the HĂŽtel de Passy received his almost daily visits. Montalbo, voluntarily estranged from his family, needed the presence of these people he hadnât met for a few years, and even complained about human selfishness when a few days went by without seeing them. Suddenly, Crovetto needed to be with his comrades. He felt the sextonâs desire for independence, who, however much he adored the miraculous image, eventually grew bored of contemplating it all the time and sought the humble company of people of his own class. SoudrĂ©, in his incessant business invention, would forget the maestro for a few weeks to engage in illusory ventures that, he believed, would make him a millionaire. The daughter had numerous friends and an insatiable desire for entertainment, attending concerts and all kinds of parties, and monopolizing all the theater tickets her father purchased in the maestroâs name. Left alone in his youth, he felt the tedium of solitude less than other men . He was a hard worker and had spent most of his life in silent isolation, at a table, pen, and in hand. But now he worked less and less, and the hours seemed very long. In need of action, he wanted to do something to fill the emptiness in his existence, and he didnât know how to achieve it. When his productive force began to decline and his days of leisure became more numerous than his days of work, those romantic adventures that lent his name a slight flavor of scandal had been enough to entertain and interest him. But now he was beginning to find amorous amusement monotonous and charmless. Whenever admirers were astonished by his youthful appearance, which did not match his years, the great man expounded the ideas that served as the rule of his existence. âYouth is an act of will. Anyone who truly wants to be young will always be so. What matters is having the will.â To a journalist who wanted to know if old age frightened him, he replied with a smiling cynicism: âIâll never be old. When Iâm eighty, Iâll put on a blond wig and kidnap a fifteen-year-old dancing girl.â At other times, with the gravity of a profound conviction, he would expound on his way of seeing life. For him, existence was like a gray canvas, and the great talent of men consisted in knowing how to cover this background of sadness with bright, cheerful colors in order to ignore it, mercifully deceiving themselves. âWe all carry,â he added, âan orchestra within us. The important thing is to make it work, to ensure that it tirelessly plays the symphony of Illusion and Desire, the only themes that sustain our lives. We mustnât let the orchestra fall silent. Once one score is finished, letâs immediately put another on the music stand.â But the great man had recently made a terrible discovery. None of the symphonies with which he tried to brighten his life had the charm of novelty; old, worn-out music, heard countless times, and which, instead of inspiring enthusiasm, overwhelmed him with the saccharine monotony of over-repetition. Besides, all the scores of Illusion and Desire that he could place on his music stand were well-worn and grimy volumes, revealing the touch of countless hands, and the first bars made him grimace, murmuring: âAnother one, always the same!â He never knew the unprecedented and virginal emotion of someone tearing the pages of an untouched work. Alas! His sad, passionate adventures, which began with inner tremors of curiosity, as if he were about to see something extraordinary, always ended grotesquely! Perhaps it was ordinary men, men of ordinary intellectuality, who could devote all their time to love, who knew the great passionate adventures. It happened to writers like priests who are dedicated to confession. Only women who had lived a long life went to them and, in their mature years, in need of advice, felt the irresistible desire to lighten their souls by telling someone about their past. Montalbo needed all the deceptive resources of his imagination to continue his interest in certain great ladies who had sought him out. In this day and age, an elegant woman is ageless as long as she is on public display. Modern luxury plays the most astonishing tricks and muddles the appreciation of time. A salon belle can be as young as thirty as sixty. Then, alone, sad reality reasserts itself, and for this reason Montalbo recalled with shame many of his so-called triumphs. âAnd thatâs how it is,â he said to himself, âall the birds of deceitful plumage who are attracted to the beacon of literary glory.â Sometimes the springtime beauty had crossed his path. Young women who seemed to breathe the joy of life came to meet him, paying tribute to the writer. Some, arriving from across the ocean, were so enthusiastic that they even secretly took small objects from his library. One of them had asked him for one of his pipes as a souvenir. But all of them, as soon as they obtained the book or the portrait with the dedication of the writer, teacher, they would leave, never to return. When Montalbo tried to use the same words or attitudes that moved the other women eager for psychological consultations, the astonished look or the slight smile of these young women would make the great man fall silent and withdraw timidly. One day in a bad mood, while reviewing his present life, Montalbo discovered the reason for his boredom. âYouth is a will,â he repeated to himself again. âI wish to be young, and I will be if I avoid contact with old age from now on. Iâm doing enough forgetting my own years.â And he added, with the energy of a man about to leap from thought to immediate action: âLetâs go in search of youth.â Chapter 15. This psychologist, who had often thought he had dismantled love in order to explain its internal mechanisms, finally recognizing that loves are infinite in number and each one works in a completely different way, kept in his memory a long list of observations on how attraction between a man and a woman begins. Sometimes, at first glance, they become interested in each other; other times, they treat each other as friends for years and years, and suddenly, they discover, to their surprise, that they love each other⊠And so his catalog of infinitely varied observations continued. But of all the ways love begins, there was one that Montalbo preferred, having experienced it himself repeatedly in his life, later applying it to the characters in his novels. A man who has treated a woman with indifference for months or years, sees her one night in a dream, and upon awakening, considers her already different from the others, as if she had suddenly become more beautiful. He then continues to dream about her for other nights, and finally, ends up loving her. The day after he decided to seek his youth, the novelist saw a woman in his dreams: Faustina, SoudrĂ©âs daughter. This made him laugh a little upon awakening. âNot so much!â It seemed excessive to him to have dreamed of such an exaggerated youth for him. Nineteen years!⊠With five or six more, she could have been his granddaughter. But from this daydream on, he began to contemplate her in his imagination with a completely new relief and colors. Until then, he had gazed distractedly at SoudrĂ©âs daughter: a poor young lady dressed âin an artistâs style,â with a certain extravagant tendency, a sure means of concealing her lack of money. Sometimes she had even inspired him with pity when he compared her with the great ladies, ostentatious and expensively luxurious, who invited him to their parties and pretended to be something more to him than a mistress of the house. Now he began to recognize in âlittle SoudrĂ©,â as he called himself, a certain charm, like that of a humble, pungent flower, like those that bloom along the roadside and represent springtime for the poor. He was even surprised that such a keen observer as himself had not earlier discovered her charms. He continued to see her every night in his dreams, and then, upon waking, he would think of Faustina, finding her ever more interesting. It no longer occurred to him to be shocked by the difference in age between them. He looked for proof to justify this imbalance in the stories of other writers. What was so scandalous about his loving little SoudrĂ©, if it brightened his life?⊠All things considered, her age was not so extraordinary. Sixty- something years: what is that to a modern, wealthy man, who can employ on his person all the advances in hygiene and beautification achieved by our time? Besides, what famous man isnât sixty years old? He remembered Goethe, who at eighty found himself adored by Bettina di Arnim, a child of eighteen. Itâs true that this Bettina was a literary aficionado, and literary enthusiasm works the greatest mischief, just as it also makes old writers, with one foot in the grave, revive their old age by absorbing the youth of beginners. âBut little SoudrĂ©,â Montalbo said to himself, âhas talent, and if she wanted to,â he said, âshe would be a great woman.â write, he would write the same as others⊠He is just like his father, who nevertheless possesses certain literary qualities. This optimism of the maestro, which extended to Faustinaâs father, grew, eventually stifling all the objections of the critical spirit and common sense that stirred and protested within him. With his usual vehemence, the great man made his thoughts visible to all those around him. He displayed a childish joy, as if the air were singing in his ear and the light were rose-tinted. His inner orchestra had begun to play, but this time the symphony was completely new to him, and the score still had its pages intact. The first to become aware of the maestroâs state of mind was Faustina, before he spoke. Her eyes, her attention, the tone of her voice, surprised her at first. Then he smiled slightly, with the expression of someone who suddenly sees something realized that he had dreamed of as an impossible undertaking. Later, SoudrĂ©, having lunch one morning with the âdear maestro,â suddenly noticed the affectionate intimacy that seemed to have developed between him and his daughter. Montalbo took every opportunity to caress Faustinaâs hands, speaking of the great interest he had always felt for her. And little SoudrĂ©, with the audacity of a poor young lady who doesnât trust her fatherâs help and is determined to make her own way, no matter what, fixed admiring eyes on the great man and responded to his falsely paternal caresses by burying her tiny hands in the poetâs hair or praising his extraordinary youth, which so interested the aristocratic ladies. SoudrĂ© frowned, just as he did when he described one of his multi-million dollar ventures or when he advised Montalbo to destroy his estate to plant beets and make sugar. At last, a sure business opportunity awaited him . Crovetto had gone to his hometown for a few months after his fatherâs death to intervene in the estate transactions, and this led SoudrĂ© and his daughter to visit Passy more often so that the maestro would not be left alone. A notable transformation was taking place in Montalboâs person. He had always dressed with a certain elegance. His tailor boasted a very old and reputable name in Paris. But this respectable seniority suddenly displeased the great man. He compared him to the famous, traditional, majestic dressmakers who only knew how to make court gowns for queens and grand duchesses. He now recognized himself as having a soul equal to that of the decent, young ladies who prefer the dressmakers entrusted with dressing actresses and coquettes. For this reason, he requested reports from some of Crovettoâs writer friends, who were preparing to become famous by attracting attention with their exaggerated clothing and ties, and went in search of a tailor who was the favorite of comedians, but not of leading actors, only of young gallants . The gossipmongers, quick to comment on the particular events of literary life , took note of this new evolution of the maestro. Montalbo now served as a test dummy for the most daring tailors, wearing all his inventions in public, just like a young man. Faustina seemed to thank him with her eyes for these transformations in his personality, considering them a tribute to her. SoudrĂ© intentionally directed all his conversations with the maestro toward the same end: the defense of marriage, the state most favorable to work, and the final chapter in the life of every famous man. Montalbo hadnât yet clearly expressed his desire, but Faustina was already moving around the house authoritatively, speaking to the servants like a future mistress, and the father directed the great manâs affairs as if they were his own. That autumn, the three of them made a trip to the South of France. Several artists from the ComĂ©die Françaiseâthose who never work in that theater and wander the earthâhad organized an open-air performance in the ruins of a famous Roman coliseum in Provence. They were going to perform _The Conquistadors_, Montalboâs great tragedy, undoubtedly written in honor of his distant grandfather the navigator, and in which he sang of the efforts of the Spanish adventurers, the struggle of the bearers of the cross with indigenous traditions. It was a highly spectacular work, with crowds of Indians, Spanish warriors on horseback, and choirs, whose music had been written by a celebrated maestro, disciple and successor of the late Fontana. The regional authorities and the organizers of the show requested the presence of the eminent writer. His tragedy had been performed only a few times in Paris, and now it was going to be resurrected, as a new work, among the half-ruined arcades of the ancient theater. The author, with the kindness of a man who awaits happiness and has no doubt that it will come, accepted the invitation. âThe three of us will go,â he said to Faustina and her father. âLuigi will come from Marseille to join us.â The presence of such a celebrated figure in the small Provençal town was greeted with the most extraordinary honors. The people were somewhat surprised by the joviality and excessive simplicity of this man famous in Paris. He and his companions were dressed in white flannel, just as they would be on a beach. They had felt it necessary to present themselves this way in a sunny country, even though winter was approaching. The curiosity of a mischievous child prompted the great man to stop street vendors in the middle of the street to sample all the fruits and foodstuffs available to the populace, offering them to his entourage. The women commented on his predilection for the young lady who was always at his side, equally surprised by the freedom with which he fondled her in public. âSheâs his daughter,â said one of the townspeople who might have been well aware. And everyone pointed their fingers at the daughter of the great Montalbo, making her a sharer in the glory of her illustrious father. Never had the poet seemed so content with life. That same day of the performance, standing on a hotel terrace at dusk, still intoxicated by the applause of a crowd of twenty thousand spectators, he finally freed himself from those scruples that had prevented him from speaking⊠And he proposed to Faustina that she become his wife. Little SoudrĂ© hesitated a moment, as if surprised by this long-awaited proposal. Then she closed her eyelids, ran a finger over them, no doubt to shed her tears, and nodded her head in the affirmative, finally letting it fall on the maestroâs shoulder as if she were about to die of happiness, at the same time offering him her mouth. He felt as proud of this triumph as of the one he had obtained hours before. SoudrĂ©âs daughter agreed to become his little wife; how could he show his gratitude? The next morning, the four of them were walking along the main street of the city. Some workers were restoring the pavement. Montalbo, busy looking at the young woman, tripped over an empty wheelbarrow abandoned by the workers. This suggested an extravagant idea to him. âIf you sit there,â he said to Faustina, âIâll parade you around in front of all these bourgeois.â The proposal was not original. He suddenly remembered that another famous artist of his same age, named Wagner, had made it to a woman who later became his second wife. The young woman immediately jumped into the wheelbarrow, flushed with pride at such an homage. The great Montalbo carrying her like a servant in the presence of the most important people in the city! Crovetto protested with pain and surprise: âThatâs not serious, maestro!â The numerous passersby stopped to contemplate this extraordinary scene with scandalized silence. They were thinking the same thing; they were not surprised by what they saw. The writers, the artists⊠all crazy! Chapter 16. A piece of news began to circulate in Paris: âMontalbo is getting married!â And the ladies who kept memories of their intimacy with the writer asked their guests for details about the past of that Miss SoudrĂ©. Some believed her to be a young girl with no other appeal than her youthful freshness, which had tempted the aging author. Others, sensing her malice, admired the skill with which she had managed to entice a man who considered himself an infallible psychologist. At gatherings of young writers, insolent comments were made about the age of the maestro and his fiancĂ©e, envying Crovettoâs future. The only one who found this union natural and logical was Montalbo. He no longer called glory âthe sun of the dead.â He recognized in it the power of those stars that communicate their incandescent energy to dark bodies , attracting them with irresistible force and forcing them to revolve around them. The maestro, as a celebrated observer, was incapable of deceiving himself in his assessment of his own personality. He knew full well that he was not young, and a woman of a young age could only approach him driven by glory. But his name was Montalbo, and he had the right to demand, at the door of old age, the consolations of love, which ordinary men renounce at the same period of their lives. SoudrĂ© was in a hurry to finalize the official marriage arrangements. Perhaps he was afraid that the maestro, suddenly reflecting like a simple bourgeois, might regret the adventure. While he was busy setting the date for the ceremony and had slipped into the newspapers several indiscreet ârumorsâ revealing the impending event, thus cutting off all recourse to Montalbo, trouble began to arise. The daughter of the great man, who had patiently awaited his old age and his renunciation of passionate adventures to come and settle down in her house, suggesting love to her grandchildren, was indignant to learn of the impending marriage. And since the exuberance of his character sometimes made him as violent as his father, he sent the latter a letter to tell him that he had always considered him the equal of a child and that it was no surprise that he allowed himself to be deceived once again by the first woman who came his way. Warned by a telegram from his sister, the son also wrote from Asia a laconic, cold, and sad letter that was a reflection of his character. He considered his fatherâs behavior illogical and absurd, but then he recognized his absolute right to make the entire world laugh with his marriage. Crovettoâs return to Paris consoled the maestro for such ingratitude. To be treated like this by his children, when he had never bargained with them, giving them whatever money they needed! Fortunately, he was now surrounded by his true family, formed by the affinities of will and not by the chance of birth. The loving Faustina, his intelligent father, and that enthusiastic and faithful secretary were truly his own. But this second family also gave him worries. Luigi no longer seemed the same disciple after his absence. He held the same admiring respect for the master, but his adherence was too silent. The young man stood with his head bowed, sullen, avoiding looking at the great man, replying to his words with grunts, avoiding any expansion. When Faustina began to speak to the master, Crovetto immediately feigned a reason for leaving. On the other hand, the writer often saw, through a large window in his library, how the secretary would rush down to the garden as soon as he glimpsed Faustina strolling alone along one of its avenues. SoudrĂ©, in the presence of this young man, was uncommunicative, and if he needed to speak to him, he did so curtly. Perhaps he wanted to establish in advance the difference that should exist between the father-in-law of a great man and his secretary. Moreover, he undoubtedly found this tendency to seek out his daughter as soon as she left her future husbandâs side inappropriate. Winter was gently approaching. The evenings were cold in the garden of Passyâs house. Above its trees and those of the nearby Bois de Boulogne, the cherry-red sun could be seen setting; The sun was veiled by mist, which could be seen straight on. Other afternoons the mist was denser and the sky had a melancholy pallor. Despite the coldness of the afternoons, Faustina always went down to the garden, even if only for half an hour, and Crovetto found an excuse to abandon his work and go in search of her. The continuity of these interviews and the restlessness they aroused in SoudrĂ© finally caught the attention of the famous observer, who was only agile at observing what interested others. When he discovered Faustina and Crovetto sitting on a garden bench in his library, his memory leaped back several dozen years. He saw Luxembourg as it had once been, and sitting in an avenue of the garden were two young people dressed ridiculously, in a now-forgotten fashion: he and Mathilde. This memory aroused a feeling of anguish in his heart. Crovetto was young, as he had been in those days; What was he saying to this new Matilda? He felt jealous. Suddenly, he found himself marching slowly through his garden, taking cautious steps, avoiding the dry leaves that broke beneath his feet with a demonstrative crackle. A small path led him to the back of the bench occupied by the two young men. Crovetto spoke, raising his voice in anger, convinced that only she could hear him in this solitary corner. âIâm jealous; yes, Iâm jealous; I donât hide it⊠You love him, despite your denials. I understand: heâs famous the world over⊠I admire him, even as I hate him; heâs caused me enormous harm, but I canât help believing in his greatness. Iâm not surprised by your awe. That man has glory. Just like him!â His secretary spoke with the same conviction that Montalbo had spoken thirty-eight years before. Faith and admiration had not died⊠But an ironic laugh cut short his reflections. âGlory!â And her feminine laughter continued for a few moments: âWhat do I care about glory? How will she make me love a man who could be my father⊠not my father, my grandfather? I only love you. But you are a visionary, a big child like him, and you cannot understand me. Just like the other one!â The master thought he saw Matildaâs melancholy face before his eyes. But Faustina was still talking. The poor, grown man guessed that she had just taken one of the young manâs hands, caressing it with protective gentleness. At the same time, she had bent her head toward him as if she were going to kiss him. Her voice was a sweet murmur. âDonât make that face! Let me marry Montalbo. What have you to lose by it? We shall live under the same roof, and then⊠â Alas! The other woman had not said this. The passing years were years of progress, and had undoubtedly changed the mentality of youth. He was afraid to continue listening, and he walked again, but instinctively, as if obeying a mysterious command beyond his will. Now his movement was backward. His anguished chest expanded, and his reason returned to him as he moved away from the bench. Suddenly, he felt cold, as if enveloped by a gust of icy air. Looking around, he realized that not a leaf on the trees had moved, nor had a grain of dust been stirred from the ground. The great man thought of his novels. The countless characters he had created were always with him, breaking through the mists of limbo in which they survived at critical moments in their inventorâs existence , as if to give him advice. He suddenly knew which role he should reserve for himself for the rest of his life among the many he had attributed to other actors in his stories. He could only be the kind and friendly old man from the novels, the smiling patriarch who had a stormy youth and in his old age dedicated himself to protecting and marrying off young people. Immediately, with the quick vision of the imaginative, he admired the grandeur of his new role, adapting to its demands. It instilled fear in him. He remembered that girlâs dry laugh, and at the same time he couldnât push her away. He would continue to love her, but in a different way. The two young people would live under the same roof as him, as Faustina had said; but she would be the wife of his secretary. Youth with youth⊠And as for the power of gloryâŠ! Once again he felt that icy whirlwind around him. Now the leaves stirred lightly in the cold evening breeze. But it seemed to him that a hurricane from the Pole was beginning to blow over Paris. Needing warmth, he looked up at the sun. It was like a reddish wafer, and he could gaze straight into it without blinking. A perfect symbol of glory! And he recognized that the invisible star, for whose fire men have fought since the beginning of time, using force, cunning, or envy, could henceforth be for him only âthe sun of the dead.â The Comedian Fonseca Chapter 17. I met Mariano Fonseca in a cafĂ© on Avenida de Mayo, where many Spanish actors and musicians who had come to the theaters of Buenos Aires gathered. His hair, intensely dyed, sometimes caused him the embarrassment of black streaks on his face that spread through the furrows of his wrinkles. But this scandalous dye also instilled in him the certainty that he still had many years of life ahead of him to be the middle-aged protagonist of chivalrous deeds in comedies and dramas. His colleagues in the profession did not accept this illusory youth. Only the old-timers, those who were ânoble fathersâ on the stage and could claim the role of âbeardâ because of their age, dared to address the famous Fonseca as âyou. â The others, despite the familiarity that governs theatrical life, always called him Don Mariano. âIâm nothing compared to you, Dr. Olmedilla,â he told me one night. Before becoming a comedian, I studied high school there in Madrid, and I realize that Iâm speaking with a doctor of great promise, who came to these lands out of adventurous curiosity, but who will one day achieve great fame in our country. Thatâs why I am very grateful that such a âscientificâ man would deign to come to an establishment like this to speak with a poor actor⊠But, even though I am ignorant compared to you , I consider myself above my comrades. And Fonseca, leaning his elbows on the marble, in an attitude he wished was spontaneous and reminiscent of the arrogant posture of a swashbuckling hero sitting in an inn, looked with protective kindness at the other theater men who occupied the nearby tables and seemed to have forgotten him. âNow, doctor,â he continued, âI am in decline. I recognize that my time has passed. Besides, this Buenos Aires, where I achieved enormous success, is no longer for me. It has grown too quickly, and tastes change.â Nowadays, the public only wants luxurious companies, with many scantily clad women and lots of music. No one likes plays in verse anymore, and fewer of us know how to recite as we did in the past. I was famous, Doctor. There are still Creoles from my good days, who live on the outskirts of Buenos Aires surrounded by their grandchildren, and if you talk to them about Mariano Fonseca, theyâll tell you who he was. Thatâs undoubtedly why I only find work these days on Saturdays and Sundays, performing old plays, truly good plays, in some town near the capital. These simple, honest audiences are the only ones capable of appreciating true art now. But I donât want to dwell on this; I prefer to tell you about my life, which will interest you more. You should know that I am a great Spaniard, even though Spain didnât treat me well. Thereâs a reason I left it when I was little more than twenty, and I havenât returned. The audiences there were unfair, and I had to come to America for someone to applaud me. But I bear no grudge against my ungrateful homeland. I know well that many great men have suffered the same fate. Despite this, I have served Spain here in America for thirty years, longer than the diplomats and the men Politicians. These days, we hear a lot about Spanish-American brotherhood. There are societies that strive to foster it, and banquets and other celebrations with speeches commemorating the motherland are common. But when I began my travels as an actor, from Texas and California to Cape Horn, the situation was different. Spain paid little attention to the American peoples who spoke its language, and these Spanish-speaking republics, as some scholars say, kept alive the hatreds, concerns, and blindness of the War of Independence. No other envoys came from the Peninsula than we did. We comedians evoked the memory of Spain, performing verse plays of Romantic theater. This apostolate was not free from torment. We comedians sometimes viewed with anxiety the arrival of the patriotic festival of each republic. Almost all of these countries have an aggressive or vengeful verse dedicated to ancient Spain in their national anthem. Time, which calms all things, good diplomatic relations, and the interests of the race have rendered these verses obsolete, antiquated and mediocre. But in the days of my youth, they brought with them as many dangers and uproars as a storm, and often caused bloodshed. On the day of a patriotic anniversary, one section of the public ordered the Spanish actors to sing the anthem offensive to their nation. Many resisted such an outrage, supported by another section of the same public, made up of Spaniards established in the country. General scandal, insults, beatings, and often shots. Furthermore, you know the great variety of nicknames that exist for us in these Republics populated by the grandchildren of Spaniards. Your grandparentsâ compatriots are in one place âGothsâ; in another, âGaliciansâ; in another, âPatonesâ or âGachupines,â and so the list of nicknames goes on⊠This was the bad part of the theater in those days; But it would be unjust to omit the pleasant and glorious part of our wandering life. As I have already told you, for half a century we were the only Spanish representation known to the American peoples of our language. In many inland cities, we were welcomed as if old Spain had come as an actress in our company. The ladies in the audience murmured in low voices during the performance the verses of the famous plays, known to them as well as to us. In addition, we always found some respectable doctor, dedicated to the study of the ancient things of his land, who was moved to see us, as if witnessing a second arrival of the conquistadors. You know me now in misfortune; but if you ever visit my house, I can show you dozens of crowns, silver or bronze plates with engraved dedications, which I have refused to part with even in days of agonizing poverty, and verses, many verses, dedicated to my humble person. I also keep a speech that a young poet, later a minister in his country, read on my inauguration day. âSpain,â he said, âis immortal because of its famous sons. A nation that has given the world Cervantes, Castelar, and Mariano Fonseca can never disappear.â I know well that this last point is a bit exaggerated. A boyâs enthusiasm! But it would be unfair not to acknowledge that our wandering life served for half a century to prevent the old family relationships from completely cooling off and to remind people that Spain still existed. I should have stayed in one of those small republics, where life is patriarchal, and to keep it from being entirely boring, the sons of the country try to liven it up every year with some revolution. But my daughter likes to return to this Buenos Aires, where she was born. I, too, feel the attraction of the Avenida de Mayo; And even though I live perfectly in Mexico, next to the Texas border, and swear never to return to Argentina, things always work out so that, from adventure to adventure and from triumph to failure, I end up rolling from one extreme to the other. from the New World, returning to this city, which is the refuge of us all. However, many Spanish comedians remain scattered throughout both Americas, whose name Spain ignores and who are truly popular figures in the lands where they settled. Having pleased the public for several consecutive seasons, they remain in the country forever, believing them to be the best in the world for having given them their applause. Thus they grow old on the stage, watching three generations pass by the theater seats. The President of the Republic remembers how, as a child, his mother used to say to him: âIf youâre good, Iâll take you to the theater to see So-and-so.â The children who now laugh at So-and-soâs jokes are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those who witnessed his arrival in the country. They all forget the place of their birth and end up considering it a national glory. When they die, they believe that the theater has suffered an irreparable loss, and that actors of their same caliber will no longer emerge. Had I stayed in one of these Republics, my existence would be more peaceful and dignified. I wouldnât be forced to play gigs on Saturdays and Sundays in small towns, nor suffer the impertinence of the young men who are now arriving on stage, with so many âmodernismsâ and unable to deliver a verse properly. But Iâve always been moved by a wandering spirit and prone to adventure, like that of the ancient conquistadors. Eight times Iâve traveled from the southern tip of Chile to the border of the United States and back, stopping at every theater, good or bad, I found along the way, or improvising occasional sets in places that had been awaiting the arrival of a comedian since the dawn of the planet. I acquired this ease of wandering in my early years in the Americas, when I began my career as a young leading man, alongside the great Rengifo. The mother country was not ungrateful to this glorious actor. You will recall that he enjoyed many years of glory in Spain. But, becoming practically hoarse and lacking money, he had to be a hero and cross the Atlantic, which had always inspired horror in him. One had to listen to this great man when he recounted his travels and the observations he made in the theaters of the New World. You know, doctor, that the numerous Spanish-speaking American republics differ greatly in physiognomy, development, and character. It happens to them like the children of the same family: they have common parents and the same blood; but the geniuses are different, and each one is born with different interests. The older ones are serious and work; others have the dizziness of adolescence; the younger ones get up to mischief. There are republics I call âserious,â and others that are like birds of prey, and no one knows if they will ever become serious or remain like those lunatics who continue to go crazy even in their old age. I love all these countries, large and small, and I recognize a depth of chivalrous sensitivity and an enviable joy for life even in those who lead tragic lives. The great Rengifo often spoke enthusiastically of some small republics, where not a year goes by without numerous executions and human life is the least valuable thing in the country. âEveryone, however, composes verses in those lands,â my teacher would say, â and when the sun rises, from the president of the Republic to the last alligator in its rivers, there isnât one who doesnât pluck the lyre and sing an ode to the awakening life. â Rengifo witnessed extraordinary things in this new world. One night, while working in the capital of one of the aforementioned republics, the publicâs enthusiasm was such that the president thought it appropriate to come and pay his respects in his room, followed by a pair of assistants, covered in gold laces and embroidery, who carried a revolver hidden in each trouser pocket. âVery well, eminent artist! Very well! I congratulate the glorious representative of the old motherland.â And he shook his hand. The performance continued, the enthusiasm of the spectators growing. Before the last act, Rengifo, who was changing his suit, saw another gentleman enter his room, also flanked by two dazzling aides-de-camp. âVery well, eminent artist! Very well! My congratulations to the glorious envoy from old Spain, our mother. â âTo whom do I have the honor of speaking? â âI am the President of the Republic. â âOh, no!⊠Itâs a useless joke,â protested the maestro. âThe President of the Republic was here recently. He is a gentleman with a beard, dressed in a tailcoat, and you have a mustache and a generalâs uniform. â âYou donât know that between the second and third acts there was a revolution. â Chapter 18. My best times began when I was able to form a company, being both impresario and actor. The first lady was my wife, poor Rosalba, of whom I will speak later. Her father, a Spaniard who had come from there thirty years before me, had reached Buenos Aires during the time of the tyrant Rosas, and, because of his age and voice, he took on the role of the traitor in our performances. The other actors complained constantly, provoking disputes with their jealousy and demands; but this didnât prevent us from always marching together, loving each other as if we were members of the same family. Rosalba was extremely dark-skinned, had beautiful eyes, and more than once I felt both pride and sadness seeing how many spectators in the cities of the interior looked at her. The poor woman had never known wealth or true luxury; but she represented the poetry of life, aristocratic elegance, and the great pleasures of Europe before the simple audiences who came to listen to us, as if we were envoys from a mysterious and distant world. Her mother was also Spanish; but Rosalba, having been born in Buenos Aires, considered herself different from us, interpreting this difference as something that conferred on her an indisputable superiority. In her moments of artistic fervor, which were not many, she dreamed of going to Spain to perform in one of its theaters. Being an actress in Madrid seemed to her the glorious end of an existence. Then, in her moments of anger, which were most of the time, she would reproach me for my origins: âYouâre a âGalicianâ; Iâm a Creole and Iâm at home. â My father-in-law, a man of the old school, incapable of abdicating the superiority of his sex, gave me advice: âBe careful, Mariano! My daughter is a nasty beast, and you know how to treat her: bread in one hand and a stick in the other. But I, doctor, always preferred to be right, letting her be unfair and aggressive. In truth, I no longer remember the trouble she could have caused me. Our hectic and troublesome life drove us to get together again, easily forgetting the quarrels of the previous day. I frequently heard bad things about her, and I even received anonymous letters; But professional envy, especially among women, advises such things to theater people. I confess, however, that I was sometimes tempted to separate from her because of her imprudence. She flirted shamelessly with gentlemen in the audience, and this was detrimental to our business, discrediting the company and diminishing our prestige with the noble matrons of the cities where we worked. I could have been angry with my wife, but I couldnât possibly dismiss the leading lady. We wouldnât have been able to continue our performances without her. Therefore, although it causes me some shame to admit it, I always compromised, and sometimes, when Rosalba fled from us, I went to ask her to return, on behalf of her family and also on behalf of the other artists, who without her collaboration would be destitute. I know that malicious people made comments I didnât appreciate about these escapes, saying that she was always accompanied in them by some prominent local figure, a doctor, a general, or a simple journalist. But Iâm sure it was all slander. She always proved it to me with irrefutable evidence. If she ran away from us, it was because of her capricious nature, her independent temper, which made her suddenly hate everything around her. Believe me, doctor, if he was ever unfaithful to me, and I now doubt it, it must have been because of violent impositions, and not of his own free will. You donât know what one encounters traveling through this America, so unequal. In republics with an advanced life, where whites rule more than blacks, there is justice, and the people can believe themselves safe. But sometimes we ended up in places where the people seemed to be cowering, under the whim of a single man. This was in the provinces of some of those republics subject to frequent revolutions. The president, to reward those who contributed to his rise, sends them to a distant territory, and there they can enrich themselves, living an existence equal to that of an ancient Turkish governor. Imagine the anxieties of our company when it arrived in one of these places. We feared the tyrantâs bad mood, because he could oppose all kinds of obstacles to our work. Without his protection, it was impossible for us to obtain a place or earn money. But I, for my part, feared no less the governors, enthusiastic about the dramatic arts, who received us with extraordinary affability, attended our rehearsals with familiarity, and offered us support. Tired of the women of the country, they felt the attraction of the newly arrived comedian, who was also the wife of the companyâs director: a novelty. What tricks she had to employ to defend me from such barbarians!⊠One of them kept me in prison for three weeks, believing I was a friend of those conspiring against him. It is true that while I was imprisoned, he provided for the maintenance of the entire company, also inviting my wife to lunch and dinner at his house⊠And my companions, flattered by the governorâs familiarity, declared that this season, so painful for me, was for them the most pleasant. I never wanted to know with certainty what could have lain behind such an arbitrary measure. Rosalba swore to me that this fearsome and relentless man, though perverse in upbringing, was at heart a gentleman, and had dared nothing against her. I couldnât refuse to believe her. She swore it on our daughterâs head. Iâve forgotten that you donât know my daughter Pepita: an actress of true talent, but with a character worse than her motherâs. This excellent girl, very serious in her manners, has a manner of speaking that cuts through and dissolves all attempts at trust. Thatâs why many in our profession call her âthe Warrior Virgin.â She was born in Buenos Aires more than twenty years ago; but this was pure chance. She could just as easily have been born in a poor railway station , in a wagon crossing the Pampas, or in a canoe under the foliage of a jungle near a river. Rosalba never stopped acting while she carried her in her womb. Until the last moment, she tightened her corset and made efforts to keep her maternal deformity hidden. I didnât want the audience to laugh considering her condition and seeing at the same time that the young man was chasing her, madly in love, eager to die or kill for her. Such is our existence. Nor did the duties of breastfeeding hinder the motherâs glory and artistic activity. My poor Pepita realized that she existed between the wings of a poor theater, and spent her first years in continuous travel through the lands between the two tropics, sometimes reaching the icy mountains of Tierra del Fuego. My wife, who was sometimes Doña InĂ©s, other times the feudal lady loved by the troubadour, and still others the romantic maiden with modest eyes holding a rose, would open the front of her dress during intermissions so that the baby could feed, half-blinded by the glare of a lighter. Extraordinary resources had to be resorted to so that she wouldnât die of hunger. Rosalba, who, despite her defects, was an excellent woman, could not fulfill her conflicting duties as mother and artist at the same time . Since we traveled incessantly, the little girl was nourished randomly by our adventures. Indian women and black women gave her breasts; She was fed milk from animals of all breeds: cows, mares, and goats. I even believe she was familiar with the udders of llamas that trot like beasts of burden along the stony paths of the Andes. This diet, which one of my companions, named Tribaldo, very extravagant in his use of words, calls âinternational and geographical,â was perhaps the cause of the girlâs strange or intractable character. She learned to stay on a horse before she knew how to walk. She slept peacefully, as if on a lap, among bundles carried on the backs of mules or guanacos. Her tender flesh grew accustomed to the sucking lance of mosquitoes, colored flies, and other insects of the American wilderness. Once, while stopping in a jungle, we surprised her playing with a rattlesnake. On another occasion, while crossing a river teeming with alligators, she fell off the mule, and we had to pull her out by the skin of her teeth. She was four years old then, and after expelling the swallowed water, she remembered nothing about the accident again. My daughter knows all the bad things about this country, and thereâs nothing in it that could kill her⊠Those trips of twenty years ago, when my wife was still alive and Pepita was just beginning to appear on stage, sometimes as a kidnapped child, other times as a little angel, at the moment of her final apotheosis!⊠While we were working in lands with railroads, the company moved easily from one place to another, followed by all its luggage. In our nomadic existence, we couldnât forget anything: costumes, props, or decorations. It was imprudent to rely on the countryâs resources. In certain towns, the theater was a corral. We simply erected the platform that served as a stage, and the spectators brought their seats from home. Today, there are railroads in many lands that I crossed less than half a century ago, traveling the same distance as the first Spanish explorers. As always happens in countries that arrive late to enjoy the advantages of progress, these railroads are magnificent, superior to those of Europe; as they say, âthe last wordâ: Pulmann carriages, spacious dormitories, etc. But in my time, I had to spend six or eight days climbing and climbing the foothills of the Andes and crossing eternally snow-capped peaks to travel the same distance the train now travels in a few hours. We climbed such enormous peaks that we suffered from the illness called âsorocho,â altitude sickness, similar to seasickness. The condors flew curiously above us, sensing that we were a different troop from the red-ponchoed muleteers who cross the Andes with their pack animals. We set out from any Pacific port, a cosmopolitan and warm town, at sea level with the waves, with many English or German merchants, to some inland city with a historic name, located high in the Andes, at two or three thousand meters, and nobly asleep, just as in the time of its illustrious founders, who came from Extremadura or Andalusia. As we advanced along narrow paths, skirting precipices, the companyâs equipment was carried on the backs of beasts of burden. For greater safety and cost-effectiveness, we employed the countryâs pack animal, the Indianâs companion. You undoubtedly know what llamas do when the muleteer tries to impose extraordinary work on them. It is an animal that knows the limits of its strength, bristles at abuse, and tenaciously defends its rights. All of its species have undoubtedly agreed that they should only carry a certain number of kilos, and when another pound is placed in their saddlebags, called âpetacas,â they lie on the ground like a worker appealing for a passive strike, and there is no one to lift them, no matter how many blows they are beaten. Our decorations were made of paper, and not many; costumes and stage props were not abundant either; but, even with this parsimony, imagine if animals of such a species would be necessary to transport all the companyâs equipment! We formed a row of two or three hundred llamas, with their Indian muleteers shouted to encourage them on their difficult paths. We artists rode on stubborn and willful mules, which it was prudent to let loose, at the mercy of their instincts, without worrying about guiding them, with no defense other than closing our eyes on certain paths, which were more like knife-edged paths, with a precipice of several hundred meters beneath our feet. This didnât stop âthe Warrior Virginâ from trotting at the front of the caravan, astride like a boy, her legs in the air, her hair loose in the wind, and in constant conflict with her mule, which kicked along the chasms, protesting its will eager to impose itself with blows from the stick and tugs on the halter. The most important members of the company marched in the center of this rosary. Believe me, our three or four women, wrapped in their cloaks, their faces blackened by the sun and the cold of the peaks, would never have been recognized by the same people who had applauded them a week earlier in the city we had left below, by the sea. We zigzagged up the slopes of the Andes, like a line of red ants. We were so insignificant in that immensity! Raising our eyes, we could see the bellies of the animals in the first section of the caravan, rising and rising, tracing a series of angles. Looking down, our eyes only met the loads and the heads of the llamas bringing up the rear. Sometimes we crossed very deep ravines thanks to a bridge made of vines, which rocked like a cradle over the abyss. We traveled the same way the figures of the Spanish colonization had traveled in other centuries. Since Iâve read my stuff, I often thought we werenât a troupe of actors; rather, a caravan of officials sent by the King of Spain and the Indies, who had just landed; a corregidor and several judges from the Court of Appeals, who had come with their ladies to take up their duties. When the wind from the heights was favorable, blowing behind us, the muleteers transformed their beasts into ships. Between the two âpetacasâ (small canoes), they placed a pole, hoisting a piece of canvas onto it to act as a sail. In this way, the cold breeze from the peaks aided our progress, pushing the llamas forward, making them redouble their sleepy trot; and the fleet of animals, with its hundreds of unfurled sails, sailed through the choppy waves of rocks and snow. I have a bad memory, Doctor, of my train trip the last time I was in Quito. I had made this same journey six years earlier by mule, and although it was uncomfortable and long, it proved safer. The railway line that exists today from Guayaquil to Quito is practically a funicular railway, several hundred kilometers long; a daring line that climbs and climbs. Since my people and I used this means of transportation in the first weeks of its operation, the train derailed upon reaching a lonely plateau in the Andes. There were deaths and many injuries. Itâs impossible to imagine a more desolate landscape: metallic-colored rocks, and the only vegetation was upright, widely scattered cacti that looked like men sliding down the slopes. Not a house, not a tree, not a drop of water. And in this solitude, the wails of the wounded, people calling to each other around the shattered or overturned cars. I moved away from the train, looking for help. Suddenly, I saw some red, somewhat limp horns, as if made of rags , cautiously peeking out over the edge of a ravine . then slanting, malignant eyes, with angled eyebrows , and the rest of a face stained with black and vermillion. It was a demon, a true demon, more horrible in this solitude than any I had seen in paintings and in the theater. Behind this demon, who was slowly climbing on all fours, another appeared, and then another. They wore grotesque, absurd, shabby costumes; but these garments seemed to give them a more horrifying appearance. The infernal troop, which was advancing half-hidden, with the precautions imposed by the distrustful life of the desert, stood up and marched Boldly, encouraged by the appearance of the train. I confess I was frightened to see so many devils, red and green, their faces blackened with soot, coming toward me. Suddenly I remembered it was Sunday and Carnival. The devils turned into Indians, inhabitants of nearby huts or invisible to me, who had dressed up for the festivities, abandoning their dancing when they learned of the catastrophe. Since it was mid-afternoon, they were drunk, and after hanging around the cars, they began to be tempted by the travelersâ luggage, quietly making it their own. It was life-threatening to spend the night in the company of these devils, whose numbers were increasing. Fortunately, a relief train arrived: an engine and a car, with several American employees of the line, and a case of whiskey bottles for first aid. Nothing more could have been asked for. At other times on our travels we experienced unexpected grandeur and marvelous abundance. I remember how we landed in a city on the Peruvian coast, founded by Pizarro, but which had subsequently remained forgotten for centuries. The Yankees were beginning to exploit some mines there, or rather, to refine the silver-rich slag left behind by colonial mining, and this had attracted numerous workers. We went ashore from the steamer on a raft made of logs and manned by Indians. Donât think the journey was easy. We had to negotiate three lines of surf, seizing the precise moment, with the risk of capsizing and drowning if the rowers maneuvered a moment too early or too late. Even so, we were engulfed several times, people and belongings, in the foam, each jolt of the raft accompanied by the shrieks of women and calls to All Saints. Travelers and belongings sailed tied up for greater safety, and even so, we lost a lot of luggage. There was no other way to disembark; but the adventure was worth it. Imagine the excitement of a thousand men isolated on this forgotten stretch of coast, earning ample money and not knowing what to do with it. We converted a shack next to the ore dock into a theater. Each miner paid a strong peso for admission. Iâve never seen so many duros together again. When we retired at midnight to our lodgings, we had to use a wheelbarrow to carry the baskets full of silver coins. Furthermore, I never received such sincere and thunderous applause in any theater. What this audience of whites and mestizos liked most were dramas full of fights and sword clashes. Every time I dueled the traitor in the play, the spectators shouted with enthusiasm, demanding a second bout, and I, fired up by the applause, repeated the fight, killing my opponent again. One never appreciates the magical power of the theater as much as one lives among simple people . Thatâs why, on my travels, Iâve preferred humble and forgotten towns , old cities, to which a theater company only occasionally arrives. Donât tell me about those American capitals near the sea, where the Spanish language is generally spoken, but where there are many people from all countries. Someone arrives to introduce classical theater works, and they immediately ask how many women the company brings, if they are pretty, and if the plays to be performed have music and singing. Show me inland cities, quiet and noble, where there are plazas with arcades reminiscent of Toledo and Segovia; where the gentlemen wear beards and have a chivalrous air, as if theyâve just removed their armor in their home; where the ladies are stately and go to mass at sunrise to a convent with orange trees in the courtyard, wearing a black cloak over their faces, just like the veils of CalderĂłn and Lope. It seems that this old America has changed a lot since my days as a young gallant and is about to disappear. But I have known it, even with its noble backwardness and colonial luxury. I have been to towns in the interior. Famous for their historic mines, where everything was made of silver, but of old, sturdy silver, hammered with the prodigality warranted by the abundance of the material; the plates, the jugs, and even a certain night utensil left next to the bed. The earthenware had to be brought from the coast, and they easily broke during a trip on muleback along the trails of the Andes. It was cheaper to make them of silver. It was in these lands of naive life that I found myself most appreciated. Men with curved knives, who had several deaths on their consciences, followed me when they met me in the streets with eyes of admiration and respect. They were spectators who had seen me the night before fighting like a hero against several scoundrels. âCheers, boss!â some would say. âWhat a knack you have with the sword! May the Lord preserve it! I have often thought of the great Rengifo.â While in Mexico, traveling by stagecoach from one city to another, he encountered some notorious bandits, their clothes and saddles plated with coins and silver embroidery. These criminals killed anyone who attempted to disobey them. âI am Rengifo,â he said arrogantly to the robbers, looking them in the eye. And they stopped pointing their rifles at him, dismounting to shake his hand. âWe respect the brave, comrade. They had all seen you in the theater. â The great Fonseca stopped speaking, falling into a thoughtful attitude. He seemed to be chasing his memories and concentrating them, so that none would escape . He wanted to show me, in its many aspects, good and bad, that wandering life across America, which had for him the melancholic sweetness of his distant youth. But a fat, shaven man with the face of an old comedian had just entered the cafĂ©. He was about to sit down next to a table occupied by others of his same ilk, when, recognizing Fonseca, he changed direction and came toward us. âHow long itâs been since I last saw you, Mariano!â he said in a deep, slow voice that gave a grotesque solemnity to his words. âI find you as fat as a village canon.â Fonseca looked at him with pitying eyes. âDonât be stupid, Tribaldo. There are no canons in villages. You mean a village priest. â âYouâre always lecturing! You want me not to forget that in your youth you were a student⊠Well, we have to talk about a business, a tour in Chile. Iâll come and find you later. I invite you to take a walk⊠at night.â And as Tribaldo left, the great Fonseca looked at me as if he were imploring mercy for his comradeâs nonsense. âThatâs how it is,â he said in a resigned tone, âmost of the people who come to this cafĂ©. And one must live with them all the time!⊠Fortunately, I have Pepita. Itâs necessary, Doctor, that you come to our modest house, so that you can meet my daughter. â Chapter 19. âWhen did we last see each other, Doctor?⊠Eight or ten years ago? I only remember that we met in that cafĂ© on Avenida de Mayo, where people from my field used to gather. Despite the passage of time, I recognized him immediately. You, on the other hand, would never have suspected that I was the same Fonseca who entertained you with his stories back in Buenos Aires. It was true: you would never have recognized the famous wandering comedian in this old man with a convex back, toothless and a face wrinkled like a winter fruit. All that remained of his past was his curly , abundant hair; but it no longer accepted dye, and it was white and hard, like that of black people when they turn gray. âYou will admit, Doctor,â Don Mariano continued, âthat I was a prophet when I announced to you in the other world the brilliant future that awaited you here. I felt no surprise at all when I recognized my old coffee companion in the celebrated doctor who deigns to visit our establishment. I have continued rolling downhill; it was my destiny, and thank goodness I was able to stop here. You knew me as a comedian in decline; But, in short, still an artist, and with certain audiences who remained loyal to my name. A few years later, I now find myself sheltered in a charity institution, and old, as if an entire century had passed over me. During my summer vacation on the Cantabrian coast, I had wanted to see a nursing home for the elderly, founded near the sea by a Spaniard who had become wealthy in the Argentine Republic. This âIndianâ had bought an enormous house with a vast garden to live out the rest of his days in his native country; but rest, after a difficult existence of business and thrift, seemed to attract death. Before leaving the world, he had ordered that his estate be converted into a nursing home, applying most of its income to the maintenance of the foundation. As a moral reward, he only asked that his name appear in large gold letters on the façade. The medical director of the establishment was a young man very devoted to my scientific work , and it was he who encouraged me with his entreaties to make this visit. âDonât think Iâm complaining about my current situation,â the comedian continued. â It was truly fortunate that some Spaniards from Buenos Aires, taking pity on the misery of Fonseca, whom they had applauded so much in the past, obtained a place for him in this house, which can only accommodate a small number of unfortunates. I warn you that they also made a subscription to pay for my trip. The last gift from that public that loved me so much. Iâm not doing badly here. The director likes me and likes to hear my stories âfrom the other world,â that is, my adventures from when I traveled from one end of the West Indies to the other performing comedies. The asylum seekers know me and even feel a certain pride in seeing me among them. Some were in America, where so many brutes had become rich, and returned poorer than they had left, their health failing. Some remember having applauded me in a theater there; probably a village theater, one of those from my later years.â Others only know that Don Mariano was something, and they respect me no less for that. Everyone sees that when important visitors arrive, Iâm the only one in the house who inspires curiosity and the only one who can hold a conversation. The others move away as soon as the visitor gives them tobacco. Fonseca paused as he said this, looking dismayed at the cigarette butt he held between his fingers. âDonât think Iâm ungrateful and like to criticize my benefactors, like some of the unfortunates who live here. But I must declare that not everything is perfect in this house, and there is a serious organizational flaw. The worthy man who founded it made his fortune in Buenos Aires manufacturing cigarettes, and yet, in his will, he completely failed to take into account that man needs to smoke, a need that gave rise to his wealth. We are well housed, we donât eat badly; but of tobacco⊠not a sliver!â The regulations of this house donât mention giving asylum seekers even a meager cigarette, and you know how necessary tobacco is for those who live an ordinary life, on a ship, in a barracks , or in an asylum. I wait for hours for the director to pass through the garden or invent pretexts to seek him out. I know the meeting might provide me with a little tobacco, since he likes to hear me, and I speak more freely when I smoke. I didnât say this as a hint to get you to give me cigarettes⊠But anyway, since you insist!⊠Believe me, I truly appreciate your gift. Other asylum seekers have relatives in the country who come to visit them and bring them packs from the tobacconistâs. I am alone in the world and can only count on what good souls give me. Yielding to my insistence, Fonseca seized, with childish greed, all the cigarettes in my cigarette case. He lit one in the rest of the previous one, and after expelling two jets of smoke through his nostrils with the relish of someone savoring his favorite delight, he continued speaking: âYou will leave this very afternoon. I heard it from the ladies who arrived.â with you, and are visiting the garden at this moment, accompanied by the director. Weâll be parting soon, and I guess youâre curious to learn about this unfortunate manâs life after you stopped seeing him. Do you remember Pepita, my poor âWarrior Virginâ?⊠I havenât forgotten that you came to my house to see my mementos of glory: the wreaths, the metal plaques given away at charity events, a collection of small terracotta jars and other things taken from Indian graves that I acquired on my travels. Alas! All thatâs gone. I had to sell it at any price in my last years of poverty, when I found myself alone in Buenos Aires and forced almost to beg. You met my daughter on that visit. I donât think you took away pleasant memories of her. Excuses are useless: the same thing happened to many. Iâm not saying she was ill-mannered; but she was incapable of a smiling expression, of a kind word, always frowning and hostile toward men. It couldnât have been any other way, even if she wanted to. She repeatedly courted young actors in our company, but she always ended up repelling them. âI canât stand any man but you, Papa,â she told me. âIâll never marry.â I believe it was one of these rejected suitors who coined her nickname, the âWarrior Virgin.â The nickname couldnât have been more exact or complete. Her hatred of men was proof and guarantee of her virginity. And as for the warrior thing, I knew about this more than anyone. She had my wifeâs bellicose nature; but poor Rosalba voluntarily sent smiles to the gentlemen in the audience, and it took a heroic effort for my daughter to smile on stage. In reality, she only managed half a smile, and that was with her mouth only, while the rest of her face remained frowning and aggressive. This bad temper prevented her from being a great actress. Donât think that my fatherly affection speaks for her. I assure you she had more talent than Rosalba and all the women Iâve worked with in my life. But that unfriendly face! That harsh, monotonous voice, which only softened when expressing anger or revenge on stage! With all their faults, the last years I spent with her, despite being those of my decline, seemed more pleasant than those of my glorious youth with Rosalba. After you saw her, we took a trip through Chile and other republics on the Pacific coast. We moved from theater to theater in the opposite direction to that of the Spanish discoverers, that is, from south to north. Iâve told you from theater to theater, and this was often not true. We fled from cities with theaters because the public there showed no interest in getting to know us. The era of Mariano Fonseca had passed . That name meant nothing to the new people. Everywhere they wanted plays with music or dramas performed with grand theatrical displays, and we were so poor!⊠The youth of the country would come on the first night eager to see the women in our troupe; but my Pepita, with her mere appearance, would put this boisterous audience to flight. However, you knew her. She was perhaps too dark, but no one could call her ugly. Besides, remember her eyes⊠She was undoubtedly no scarecrow, and many felt the attraction of her youth and her somewhat unusual beauty. But alas! Her cursed temper!⊠That quickness of hand to respond with a slap to the slightest insolence!⊠In some towns we were hissed at because of her violence; from others we had to leave in haste because the girl had struck the son of the most powerful person. So as not to die of hunger, we sought out almost unknown towns, without considering whether there was a theater there or not. We improvised our stage in the corrals of inns called hotels, in public squares, even in semi-civilized Indian tents. Wherever there was a group of people, the Fonseca company arrived, by mule, by wagon, by canoe, or on foot. When we lacked something for our scenery, we would look for it at the local grocery store. I remember using, in Don Juan Tenorio, as a statue of Doña InĂ©s, a billboard made in the United States, depicting a beautiful young woman, life-size, riding a bicycle. And such is the power of art, that with this lack of stagecraft, we managed to move our audiences and make them applaud. But I repeat, this always happened far from the cities, working âwith jungle scenery,â as one of our companions said. We also had a fierce enemy, who harassed us incessantly and seemed to grow a hundredfold each year. We felt it advancing behind us; it came out to meet us, blocking our path; it forced us to redouble our pace to escape its pursuit; it closed in on us on both sides. This enemy was the cinematograph. As long as that cursed invention didnât exist, we, the wandering comedians of America, were able to prolong our lives. In the inland towns, people needing to entertain their evenings happily flocked to our shows, whatever they were. There was nothing else. But with the widespread use of so-called âsilent theater,â everyone seemed to see us in a new light, noticing our poverty and our grotesque improvisations. Believe me, doctor, it was because of the cinema that we suffered great hardships and embarrassment in the final period of my career. Thanks to Pepitaâs energy, she helped me more than once to get ahead. Traveling from town to town and avoiding the cities, which represented failure and misery for us, we ended up in one of the least populated regions of Venezuela; a country that politically belongs to that Republic, but because of the difficult and long communications , is governed by a friend of the president, who exercises absolute authority. This ruler changes with each revolution, and the one we found was a handsome young man named Urdaneta, a great horseman, a great âmachete-wielder,â as they say there, and irresistible in the use of a lance. He was a reckless man , generous with gifts, rapacious toward those under his rule, fierce with his enemies, and fond of all pleasures tinged with cruelty; in short, a man born for fighting and conquest. He saw a kind of political triumph in our arrival at the town, the capital of his dominions. The Fonseca company represented a great event in the history of his government. Many years had passed since the last time comedians had visited that corner of the earth. The enthusiasm with which we were received, after so much contempt and poverty, was understandable. The journey was worth all this and much more. I, who had led such a long life of exploration, was astonished to find myself there. A protĂ©gĂ© of Urdaneta, upon finding us in the capital of the Republic, had proposed this âextraordinary season,â and under his direction, we crossed seemingly endless savannas, our mules sinking up to their bellies in their vegetation. Later, we thought we were lost in jungles where the sky was invisible and a greenish light, like that of the sea floor, shed its light through the branches. But the guides managed to orient themselves, following barely perceptible paths through the undergrowth stirred by hidden beasts. We saw birds with fantastic plumage, enormous butterflies, tiny insects, flies that looked like emeralds and rubies with wings; but we lacked the tranquility to admire such prodigies. We thought of tigers and jaguars, believing their immediate appearance every time the mules kicked or backed away, their ears drooping in anxiety. Afterward, we spent many days living and sleeping in canoes that glided through a tangle of streams and rivers. All the waterways seemed the same. Repeatedly, we imagined we had passed through the same place, staring in disbelief at the indigenous pilgrims, who They smiled at our distrust. We sailed for entire days beneath tunnels of foliage. The overhanging branches forced us to lower our heads with their lash. From time to time, a copper-skinned sailor, his gaze fixed on the canopy of vegetation shadowing the waters, raised his perch, giving one of the vertical vines a strong blow. The vine had eyes, it contracted, and, losing its balance, ended up collapsing into the river. It was an enormous boa constrictor⊠But why tell you more about this voyage? It was a different America than the one you know; the tropical land almost untouched, just as the first Spaniards who descended the Amazon or the Orinoco must have seen it. To us, poor comedians, after spending several weeks in the bosom of this untamed nature, the town where Urdaneta lived seemed like an enormous capital, and we received this personageâs displays of affection and protection with almost tearful gratitude. Never was the sultan of oriental tales so admired and obeyed as he was by us. It should be noted that Urdaneta lived almost isolated in the lands under his rule. Everyone feared him and tried to avoid his presence. He was capricious in his dealings with people, disbelieved in friendship, felt constantly threatened, and to avoid threats, he sought to be the first to attack. In short, he had killed many of his subjects to save his own life, as he claimed, or out of whim and drunkenness, as people said. Our presence provided him with extraordinary entertainment. With the magnanimity of a tyrant patron of the arts, he repeatedly invited us to dine at his house. He also emphatically decreed that the country should be civilized, and that the most effective way to achieve this was to attend a cultured and moralizing spectacle like our performances. He had always been a great lover of poetry. During the after-dinner conversation at his banquets, when the bottle of rum placed before him was almost empty, he would recite to us the immense wealth of sentimental and amorous verses treasured in his memory. During his campaigns to overthrow various presidents by sword and fire, his nightly distraction was playing the guitar, singing ballads of thirty or forty verses, all worthy of tears. I admit that this lyrical and sensitive warrior would sometimes have ordered numerous executions on the same day; but, despite this detail and the enormous harm he ultimately caused me, I declare that he was sympathetic in his own way. I owe the final triumphs of my artistic life to his protection. He had improvised a theater, to which the townspeople came punctually every night as if performing a public function. In front of the stage was a platform adorned with national flags, and on it a gilded wooden chair brought from the church. This presidential box was occupied by Urdaneta with other figures of somber complexion, devilish eyes, and honeyed speech, who were either executors of his wishes or companions in his perils. The audience laughed at our antics or frantically applauded our noble actions, encouraged by the presidentâs benevolent gesture. Pepita was considered by the spectators to be a miraculous deity who could intercede on their behalf, making their existence more tolerable. I worked with the unwavering enthusiasm of one assured of success. But I must reach the end of this period of my existenceâthe last in which I believed myself happyâthat is, my definitive misfortune. One day I realized that my daughter no longer deserved her nickname. As always happens in such cases, I was the last to find out. For some reason, the audience, in applauding her, displayed the adulation of those who wish to curry favor with the powerful. Pepita was Urdanetaâs lover, and this had been of her own free will, without the despot, accustomed to violence, needing to do anything to defeat her. The âWarrior Virginâ had reserved her bodily integrity for this descendant of the conquistadors, who, unbeknownst to her, awaited her in a corner of hot America, isolated by jungles and rivers. I wonât deny that Urdaneta was a well-rounded man, capable of moving women who like violent men and wish to live under the control of an overbearing will. But Pepita was the complete opposite. I didnât consider her bad temper inferior to the tyrant who protected us. Later, I thought that perhaps the identity of their characters had finally attracted them. I spent a long time feigning ignorance and blindness. You might say this isnât worthy of a father; but alas, life demands such things of us when weâre poor! Besides, Pepita seemed happy with her new situation, and every time I tried to talk about what had happened, she looked at me with those eyes that seemed to freeze me, abruptly cutting off my words. With a man like Urdaneta, calm and placid situations couldnât last long . He brought our theatrical season to an end in the most unexpected way. The familiarity of the men in the company toward the first lady seemed inappropriate to him⊠Why were they addressing Pepita informally?⊠How could she tolerate an actor embracing her on stage, uttering amorous words, when for less he had on several occasions drawn his revolver or his machete, freeing himself in a second from a potential rival?⊠The theater ended, and with it my glorious nights, forever extinguishing those bursts of applause that made me regress to the days of my youth. Urdaneta generously rewarded my companions, sending them on their return journey to the capital, once again across rivers, jungles, and plains. I stayed because I was the governorâs father; but never in my life had I been so lonely and bored. I spent my days conversing with those disturbing, dark-skinned figures, who were something like the marshals of my Napoleonic protectorâs court. They spoke to me of civil wars and revolutions, displaying a chilling disregard for the value of human life. Meanwhile, the two lovers raced through the jungles or went hunting. Urdaneta was now my daughterâs teacher, praising her admirable disposition. This man-at-arms delighted in showing his weapon to Pepita, and the governorâs house trembled daily with the thunder of the pistols and carbines she used. Such was the trust of the formidable teacher in his disciple that he had invented a diversion of the kind he liked, a mixture of voluptuousness and danger. Many nights before going to bed, my son-in-lawâ letâs call him thatâwould place a local fruit on her head, something that could serve as William Tellâs apple. And the new shooter would snatch it away with a shot from her rifle. After this game, the two seemed to love each other with renewed passion. It was something similar to the caresses of wild beasts, as they said in the village. One day, two strangers approached me, praising my acting talent highly. They claimed to have applauded me in one of the few performances I gave in the capital of the Republic. They then offered me a gift of ten thousand dollars in American currency and two tickets to Cuba, for me and my daughter. A trivial transaction would have been enough to reciprocate such generosity. They were content if the former âWarrior Virginâ had lowered her aim a little one night: the projectile, instead of grazing Urdanetaâs abundant hair, hit him square in the forehead. It seemed insufficient to repel this proposal with the best indignant phrases in my repertoire, and I revealed it to my daughter. âWhat do you want?â I had taken a certain liking to the tyrant, remembering the times when he had so effectively protected the dramatic arts. Pepita had to speak out, and Urdaneta deemed it appropriate to carry out a few executions, ordered on a whim, no doubt, but with the desire that they serve as a salutary warning to his opponents. You wonât be surprised, after this, that Mariano Fonseca, a peaceful man prone to remorse, couldnât live peacefully. He accused me alone of the executions, as if I myself had ordered them. To make matters worse, Urdaneta began to He looked at me with suspicion, considering my presence in his domains inopportune. Fortunately, he didnât believe me a traitor for a moment; but, as he told my daughter, he considered me a dangerous good-natured man, ready to make friends with anyone who spoke to me about theatrical matters: a kind of open door through which his enemies could reach him⊠And since he was quick and energetic in his resolutions, he ordered my return trip, the same as he had done months before with the people in my company. It was absurd to think of protests or arguments with Urdaneta. Besides, my daughter always said the same thing as her lover. To cut a long story short, I had to make the long journey again, by canoe and mule, to the capital of the Republic; but this time abundantly provided with money. The despot knew how to be generous, squandering his wealth with the same violence he used to acquire it. Finding myself alone, I felt the pull of a nomadic life, and I resumed my wanderings , now from north to south, drawn, as always, to Buenos Aires. During my slow retreat, I heard from Pepita: the latest. A revolution had broken out in that land; one more to add to the endless list of its history. The president was overthrown; but he was given time to escape. Urdaneta, his protĂ©gĂ©, refused to imitate him. He had grown accustomed to living as an independent authority in that forgotten and almost wild corner of the Republic. He imagined that this government was his by right of conquest, and no one could take it from him, no matter what happened in the rest of the nation. The people didnât understand it that way. Since a revolt had triumphed, the authorities had to be renewed, with Urdaneta being replaced by another ruler. No one entertained the illusion that the new one would be better; but it was essential to change the tyrant. The trusted men of the vanquished also felt this general desire, abandoning him to join the victors. Even so, that stubborn, bold, and courageous man, worthy of living in other centuries, didnât want to flee. Finding himself without friends, he fortified himself in the government house with my daughter. The two of them against the entire town and against the armed groups sent by the victorious revolution!⊠Both were excellent marksmen, and rifles and cartridges abounded in their home. Iâve been told that Pepita, fallen on the floor, her leg broken by a bullet and other wounds on her body, loaded the rifles, passing them to Urdaneta, who shot and shot incessantly with the swiftness of a devil. The assailants, after many useless and deadly attacks, had to advance protected by wagons of burning straw, and they set fire to the building, convinced that only in this way could they finish off their fearsome governor. Thus perished Urdaneta and my former âWarrior Virgin.â The mob only dared to approach them when their bodies were burning like coal. Even so, many feared that the tyrantâs accurate shots would once again emerge from the flames. After this, I believe no one will dare say that in the lives of actors everything is lies and pretense, and that no dramas more tremendous than those we act out on the stage occur in reality. With my daughter dead, the adventures of my life are of no interest. When I returned to Buenos Aires, I had already eaten everything that Pepitaâs generous companion gave me. I once again experienced misery and humiliation; but now I was alone, missing my daughter, who seemed to sustain me and give me strength with her harsh character. Besides, my companions were mean to me, not seeing âthe warrior Virginâ at my side⊠You already know the rest: how I ended up in this refuge, the protection of some Spanish merchants there, the subscription for the trip, etc. But I notice, Dr. Olmedilla, thatâs what those ladies call you, and the director seems to be getting impatient because I keep him talking. Donât worry about me; take care of your friends⊠and if you ever remember the comedian Fonseca, your old friend from Buenos Aires, you know how you can help him. No money⊠He simply sends me tobacco: a few packets of cigarettes. We all suffer in this house from the absent-mindedness of that cigar maker who, at the hour of his death, failed to remember that men smoke. And good souls must make up for such an inexplicable oversight. Chapter 20. Several years passed. I never returned to the asylum on the Cantabrian coast; but one day in Madrid I spoke with the doctor who had been its director. When I saw him, the image of the comedian Fonseca resurfaced in my memory, and I asked about him. âHe died a year before I left the directorship,â said the doctor. â When he had only a few months left to live, he changed his name, and almost in his dying breath, made a will, leaving his fortune to his fellow inmates. I understand the expression of astonishment with which you receive such news. In truth, the ending of the famous Fonseca was extraordinary, something like the last act of one of those melodramas that were fashionable in his youth. â I warn you that Don Mariano always remembered you, and spoke to everyone of your friendship. I believe you only sent him tobacco twice; but these packets of cigarettes, which perhaps numbered no more than twelve, seemed to have the reproductive power of the loaves and skins at the wedding feast of Canaan. Whenever he smoked a cigarette, even if it had been given to him minutes before, he would say to his companions in a resounding and solemn voice, as if he were acting out the climactic scene in a drama: âThis is from the monthly shipment sent to me by my illustrious friend Dr. Olmedilla, a prominent figure in Madrid. One summer we received a visit from the senator of that region, a political figure as venerable as he was little known, and as old as Fonseca. After repeating our visitorâs name in a low voice and with a thoughtful expression, he approached him, extending his hand. Many of us present intervened, interpreting this familiarity as the insolence of his old age.â The old actor was beginning to sound less reasonable and coherent in his telling of his stories. But Fonseca explained things in a confident voice that convinced us all. His memory seemed to have been strengthened by the senatorâs presence. He remembered his name perfectly. They had been classmates in Madrid when he was a student at the baccalaureate. And he piled up such details as he recalled that distant time that the politician, who seemed to have also awakened from his senile apathy, finally recognized him. âBut youâre CerĂłn!â he said. âI remember how we used to laugh about your last name when we were kids⊠Why do they call you Fonseca here?â The comedian accepted the question with resignation and at the same time with concern, like someone forced to reveal a mystery about his life. Indeed, his last name was CerĂłn, and in the following days we learned about his early life, before he left for America. Two reporters from the provincial capitalâs newspapers who had come with the character saw in this story material for an article. Fonsecaâs name was CerĂłn, and under this name he had begun his career as a comedian in Madrid. Continuous and resounding failures forced him to flee the stage and his homeland. How could he continue his theatrical life in a country where actors, to demonstrate the mediocrity of a comrade, simply said, âHeâs worse than CerĂłnâ? Upon leaving, he had thought it appropriate to change his name, and Mariano CerĂłn became the tireless Mariano Fonseca, a wandering and celebrated actor, as he said, âfrom the border of Texas to the Strait of Magellan.â I donât consider this extraordinary; now comes the most interesting part. The story of the actor who changed his name and became famous in America was passed from newspaper to newspaper, and one day a man of judicial business, a litigator, came to the asylum from Madrid only to give Fonseca the news that an inheritance had been waiting for him for more than twenty years. A certain Mr. CerĂłn, now deceased, had made a will, leaving his property to a brother of his who had fled to America, without anyone knowing anything about him. Who could have guessed the unknown CerĂłn in the glorious Fonseca? The inheritance wasnât enormous, like those you see arriving unexpectedly in comedies and novels. I donât think it was more than twenty-five thousand duros; but imagine what this meant to our unforgettable friend! Furthermore, the inheritance seemed extremely tired of waiting so many years, and, contrary to what is customary in the courts, he wanted to hand it over as soon as possible. The rabbula only needed a power of attorney from the heir to resolve the matter with unusual speed. But our hero hurried to die anyway, now that he saw himself rich. He left the world with dignity, righting a great injustice, as he had done so many times, sword in hand, on the stage . He wanted to dictate his will, and left as heirs to his property all his fellow asylum seekers and those who would succeed them in that house. The income from his capital must be spent entirely on tobacco, so that the poor will never know the torment he suffered in his final years due to an omission by the founder. And the asylum seekers now spend the entire day smoking and smoking. What I donât know is whether in a few years they will remember the comedian Fonseca. The Old Man of the Promenade des Anglais Chapter 21. Every morning, at eleven oâclock, he invariably arrived at the Promenade des Anglais, when it was at its largest crowd. Under the double row of palm trees next to the sea, people of various nationalities and languages ââwho had come to Nice for the winter formed groups. The dense, restless blue of the Bay of Angels was interrupted by the reflection of the sunâs brilliance, a throbbing triangle of gold resting its vertex on the shore, while the white fleeces of the clouds slid across the motionless blue of the sky. A springtime illusion rejuvenated this crowd during the daylight hours. As the afternoon waned, the stinging wind falling from the peaks of the Alps recalled the existence of the long-forgotten winter; but at midday , the women, dressed in floral colors, had to open their parasols to protect themselves from the causticity of the sun, and the men felt proud of having conquered the weather, looking down at their white flannel trousers through the smoked glasses they used to protect their eyes from the refraction of light on the asphalt. A selfish joy animated them all as they talked about the cold that those unfortunate enough to have remained in Paris, London, or New York, far from the sun-drenched CĂŽte dâAzur, must be suffering at that hour. Eager to see and be seen, they crowded into a small section of the Promenade des Anglais, which is several kilometers long. People placed their iron chairs close together, seeking to speak more intimately, or moved them further away from their neighbors. This narrowed the space available to passersby in their constant comings and goings, but it didnât curtail their tireless rosary, and they continued to glide between the windings of the seated people, exchanging greetings and words with them. Conversations in various languages ââformed a hum almost as sonorous as the crash of the last shudders of the sea on the pebble beach, polished by millennia of friction. When this human murmur subsided, the orchestras of the restaurants and hotels on the promenade, whose straight buildings face the sea, could be heard. Between the houses and the double row of palm trees, cars with license plates and colors of all nations passed, along with groups of horsemen: the women, with a boyish air, wearing menâs trousers; the men, with their heads uncovered, their hair swept back, and their shirt collars open over their chests. From the famous hotels, lazy ladies were coming out, whistling for a large dog to follow their steps, with the air of a beast that deigns to be good, or a very small one, and dragging itself along the ground, like a fur muff falling from oneâs hands and blowing in the wind. They were women famous for their families or their history: artists of costly love or princesses of a reigning dynasty. People repeated their names with interest, and they, sensing out of the corner of their eyes the curiosity aroused by their presence, continued advancing with an aristocratically faint air , resigned, like a queen who has to reveal herself to the populace, and implying by the limpness of their person that for most of the year they only got out of bed in the early afternoon. Here in Nice, it was considered fashionable to abandon the sheets to pay a visit to the sun at the hour when it is most visible, although its vulgar and ill-mannered light brutally reveals the imperfections on faces. At twelve oâclock, the traditional cannon shot sounded from Castle Hill, and instantly, with theatrical swiftness, the human groups disbanded beneath the palm trees, which the shipâs crews could see like anthills as they sailed along the horizon. The people disappeared into the streets that led to the promenade or entered the hotels. Only the talkers, unable to break up a discussion, and a few amorous couples remained lingering on the asphalt , waiting for this moment of general disbandment to approach and arrange where they could meet more intimately again at dusk. An hour before this dispersion in search of lunch, the man many called âthe old man of the Promenade des Anglaisâ arrived every day , as if he were an integral part of the place. Others, who, having lived longer in Nice, felt obliged to have a specific knowledge of people and things, gave precise details about his existence. âHeâs a Russian: one of the many whom the revolution has left in misery.â No one could elaborate; everyone moved on to other things, with a weary grimace. Russians were no longer fashionable; every reasonable person knew this. At first, their misfortunes excited public sympathy ; there was no distinguished salon or elegant show where some refugee of this nationality could not be found. But a long time had passed without anything new happening in Russia, and finally the fate of such fugitives became monotonous. Besides, too many had come to crowd into this sunny country, as if driven by a Sabean mysticism. The novels of their new existence no longer inspired interest, and people spoke coldly of grand duchesses who had boarding houses or milliners in Nice ; of officers of the former Tsarist navy who had become professional dancers in the restaurants of Monte Carlo; of chauffeurs with martial bearing and blond mustaches, former colonels and generals at the court of St. Petersburg. This might have merited attention for a few weeks or months; but after four years, during which so much had happened in a world that seemed to be mad! The oldest winterers in Nice knew his name, Fedor Ipatieff, and affirmed that this âold man of the Promenade des Anglaisâ was not extraordinarily old. He must have been a little over sixty, and in the months before the outbreak of the war, he still displayed that mature, artificial, and brilliant youth that every modern man, free from the fatigues of work, can afford. Time, which seemed to have forgotten him, suddenly fell upon him at the sight of his poverty, marking his face with the scratches of its wrinkling hand. Ten years earlier, he had appeared relatively fresh and vigorous when he emerged from his bathroom in the morning. Now his eyes were sunken deep into a star of wrinkles, and when the collar of his shirt parted at the corners it revealed sagging skin and that stiffness of the tendons that betrays old age. His hair, which in recent years had disguised his anemia under blond tints, was now frankly white. But this man, old with age and Aged even further by his social decline, he made efforts of will to delay his ruin. They were desperate and futile efforts, like those of a shipwrecked man floating in the middle of the ocean, which only delay the inevitable end by a few minutes. He wore, as in his heyday, sideburns halfway down his face, joined by his mustache, as if it were a bridge, and his hair parted from the top of his head to the nape of his neck. He was reminiscent of the late Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. He was elegant, following the Viennese style that had prevailed in the courts and salons of Europe forty years earlier. His clothing, although not dating from such a remote period, also belonged to the past: cravats with an imposing plastron, with a scandalously false pin in the center, replacing one that had been a true jewel; majestic frock coats; gray gloves with black braid; indeterminate hats, under which no one could say what fashion they had originated; All brushed until the weave was visible, revealing the rubbing and liquids that had passed over its surface to remove stains. The lack of underwear was what made Ipatieff suffer the most, as in his youth he had changed it three times a day. His collars, always high and showy, no longer dazzled with the clear brilliance of yesteryear. After the war, everything had changed in the world. Besides, his poverty only allowed him to employ workersâ laundresses. His shirts were fraying, and despite the shine of the iron, they always retained a vague chocolate color. This poor, âantiqueâ-looking man was greeted by many with the affability inspired by people we knew in our youth and who remind us of it with their presence. He was also greeted affably by some elderly, aristocratic ladies who exposed their rheumatism to the sun. âPoor Ipatieff!â There you see him, he was the most famous dancer of his time. No one in modern-day Nice knew how to waltz like him, or how to conduct a cotillion⊠Alas! That was in the days before foxtrots and other Negro dances, which drive girls crazy today, yet existed. Gentlemen with stern faces, wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor in their lapels, in replying to the Russianâs modest greeting, explained who he was to their conversation partners: âBefore the war, he was rich. A brother of his had an important factory there , and sent him several hundred thousand rubles every year. The industrialist was proud that his younger brother had made the family name shine among the most distinguished Russians, in Nice and Paris. But now the factory has disappeared, the brother was murdered by the Bolsheviks, and poor Ipatieff has to resort to extraordinary means to conceal his poverty.â Those most familiar with Fedorâs current situation recounted, with a smile of pity, his efforts to live without begging. During the first years of the war, he had been able to sustain himself in relative comfort thanks to his furniture. When the monetary remittances from Russia were cut off, he occupied a sumptuously decorated apartment on a street near the Promenade des Anglais, and he exploited his luxurious accommodations as an industry, renting his house to winter visitors enriched by the war who wanted to know what life had been like in Nice for the â old rich.â He settled into the attic, occupying a room reserved for his former servants. But this extraordinary resource didnât last long. As living costs became more expensive, the owner of the house considerably increased his rent. Then, finally, she forced him to leave, preferring other, less needy tenants, and he managed to live for three more years on the proceeds from the sale of his furniture. Now, unable to expect any new income, he tried to support himself with extraordinary parsimony. Fortunately, he didnât have to worry about his home. The compassion of the owner of the house, and even more so the affection of his former doormen, who Reminiscent of Mr. Ipatieffâs prosperous days, lavish with tips and little given to examining accounts, they procured him the perpetual enjoyment of an almost subterranean room, which had always been used to store old furniture and which the housing crisis had recently elevated to the status of human habitation. Through skylights open at street level, the midday sun entered, and it was very cold the rest of the day. In this cavernous bedroom, he kept the remains of his wardrobe and certain companions of his existence, whose fertility represented the only income he could count on. Many, when referring to the old man of the Promenade des Anglais, also called him âMr. with the little dog,â for the reason that he never appeared on the promenade without being accompanied by an animal of this species, small, with erect, pointed ears, extraordinarily woolly: a ball of fur that trotted with a small gait. This Pomeranian puppy attracted the admiring glances and exclamations of old ladies, as well as the fondling of children, and was never the same. Those who knew Ipatieff spoke with pity about the canine industry that helped him make a living. Back in his hovel, he had a pair of these little beasts , a gift he had received during his prosperous days, prolific animals that produced several litters for sale each year. Besides, he easily solved the problem of food during the winter. In the most expensive hotels, or in the elegant neighborhoods of Cimiez and California, there were always families who invited him to dinner. Poor Ipatieff, with his presence, recalled the days before the war, when life was still sweet. At dessert, the hostâs wife, who didnât dare give him money, offered to buy one of her puppies, and he gravely accepted the offer, as if convinced that no one could live without the company of such animals. With the same air of a supplier announcing the dispatch of a eagerly awaited order, he would sometimes say, after greeting a lady on the Promenade des Anglais: âMarchioness, Iâll bring you the little one next week. Iâm not giving it to you before then because I want to be sure of its good manners.â And upon handing over the âlittle one,â he would shamelessly accept the five-hundred- franc note, which he would otherwise have refused. After the midday cannon shot, if Ipatieff wasnât a guest at a hotel, he would leave the ordeal of eating sparingly in a tavern in the old town until early afternoon , hurrying home. âLetâs get the family some sun.â The family was an old, trembling little dog with numerous white hairs, who was over ten years old, which in the lifespan of his species is almost equivalent to a century of human life. And around this tireless, fecund patriarch, half a dozen little dogs barked and jumped, both frightened and delighted by the sun and the fresh air. The formerly elegant man advanced like a shepherd along the now deserted avenue, surrounded and followed by this flock, which trotted on the asphalt, making their balls of black wool tremble. A simple voice from the man silenced and gathered the patiently trained animals together. But since they needed the running and barking to loosen their stamina after their confinement , their owner set them free. He went to sit on a bench and remained there, meditative, while his companions ran around chasing each other or barking at the children attracted by their presence. Fedor Ipatieff looked at the sea, but with eyes incapable of seeing. His gaze went further, with the swiftness of the imagination. The old man on the Promenade des Anglais carried a novel inside him, an unfinished novel, as most humans do. And while the black flock rubbed against his legs, barking sweetly in anticipation of a caress, the Russian, squinting, thought he saw his distant homeland, like a house without furniture, dilapidated and cold, and in it the familiar figure of a woman, remembered daily. Her face must now be somewhat different from how he had last seen it; he was certain of it. But he could only imagine her as she had once been. Chapter 22. The Russian refugees on the French Riviera hardly considered him a fellow countryman . He had been educated in France, later living in the major capitals of Western Europe. He only made trips home when his friendship with some illustrious personage allowed him to spend several months in the aristocratic world of St. Petersburg. His brother, the industrialist, proudly accepted this brilliant and lazy existence, seeing in it an honor to the family name. Had he always remained in his own country , Fedor Ipatiev would have been merely the son of a wealthy manufacturer, without entry into the big world. But in the famous capitals of Europe, he could be on friendly terms with great Russian figures: life in salons and hotels facilitates such intimacies; and then, upon his return to his homeland, he penetrated privileged places , whose doors had been skillfully opened for him from abroad. Looking back into his past, beyond the revolution, beyond the war, Fedor contemplated the days of his youth as a wonderful fairy tale that had existed in reality; but seen now, from a great distance, it seemed more extraordinary than the imagined tales. He admired Russian life under the tsars as the most complete expression of the sweetness of life. It was indisputable that this sweetness was savored only by a select few, making millions and millions of steppe dwellers pay for it with an existence equal to that of beasts. âBut are they better off now, after the revolution?â Ipatiev thought selfishly. Oh, Petersburg! Life in this monumental city had been as luxurious and joyful as the Russian balls, which later became fashionable throughout the rest of the world. Fedor remembered the performances at the Maria Theater and the Michael Theater, before audiences of overwhelming luxury: the women, with the haughty profile of empresses, wearing constellations of jewels, and the great lords, shining like idols, covered in decorations and embroidery; the sumptuous dinners in the island restaurants, enormous and white as cathedrals; the rides in docked vehicles along the banks of the Neva, under coats of extremely expensive furs. This dazzling carnival was enjoyed by thousands of privileged people, who also saw the high dignities and great fortunes of the country, valuable jobs, commands in the army and the administration, and the enjoyment of landed estates as vast as nations, reserved for the rest of their lives. And all this had been undone by Bolshevism in a few months!⊠The rich of the âgreat eraâ had been murdered, like their tsar and grand dukes, or were beggars, experiencing the torment of hunger. Stately ladies like tsarinas, who had been the mainstay of the great Parisian couturiers for their lavish commissions, were now shivering with cold in the streets of Russia, marching like thin ghosts on the ice, their hands cut and disfigured by the inclement weather, selling newspapers or offering a sprig of withered flowers in exchange for a piece of bread with more straw than flour⊠No; there was no justice on earth. Ipatieff was certain of this when he thought of the past. And he put aside his memory of his homeland to see the European capitals as they had been in his younger years. Back then, Russia was well represented on the face of the earth, and it was an honor to be a subject of the tsar. The Grand Dukes astonished Paris with their prodigality. In Monte Carlo, Moscow gamblers were the best clients. All the luxury industries had their most important market in Russia, and he, Fedor Ipatieff, enjoyed a share of this national prestige. The famous Swiss hotels, surrounded by fields of ice, had seen him in the evenings in conversation with the most brilliant society of Europe, while he was preparing to achieve another triumph as a skater the following morning. He had danced in Biarritz, Nice, and Deauville, depending on the seasons, with the most celebrated and beautiful ladies in Europe. He had friends with famous figures and had even been introduced to heirs to royal thrones, with that genteel camaraderie that prevails in places of aristocratic and expensive life. They invited him to all the parties, accepting his opinions as a slightly original and exotic man of fashion . They also needed him as a tireless dancer. His industrial brother, who learned of these worldly successes from foreign newspapers, followed him from afar with admiring eyes when he saw him arrive in Petersburg and live in the most closed and aristocratic society, provided for his expenses without restraint, often increasing the production of his factory and devising new economies in the workersâ wages so that this younger brother, who carried the family glory with him, would not suffer any loss of income. It was in the last period of his brilliant and vain life, at the age of forty- five, that Fedor Ipatieff had the encounter he considered the first chapter of what he called âthe novel of my life.â Until then, he had been a frivolous ambitious man, seeking friendships for the honor they might bring him, and always placing vanity before affection in his life. His many concerns as an elegant man left only a secondary place to the need that some vaguely call âlove,â for fear of using a more precise expression. The Russian smiled skeptically when speaking of love. This word had only a material meaning for him, one that flattered his manly vanity. On some occasions, he had thought he had known so-called love with beautiful women, but they were incapable of holding his interest for long, being simple bourgeois women, lacking in luxury, and leading vulgar lives. Other times, he had allowed himself to be wooed by respectable ladies who could almost have been his mothers, bearers of a historic name. His brother, the industrialist, had nearly wept with emotion once when Fedor was forced to leave Petersburg to please an uncle of the emperor, jealous of the preference shown for this elegant man by his noble wife, a Grand Duchess of manly ugliness and advanced in years. It was Vera Alexandrova, wife of a gold and platinum mine owner in Siberia named Velinsky, who, unwittingly, had changed the life and feelings of the fickle Ipatiev. He had met her in the salons of Petersburg. She was the daughter of General Bodkine, who had made his military career without leaving the court; But since her father was lacking a fortune and she could only conceive of a luxurious existence, she married the miner, momentarily ignoring her class prejudices. Then, when she found herself wealthy, these prejudices resurfaced, making her find life with her husband intolerable. After several years of family conflict, the Siberian finally agreed to a separation, no longer wishing to suffer her harsh and arrogant nature. He preferred to live on his land, where the poor people admired him as a superior being. He would be content to remain in name the husband of a woman celebrated for her beauty and the son-in-law of a court figure. Vera Alexandrova could spend as she pleased: the mines would provide more than enough for her every whim. Indignant at the gossip of her friends and the austerity of certain matrons of the old aristocracy, who would not compromise with the freedoms of her existence, she finally left Russia. Furthermore, she needed to be admired for her ostentatiousness in that Western Europe, from which came the latest fashions for womenâs beautification. She had been living in Paris for ten years and was a celebrity in womenâs fashion , frequently appearing in elegant publications, when she and Fedor thought they were meeting for the first time. This novelty had an explanation for both of them. The hectic life of Paris meant they met weekly at theatrical premieres, horse races, and lavish parties. But in such a restless and varied existence, their encounters were like involuntary stumbles, followed by an apologetic smile, a nod, and each walked away without a glance. Elegance was a profession that imposed numerous cares and worries, leaving no time for other things. But the two spent an entire winter together in Nice, which seemed to unite them with a sudden intimacy. They were old friends, they were compatriots, and they naturally had to seek each other out. They stayed in the same hotel, attended the same parties, went on the same excursions, returned late at night from gambling in Monte Carlo, and Fedor eventually considered this life of constant contact to be the most triumphant period in his life. He was proud to see the admiring glances with which the men followed the lady leaning on his arm, tall, slender, with pale skin, green and golden eyes, and flowing red hair on her small head, like a torch. Moreover, this woman equally moved the other women with her countless dresses, her empress-like furs, and the splendor of her jewels, almost barbaric in their richness and sumptuousness. At first, he admired her. He felt an instinctive adoration for all things rich and luxurious. Then, he considered himself bound to her by the tenderness of gratitude, thinking of the new social prestige his relationship with this extraordinary woman brought him. Finally, one day, when Vera Alexandrova had granted him everything he dared to ask of her and could no longer give him moreâthat is, at the moment when he was abandoning the other womenâhe realized for the first time the importance of the word âlove,â which had previously made him smile. He didnât hide Veraâs poor characterâ dominant, capricious, and fantasticalâbut even burdened by such defects, he felt closer to her than to any woman heâd met in his past. âThatâs how love is!â Fedor said to himself with resignation. She, for her part, in a moment of enthusiasm, said something that almost made her lover weep with gratitude. âIf I didnât need to be rich to live, Iâd divorce her and marry you. â A Vera Alexandrova couldnât say more. Five years passed, traveling from one side of Europe to the other, according to the rotations demanded by fashion: winter on the French Riviera, spring in Paris and London, summer on the Atlantic coast, reserving a few weeks for vague cures at the famous spas of Central Europe, and others for snow sports in Switzerland. When the newspapers announced the arrival of the celebrated Russian lady to these parts, many smiled indiscreetly, prophesying as inevitable the presence of the elegant Fedor two or three days later. Suddenly, war broke out. For the first few months, the lives of the two lovers were undisturbed by privations. The selfish continuation of their happiness, maintained intact amidst the continental upheaval, seemed to give new appeal to their pleasures. Then money began to become scarce. Communications functioned poorly or did not function at all. The Russian government had regulated the transfer of sums. When the great lady, for the first time in her life, experienced the need to borrow, the anguish of scarcity, the imperative need for economy, she felt a sudden love for her homeland and a vehement interest in all the members of her family, which until then she had forgotten. Her father was a general; Her brothers were serving in the war as officers: why did she live in Paris?⊠She was Russian, and she had to contribute her efforts to her family, creating charitable organizations, working in hospitals. She also considered it necessary to reunite with her husband, without being able to explain the reason for this sudden desire. And so she left, braving all the dangers of the voyage on an English steamer, through Northern Norway, until she disembarked in the icy port. of Arkangel. Fedor wanted to follow her; but she, who so desired to sacrifice herself for her homeland, with an inconsistency typical of her character, refused to allow the man she loved to face the same dangers. Ipatieff had to stay. He was not a man of war, and he could render better services to his homeland in the Western world where he had always lived. Vera Alexandrova felt the need to take him away from her, without ceasing to love him. He represented the memories of a brilliant life that seemed to have died, and she needed to move forward alone in her new existence. The years of the war passed, full of events, as if they were centuries. Tsarism fell forever; Then the Russian Republic, led by the orator Kerensky, lived languidly , and the Soviets finally triumphed , the communists attempting, in order to implant their doctrines in reality, to subject the vast Russia to a cold and methodical experience, equal to the experiments of scientists in laboratories⊠And to avoid the protests of the people subjected to such a risky operation, the Red Terror began to operate. Fedor saw all this from afar, limiting his interest to the people who lived there and could influence their suffering or their well-being. Whenever a new event occurred in Russia, he asked the same questions: âWhat will become of Vera?⊠Has something happened to my brother?â He received several letters from the great lady, widely spaced and all of them sad. His brothers had died in the war; then his father died, perhaps from astonishment at witnessing the collapse of the Tsarist monarchy. His brother, the manufacturer, also displayed an oriental pessimism, seeing his country in the midst of a revolution. After that, he stopped writing, or rather, none of his letters reached Fedor. Some Russian refugees who had managed to escape from what they called âthe red hell,â upon finding him in Nice, delivered some painful news, abruptly, with the harshness of those who have seen and suffered every imaginable horror and no longer know the value of precautions or the nuances of words. His brother had been shot by the Communists along with other representatives of the bourgeoisie. Their factories no longer existed⊠What could Fedor care about the destruction of his familyâs wealth , when capitalist society had been annulled in his homeland? He was only interested in the fate of the living⊠But⊠Was Vera Alexandrova still alive? Chapter 23. He spoke frequently with Russians who were arriving on the French Riviera, fugitives from their country. Many of them seemed to harbor in their eyes a dilation of horror at what they had seen. Some had fled, traveling over the frozen sea to reach a border port. Others descended to the Black Sea, and after terrifying adventures, managed to escape the tyranny of the Soviets, then crossed the nations of Southern Europe as pilgrims. They all spoke of deadly confinement, of executions, of madness brought on by persecution; but what made them shudder with the greatest horror was the memory of two continuous, tenacious, unbearable torments: hunger and cold. The old tyranny of the Okhrana, the political police of the Empire, which sent revolutionaries to Siberia or to the gallows, had been replaced by the Red Inquisition of the Cheka, a name that sounded Chinese and was simply the telegraphic abbreviation for the Extraordinary All-Russian Commission, charged with persecuting the enemies of the communist regime. The âRed Tsar,â Lenin, by concentrating all means of nutrition in the hands of his government, exercised the most violent and painful despotism known in history: a despotism over the stomach. Hunger was the scourge of this tamer. All food was reserved for his soldiers and supporters. The leftovers were the only thing the rest of the country could eat. The people of the cities were fed three times a week, in public taverns, by the presentation of a government card, with a few ounces of bread made of straw and a broth in which herring heads and bones swam as a substance. âWhat will become of Vera?â thought Ipatieff. In the mornings, as he sunbathed on the Promenade des Anglais, he felt remorse. His eyes would leave the luminous Bay of Angels and suddenly contemplate a Petrograd street or square, over whose snow a trembling woman was walking. Inside the buildings, the temperature was the same as that of the streets. The doors and windows no longer existed. All the wood had been consumed long before in the now frozen stoves. And he lived by the Mediterranean, surrounded by seemingly happy people, unable to give her his place in the sun!⊠When he ate at random during his bohemian existence in a grand hotel or a tavern in old Nice, his greedy gloating, like that of a man beginning to age, was disturbed by the memory of those nutritional miseries recounted by the Russian fugitives. Poor Vera! What a great, unhappy lady who had lived, most of her years, seeking new refinements to make her existence more costly! In her Paris palace, she paid her cook a salary higher than that of a Prime Minister. And now Fedor imagined how she would pounce, with the impetus of a starving animal, on the remains of his meal that soiled the tablecloth of the Nice tavern, frequented on days of scarcity⊠The poor room that served as his home was transformed into a palace when he remembered the former millionairess. He and his entire canine flock ate, ignored the cold, had good electric light at nightfall, while the other wretched people⊠âThe world has changed,â Fedor said, looking around him in surprise. Yes, the world had changed; but people only learn about historical upheavals if they are close to home, and when they see them from afar, they tire of talking about them and forget them. The old man on the Promenade des Anglais was amazed to see so many people content with their lot, coming to the French Riviera in search of the sun. To think that while one part of humanity was giving itself over to pleasure, forgetting the past war or future and upcoming wars, the most enormous revolution in history was still unfolding in the other half of Europe, unbeknownst to people who felt no interest in it because of its duration and monotony! â The era of the rich is over,â he murmured. There are no rich people in my country anymore, and those here blindly carry on with their old lives, without considering that their turn will come to die like the others. And concentrating the fate of the world on the person who interested him, he remembered Vera Alexandrova again. Everything in Nice seemed to evoke her image. The little dogs that helped him live with her fecundity were descendants of a pair of favorites she had entrusted to him before leaving for Russia. The Casino reminded him of balls of yesteryear. It was impossible for him to leave the city without his eyes immediately stumbling upon the enormous white mass of the hotel where they had both lived at the top of Cimiez. The dining rooms of the Palace, which he now frequented as a humble and friendly parasite, had seen him sitting next to her during long dinners of expensive dishes and extraordinary wines, paid for with a Moscow largesse , ignorant of values. Madame Volinsky, the wife of the famous miner, spent 800,000 francs a year on dresses that were three million today, and her jewels were so numerous that they left no room in the hotel safes. The fashion papers had spoken with astonishment of her footwear: usually a hundred pairs. She developed a sudden aversion to dresses and shoes she had worn only once, giving them to her maids or to hotel maids she had met hours before; and the poor women, not knowing what to do with such lavish gifts, sold them. Of all Vera Alexandrovaâs whims, the one Fedor remembered most frequently was her bath: a daily bath that made every second seem like a second thought. He put an end to the thermal extravaganzas of the empresses of Rome. The wife of the Siberian millionaire poured 500 francsâ worth of Parisian perfumes into her bathtub every day. And now, perhaps, she would spend months and months there, in the great city devastated by the communist experience, without changing her clothes, without knowing the proper hygiene, deprived of importance in a country lacking food and heat!⊠But as if he could not imagine her dirty, ragged, and eating filth, he asked himself: âIs she really still alive?⊠Has she not died of misery, like so many millions of others? â One day he experienced a great emotion, almost the same as if he had seen the deceased. He avoided contact with the Russians living in Nice. They all cursed the red tyranny; but as soon as they met to agree on the means of combating it, as many opinions arose as there were individuals, and these opinions were tenacious and irreconcilable. Ipatieff, educated in Western Europe , believed his compatriots to be somewhat insane from birth and to have a critical tendency that rendered them impotent for action. He, in turn , was seen by others as a freeloader who had done nothing useful in his days as a rich man, and they also considered him a foreigner. At a gathering of compatriots, speaking with a lady named Tatiana, recently arrived from Russia, he paled with surprise when he heard her mention Vera Alexandrova. She had been alive for three months. Tatiana had seen her while preparing her escape from Russia. And Fedor had to listen with feigned interest to the account of this romantic adventure, like the dangerous escapes of so many others: the journey across the frozen sea in a sleigh that advanced covered in sheets, just like the horses that pulled it, only to become immobile in the snow and blend into it when the searchlights of the Kronstadt fortresses swept their beams of light over the white plain to discover the fugitives. Then, the slow crawling on the ice, gliding between the Russian sentries; the paralysis that begins to lull those who freeze to death; and finally, the arrival at Helsingfors, gateway to the world, entrance to paradise for so many thousands of fugitives from the inquisitorial Cheka. âAnd Vera Alexandrova?â Fedor interrupted. âHow was she when you saw her?â From that day on, the old man from the Promenade des Anglais had an urgent occupation that made him forget the care of his canine flock. He began visiting this lady with the assiduity of a lover. She lived with other Russian women ruined by Sovietism in a guesthouse, where the furniture and people seemed to have the same air of Slavic indifference, resignation, and laziness. The formerly elegant man wanted to be blind to the personal abandonment of all these compatriots, who, after three years of Soviet life, needed to reaccustom themselves to the cleanliness and abundance of Western Europe. What he wanted was to listen to Tatiana, forgetting the poor cup of tea she had offered him. He suppressed his anxiety to hear about the other woman, letting her describe life as it was at that moment in Petrograd and Moscow. He was interested in all this because it was the environment in which Vera existed. In the end, Tatiana, swept away by his conversation, would tell him about the other woman. And so it always was. The poor Russian woman, extremely sentimental, ended up taking pity on the love interest of this man, once so sought after for his elegance, and spoke of her encounters with the former millionairess, exaggerating them to please her listener. He had seen Vera Alexandrova for the first time when she was leaving an antique shop. The antique trade, or more accurately , the clothing trade, was the only one that had managed to survive within the Soviet regime, despite the fact that Lenin declared all trade to be robbery and prohibited it under penalty of death. She was coming out of selling the last remnants of her former luxury and looked sadly at the thick roll of ruble bills that the Jewish merchant had given her. What good could this money do her? Food was provided by the government, and only by means of cunning, punishable by imprisonment or death, could food be secretly purchased. âWhen I saw her a year later, she, who had never set foot in a kitchen, was busy, with another lady who had been a member of the court, making chocolatesâwithout any chocolate in them. The most dangerous thing was selling them. Those who trade there end up in the dungeons of the Cheka⊠But her former reputation as an elegant woman served her well enough to sell her chocolates to the companions of famous revolutionaries . What transformations! A group of former senators had joined a union to make clogs. Many princes were coachmen or knife-grinders. The daughters of famous generals sold old clothesâŠâ But Tatiana interrupted her lamentable description of the new Russia so as not to upset her listener, who was only interested in Vera Alexandrova. âA long time later, I found her in Moscow. I donât know why she was there; perhaps she went, like me, to seek the protection of her new masters. One can protest and resist when one has eaten; but oh, hunger! What humiliation it brings! Nothing so quickly suppresses dignity and all human vanitiesâŠâ We met at the Soukharewka, a two-kilometer-long market that now exists on the outskirts of Moscow, even though the government punishes trade as a crime. Everyone goes there to buy and sell. The buyer immediately becomes the seller. Itâs the only place where money still retains its former power; but it takes so much, so much! to buy any food that we once considered contemptibleâŠâ Vera Alexandrova looked everywhere with furrowed brows, like someone preparing a resolution on which her existence depends. She needed to buy something to eat, and it was no easy task. We greeted each other and each went her own way. Hunger leaves little room for friendship. Fedor decided to ask a question that had been on his mind for a long time: âAnd is she still beautiful?â Tatiana looked at him with an expression of astonishment and pity. âBeautiful? Who thinks of that? I donât know; I never noticed her face. Back then, we had another concern: eating⊠Look at me. Before that cursed revolution, my friends said I was beautiful, and nowâŠ!â Fedor looked at her with the cruel selfishness of a lover, who can only see flaws in a woman who is not his own. Then he felt sorry for Tatianaâs vanity. She must never have been beautiful, according to him. Besides, she was so old! She was probably twelve or fifteen years older than the other. Vera Alexandrova, even if she were broken by poverty, would always look better than this bourgeois woman. Only because of the vicissitudes of the revolution had Tatiana been able to speak as an equal to the former lady of the court⊠Influenced by these conversations, he began to see the image of the absent woman more intensely . She met him in all the places they had frequented together eight years earlier. She was no longer a pale , vague ghost. Tatianaâs stories had finally brought the beloved image, alive and corporeal, out of the limbo of his memories, just as he had last seen her. Eager to adapt to reality, he made concessions to time and events, imagining Vera Alexandrova dressed modestly, but without losing her charms as an elegant woman. He saw her like a great opera artist when she must appear on stage disguised as a beggar, and he took care to make her rags look more distinguished. He also accepted that all those physical hardships had made her thinner, whitening her face with a bloodless pallor; but this would surely give her profile greater majesty and her green eyes a sickly and mysterious dilation. A second Vera, imagined by him, began to reign in his life. âOh, if only he could come!⊠If only he could escape from that hell!⊠This hope galvanized him at times, giving him the energy of a second youth. Even if they were both now poor, they could continue living together, as in their days of opulence. After the miseries of Red Russia, she must have considered the modest life of a worker or employee in Western Europe an endless joy. He would work like a true man, drawing on desperate resources to provide her with new comforts. What wouldnât he do for Vera!⊠Having her at his side, he counted on her increased energy, considering all obstacles overcome in advance. And while Fedor Ipatiev delighted in such suppositions, certain that they could not be realized, and making them, because of this very impossibility, the eternal theme of his thoughts, Tatiana sought him out with some news: âVera Alexandrova has run away and is in Finland. Yesterday she wrote to a friend she has in Nice. Apparently, this friend has found her a job and is coming to live here.â Chapter 24. The old man on the Promenade des Anglais, sitting in the mornings on his bench facing the sea, his back to the crowds circling beneath the caress of the sun, always thought the same thing: âSheâs coming! Sheâs coming!â After having desired it as an illusion so extraordinarily beautiful that he judged its crystallization into reality almost impossible, he now felt uneasy and even fearful as he saw it ever approaching. He remembered that Vera of painful beauty he had created within him , and immediately felt that irresistible tendency to compare and contrast that arises in hours of discouragement. He tried to realize exactly how he looked when he looked in a mirror. Then he examined with severe eyes the rest of himself, from the tips of his toes to his chest. She was going to arrive, with her undisguisable beauty of a great lady disguised as a pauper⊠And him! What would Vera Alexandrovaâs impression be upon seeing him? Fedor felt the despondency and sadness of a man who can no longer regain his will to be young. In vain, to console himself, he counted the years that had passed since she left: just eight. Eight years are a small number in the prime of youth, and even in the maturity of oneâs life. They bring with them only insignificant variations or wear and tear that is easy to repair. But eight years between fifty and sixty!⊠A world! When Vera left, his head and sideburns were slightly gray. She had often joked about his emerging gray hair, assuring him that it gave him a distinction equal to that of gentlemen in white wigs. He shouldnât dye it, because this would give his features a harsh look⊠But now his whiteness was that of old age. Besides, her sunken eyes, her wrinkles, all those signs of old age that hadnât bothered him in recent years, interested only in maintaining a certain decorum, and now seemed like shameful blights! Vera certainly didnât need to worry about her age yet. She was younger than him. When they separated, she had the majestic beauty of summer, the splendor of the sunâs rays. Besides, women can avail themselves, without fear of ridicule, of all the rejuvenations invented by luxury. Her boudoir bears several successive springs, and the artifices of makeup seduce men with an unhealthy force, sometimes more powerful than youthful naivetĂ©. When he was most worried about the harsh contrast between his old age and the invincible beauty of the other woman, the kind Tatiana came to look for him at his hovel, before his morning walk. âThere she is; she arrived last night. â Fedor refused to believe it. Was it possible that she, the one awaited for so many years, had appeared like this, obscurely, unannounced? He had often imagined the moment of this arrival: her trembling wait at the station; the train stopping and her getting off with the sad majesty of a queen without a throne; the thrilling moment when her emerald pupils recognized him; then the embrace⊠And instead of this, it was the vulgar and novelistic Tatiana who came to tell him simply: âThere she is; she arrived last night.â The instinct of self-preservation made him go to the only mirror in his house. Several urgent and essential needs occurred to him at once . He wanted to shave, change his suit⊠Tatiana had to leave him alone. And when his humble and verbose friend was preparing to leave, he ran after her, repenting of his vanity, believing it would be a mockery of Fate, deserving of harsh punishments, to delay for a few minutes the realization of what he had so desired. They arrived at a house inhabited by Russian refugees, just like Tatianaâs. Fedor recognized Veraâs friend who had brought her to Nice looking for a job. He had seen her many times at gatherings of compatriots, never suspecting that she knew the other. And he had wasted his time talking to Tatiana!⊠After greeting her, as well as other wretched and sad-looking women sitting in the same room, he looked around impatiently, convinced that he would eventually have to go into an adjoining room to find the one he was looking for. âIâve come to see,â he said in Russian, âMadame Velinsky, General Bodkineâs daughter.â One of the women rose to approach him. This poor lady was undoubtedly going to accompany him to Veraâs room. She seemed short in stature, owing to a tendency to hunch her shoulders and round her back, as if an invisible weight were weighing her down. Her eyes, narrowed by the contraction of her eyelids, made it impossible to accurately discern the color of her pupils. The only definite thing in them was a sharp, fixed gleam that expressed distrust and seemed to harmonize sadly with the hard pout of her mouth. Her hair, recently dyed, was a deep blond; But the dye âdidnât take,â as the women say, leaving the whiteness of her hair visible. Nor did the fresh paint, spread over her face with the oriental prodigality of the Slavs, manage to adhere to the skin, tanned and cracked by the cold. This woman stretched out both her hands to take Ipatievâs. âOh, Fedor! I recognized you as soon as you came in. Youâre just as you were the last time we met. â Then she said with an envious expression: âItâs clear youâve lived in this land, free from suffering. â That almost old woman was Vera Alexandrova; a Vera who admired him, judging him young when compared to her own misery. She continued the conversation according to these preliminary words, which Ipatiev considered absurd. The former lady of the court was now small in stature, as if poverty had shrunk and dried her flesh. All that remained of her past was her robust bones and a determined expression that at certain moments supported her words. But this gesture wasnât used to emphasize her arrogance. She only used it to express her determination to earn a living, not wanting to be a burden to her friends. Nothing connected her to the rest of the world. Seeing herself here, she imagined sheâd fallen into a paradise. Everything inspired admiration: the white bread, the modest food of her companions, even the worn clothes they wore. Her eyes seemed to caress the furniture, the walls, the patch of garden that led to the poor house on the outskirts of Nice. A sad, pollarded palm tree in this miserable corner of the French Riviera made her burst into exclamations of enthusiasm, similar to those of Abd al-Rahman, the poet caliph of Cordoba, before the palm tree brought from Baghdad. âWhat joy to be here!â After having groaned in that hell, one better understands the sweetness of living. And she looked at Ipatieff again with envious eyes. Then she murmured sadly: âYou must have found me very changed. Admit that you didnât recognize me when you came here; that you would never have recognized me if I had kept silent. â Despite her sadness, the luminous splendor of this country seemed to intoxicate her, awakening her childish and incoherent Slavic joy, making her pass from lamentation to laughter. Her friends had wanted He tried to restore her former appearance when he saw her arrive poorly dressed and with the ugliness of a working woman. Some had lent her their clothes; others helped her dye her hair and groom her face. She had forgotten these things for so long! And half-closing her eyelids, painted blue with a cosmetic pencil, she fixed Ipatiev with a look that sought to probe the past, asking him at the same time with fear and coquettishness: âHow do you find me, Fedor?⊠Am I still as you knew me?â Fedor found her simply grotesque beneath these hasty adornments, which seemed to detach themselves from her misery. But she was Vera Alexandrova all the same . His admiration for the great lady had disappeared, replaced by a protective feeling, a mixture of tenderness and pity. She left Ipatiev and went into an adjoining room. Someone had come to fetch her. Meanwhile, her protector and friend explained to Fedor. âThe unfortunate woman is poorer than all of us. When she arrived last night, she hadnât had anything to eat from Paris. She didnât have a cent left of the money some friends had collected for her in Finland. She wants to work, and since she knows many languages, Iâve found her a job at a boarding house where people from the North stay . The big hotels donât want people of our class. The job isnât worth much, but her food will be guaranteed. The owner of the boarding house is talking to her now. The old man from the Promenade des Anglais immediately decided to change his life. Invitations from his old friends and dog breeding had kept him living in misery until then, while still maintaining the false independence of a âlord.â Since one Vera Alexandrova was forced to work, he also had to find a job to support the other. In the following days he was able to talk to her, but they were rarely alone together. The former great lady could not hide her surprise at finding herself once again leading a safe existence in the bosom of an orderly society. At the same time, she recognized the fragility of social regulation. When we live peacefully, as we did before the war, we donât worry about how the bread we eat is made or who heats our house. It seems to us that everything is eternal, that it has always existed and will always exist the same, like the sun that rises every day, like the water that runs invariably through its natural channels. But suddenly a war or a revolution breaks out, and everything stops , and in the end it falls apart, forcing us to regress to a primitive life, in which we feel and suffer the same as the lower animals. We are proud of our well-being, and a simple disruption of the social organism is enough for hunger, cold, and murder to once again turn us into beasts, as at the beginning of our planetâs life . âWhat Iâve seen!â Vera said. âWhat Iâve suffered!â And the ex-millionairess looked at her wrinkled hands as she continued speaking in a muffled voice. Twice she had been taken to prison, suffering the torment of meager food and the uncertainty of not knowing if she would live the next day. Every time someone entered the cell, she thought she felt a small, cold circle on the back of her neck: the muzzle of the revolver charged with swift and economical executions. Alas! It was better not to remember⊠âAnd your husband?â Ipatieff asked one afternoon. âDoes he still live in Siberia?â She looked at him strangely before answering, as if she found his question pointless. âThey killed him⊠How could he have been luckier than the others?⊠Iâve been told that his own workers threw him to the bottom of a mine.â A few days later, Fedor was no longer able to visit Vera Alexandrova or hear her sad stories, which had the charm of a âsad flirt,â he said. The fugitive had gone to settle in the Slavic boarding house, content to earn her bread and not be a burden to anyone. Chapter 25. The old man of the Promenade des Anglais never returned to the promenade. He was now working. He had sold his young dogs, taking the two older ones under the protection of of that merciful caretaker who equally protected the master. The great gentleman, fallen on hard times, with his Austrian monarchâs sideburns and majestic frock coats, suddenly asked his friends for a job, âin any capacity.â They had appreciated him for thirty years at the Municipal Council, as an elegant man who had served as an ornament to the Nice winters, and they hastened to help him. There were no jobs available, but they invented one to satisfy him: supervising the workers working in a cemetery, considerably enlarged to bury the thousands upon thousands of convalescents from the Great War who had come to die on the French Riviera. Every morning Ipatieff walked several kilometers to reach this cemetery, where he did nothing but stroll among the crosses or along the walls the masons were erecting. His real occupation was thinking about Vera Alexandrova, who at that moment was also working, but more positively than he. A pious brotherhood began to unite him with many of the laborers he was charged with overseeing, without really knowing what his oversight consisted of. He experienced an âinner refreshmentââhe put itâwhen talking with these men, putting himself on the same level as their needs and hopes. The enormous upheaval in Russia had turned him into a pauper, a worker, even if his labor wasnât worth much. She, too, had undergone the same transformation. Why not live like his fellow workers in poverty? The following Sunday, a day of rest, he would go out for a walk with âhis girlfriend,â like the young bricklayers working in the cemetery. And he wrote to his former lover to come or join him in the early afternoon in front of the Casino. Ipatieff was preparing a surprise for her. A different time, a different face. There were no more emperors in Europe, and Austrian-style sideburns were an anachronism. Moreover, ever since Vera Alexandrova had admired him, seeing him younger than herself, he felt a vain desire to emphasize this difference, and the two tufts of white hair covering his cheeks weighed him down. His mustache, trimmed in an American style, was the triumphant adornment of the current rulers of the world. And on Sunday afternoon, it was he who had to step forward and smile, making friendly gestures, so that the other woman would recognize him. Poor Vera Alexandrova! She was dressed in black, in an old suit lent to her by the landlady of the boarding house. Her hat, another gift from a friend almost as poor as she, was dented and disfigured by the previous winterâs rains. Of her former beauty, only the smallness of her feet remained ; but this aristocratic refinement served only to attract attention to her shoes, pitifully worn and with crooked heels. Her hands, which had not been able to escape the outrages of poverty, were squeezed by gloves that were too tight, the flesh protruding over their edges. Fedor had to search hard to find her. She was the most obscure and insignificant among all the hotel employees, the maids in their Sunday best, and the workersâ wives waiting in the middle of the square for the trams to arrive and cross. Recognizing him, she was once again amazed at his youth. âIs that you, Fedor? How young! Iâm ashamed to be next to you. â They spoke to each other instinctively, seeing themselves alone for the first time after so many years. He took her arm, then pointed toward the Casino. âDo you remember, Vera?â They both suddenly saw the building with its entire facade illuminated, as on Carnival nights; the crowds of masks arriving ; the music and the bustle of the crowd escaping through doors and windows; a carriage that stood out for its luxury among the other vehicles; A woman with the air of an empress descended from it, shining like a summer sky because of her jewels, leaving behind her the breath of a garden, preceded by admiring murmurs⊠âOh, Fedor!â And the poor old woman said this as if she were exhaling a mortal groan, Blinking back her tears, he didnât want this evocation of the past to drag on, and he pushed Vera toward the groups attacking the trams. He had a plan for the entire afternoon: they were going to visit the places where they had thought themselves happy; every corner of the brilliant stage of their lives. They climbed to the heights of Cimiez, occupied by the most aristocratic hotels. A building as enormous as a barracks and surrounded by gardens closed off the avenue. A white monument, topped by a fat lady sculpted in marble, let present and future generations know that Queen Victoria of England spent her winters here. The glass screens swung around in front of the people getting out of their cars. It was tea time. The first wailing of violins could be heard in the lobby. The hundreds of hotel windows blazed like molten gold plates on the ivory facade, reflecting the sweet evening sun. âDo you remember, Vera?â Fedor asked again melancholically. And the woman, now making an effort to contain her emotion, simply shook her head. She remembered everything. They had lived there for several winters; there they had begun to treat each other as simple friends, separating years later with the silent, feigned resignation of lovers who promise to meet again soon and are unsure if they will ever see each other again. One window Vera stared at insistently was that of her bathroom, where the water was filled daily with five hundred francs of perfume. They were unable to continue their contemplation. They had to step aside repeatedly to avoid being run over by arriving automobiles. The hotel porter, braided like an admiral, and his numerous pages, their chests covered in rows of buttons like hussars, came out onto the steps to greet the guests, finally catching sight of this shabbily dressed old couple, examining them with persistent hostility. Perhaps they were two foreign beggars who besiege hotels to extort money from their wealthy compatriots. âLetâs go,â Fedor said, as if he had guessed. In the nearby Arenas of Cimiez, the ruins of the Circus of Cimela, the ancient Roman colony, their past came back to haunt them, and likewise beneath the ancient trees and the arcades of the nearby monastery. They had walked this way many times when they needed to abandon the modern luxury of the hotel, seeking a more âromanticâ atmosphere for their loversâ walks. Now they had to walk along the side of roads and avenues, avoiding the dust raised by automobiles. Being together, they felt the humiliation of their decline more intensely. They had passed this way, in the early years of their friendship, sitting in a landau pulled by expensive horses, like those in the stables of kings; then they had admired the winter visitors of Nice using the first high-powered automobiles. âHey, good mother!â âAttention!â A hired coachman shouted to Vera with contemptuous compassion to move aside. Preoccupied with her memories, she had left the side of the road and was almost run over by the horse. âLetâs flee far from here,â she said anxiously. âLetâs go to a place weâve never been before.â They walked downhill toward the plain, stopping in a rustic suburb of the city. Sunday people were dancing in the stunted gardens of several taverns. The two old men entered one of these popular dances, taking seats under the dusty vines of an arbor. To speak more freely, they turned their backs to the couples. They were workers dressed as lords and maids in short skirts, silk stockings , and patent leather shoes, dancing the latest American dances. Fedor, in contrast to this cheerful youth, found his companion sadder and older. Poor Vera Alexandrova!⊠This did not diminish her desire to resurrect the past, as if such a resurrection could grant him a second youth. The two of them wouldnât be dancing like those sweaty, red-faced people; but they could still experience the sweet emotions of other couples who were conversing in low voices, half-hidden in the gazebos. âDo you remember?⊠Do you remember?â And Fedor asked these questions after recalling fragments of the past, which were always memories of love. âOh, Fedor!â the aging lady would reply, shaking her head . Why remember things that couldnât be repeated? Real life had ended for them. They were words, nothing more than words with which he deceived himself, all those illusions of âa second spring,â and other things undoubtedly learned from the books that the former elegant man recited in the same warm, persuasive tone of old. But this tone now sounded grotesque through his uncertain teeth. She was broken inside, and would never heal. He considered himself the same as those who, after having spent most of their lives in a dungeon, when they return to the sun and fresh air, realize that from now on they can only be the walking dead. âIâm cold to the bones, Fedor, and I always will be. The sun isnât warm enough to revive me. You donât know what a soul feels like after all the years spent there. Every morning, when the boarding house servant knocks on my door, I jump out of bed in terror. I think itâs the Cheka troops arriving. In vain, when I open the window, I see the sea, the palm trees, the quiet street. Iâm afraid, a fear that will always accompany me. Besides, the humiliations, the hunger of so many yearsâŠâ The formerly elegant man looked sadly at his companionâs eager gestures. He had better preserved the customs of the past. On the rustic table in the gazebo, a maid had placed several moldy cakes and a bottle of white wine. Vera ate with the alacrity of a starving animal, shamelessly revealing, during her violent mastication, several gaps in her still-repairing teeth. Sensing her former loverâs astonishment, she said brusquely: âYouâve lived here; you may know poverty, but not hunger⊠You donât know the value of things.â She caressed the bottle of cheap wine with one hand, gazing at it admiringly. âBack in our country, I would have killed to obtain this treasure.â She filled her glass twice, draining its contents with slow, greedy sips . Then she cast an envious and ambitious glance toward a nearby gazebo, where a family of workers was eating a salad of tomatoes and other vegetables, washing it down with long gulps of red wine. âIâd like,â she said, âto eat and drink the same thing they do. It must be magnificent.â And seeing that Fedor was disapproving with his eyes this admiration for a common dish, she said again in a reproachful tone: âWhen one has lived begging for the best of food, a few grams of black bread and dirty water with herring bones in itâŠâ She then laughed, remembering the efforts she had to make at the boarding house to stifle the whims and audacity of her backward hunger. Since she feared that the landlady would dismiss her if she noticed any shortages in her pantry, she limited herself to seizing the lumps of sugar forgotten by the guests and draining the bottoms of the bottles. Fedor looked at her with dismay. And this poor woman, old, hungry, and given to wine, was Vera Alexandrova, the great lady of the court, mistress of gold mines! Her decadence made him appreciate his own decadence with renewed pain. To what a deep abyss he had tumbled into!⊠And there were so few years left for the two of them to live that it would be impossible for them to climb back up to the light, where the happy ones are⊠To be poor, absolutely poor in old age, when the comforts that money provides are most necessary!⊠He thought for a moment about the possibility of a ânouveau richeâ taking him on as caretaker of some luxurious villa, with large gardens, recently acquired on the French Riviera. He and Vera would act as respectable old servants. The true owner would travel frequently, and the two would develop the illusion that this paradise belonged to them, living there in their senile and peaceful idyll, without thinking about the next dayâs bread. But alas, the happinesses dreamed of are rarely realized in the world. This end of existence seemed too beautiful to be true. The return to the city, after dark, was sad and silent. Fedor had already said all he could say. The following Sunday they would meet again. They would stroll together like two old horses at a walk, ruminating on the memories and exploits of their arrogant youth, while pulling a dilapidated vehicle, a symbol of their misery. They would lead the existence of the humble who need to work to live, and when they combine their days off for the purpose of recreation, all they can talk about is the work they are subjected to and their poverty. And so it would always be, until death!⊠In the history of mankind, events do not return to their starting point, just as rivers do not return to their course. Reactions are an illusion; what has died, has died. Back home, disorder would eventually become orderly; revolutionaries would become men of government, and the need to live would eventually, after so many cataclysms, establish its regular course, like a river that overflows its banks and finally returns to its natural channels. But by the time this happened, the people would be different, and so would the molds of the new existence. And the two of them, victims of an enormous social upheaval, comparable only to an earthquake, which had left them without bread and without a home, would no longer be alive when the longed-for Future City, so often announced by the utopians, rose from the ground⊠if this millennia-old dream of well-being for all, as old as man, could ever become a reality . While Fedor walked away, reflecting, the former millionairess, more verbose than her companion, outlined her current ambitions. All she wanted for the moment was not to be dressed at the expense of others. She also needed underwear. It was a torment for her not being able to change it. She only had the few linens her friends had provided her. The purchase of three sets of underwear at a cheap price was her greatest wish. Perhaps next week, when Fedor collected his wages at the cemetery, she would be able to fulfill such a tremendous wish. Her companionâs monetary offers moved her more than the millions the rich Siberian had received when he asked for her as his wife. He earned so little in the boarding house, apart from his food! As he left her, Fedor returned sadly toward his home. He was now laughing ironically at the ghosts that had accompanied him earlier that afternoon. Wanting to revive love, when youâre poor? Love is only for the rich. Those who have to worry about earning a living have other, more pressing and imperative things to think about. They need all their time for work, and love demands wealth and idleness. It is the most inexhaustible and varied of pleasures; but all the pleasures of the earth exist only for those who have money. This, which would have seemed quite logical to him in the past, he now considered unacceptable because he saw himself as poor, and a feeling of envy and indignation made him protest against the privileges of the happy. It was unfair that life was organized so unequally. Everything should be for everyone: pains and pleasures. Then he modified his ideas when he thought of his years. He felt poorer than ever, hopelessly poor, when he considered that youth cannot be remade as one remakes a fortune. Ah, old age!⊠What greater poverty?âŠ
And he said to himself with resentful melancholy: âYes; Iâm not mistaken: love is only for the rich⊠rich in money or rich in youth.â On the French Riviera Chapter I THE CARNIVAL IN NICE Nice is the heir of Venice. For several centuries, the wealthy, eager for fun, and the adventurers with a romantic life braved the inconveniences and dangers of the then-current travels to witness the festivities of a Carnival that lasted for months in the Adriatic city. Now, the means of communication are easier; pleasure has become democratized, as have human knowledge and the comforts of our existence, and the railroad and the ocean liner bring thousands of spectators to the Nice Carnival. Nature likes to cruise these days. A spring sun showers its gold on the French Riviera almost all winter, and when the carnival week arrives, it is rare the year that an untimely rain falls. But since Nice needs to defend its famous festival, and the crowds of travelers arrive ready to have fun, no matter what, the masks brave the elements, the public opens their umbrellas, and the parades continue under the violent, lukewarm rain of sunny countries, where the downpours are noisy but short-lived. The Nice Carnival has become indispensable to its life, and no other city can copy it. Individuals collaborate with the Municipality; each resident of Nice contributes their own initiative. Larger capitals could organize parades with more sumptuous floats; but I believe it impossible for them to find individual support, a âpatrioticâ collaboration like that of the inhabitants of this city. The people of Nice consider it their duty to increase the number of masks, and entire families cover themselves in costumes to shout in the streets, dance, or jump from one sidewalk to another, all for the greater glory and benefit of their land. At this festival, the most admirable aspect is not the work of the artists, who spent months and months preparing the floats, wandering caricatures that synthesize current events; it is the loose mask and the spontaneously organized group that give it a unique character . The mask on foot is more worthy of attention than the enormous vehicles with their stick figures that almost reach the edge of the rooftops, and their groups of girls perched on the knees and arms of the cardboard giant, like Lilliputians climbing Gulliverâs body. More than fifty Carnivals, held over the course of half a century, with no interruption other than the last war, have exhausted the organizers and the public of so-called historical or artistic parades . Now, the Nice Carnival is burlesque, dedicated to the ingenious deformation of animal and plant forms. Certain groups of masks recall Goyaâs Caprichos and other deliriums of fantasizing artists. Those who lack the money to afford a full costume, or who havenât thought ahead to purchasing it, disfigure themselves with a false nose, throwing themselves into the torrent of masks, just to be one of them. Carnival here offers the rousing and genuinely jovial aspect of everything that is done in life spontaneously out of enthusiasm and not for money. The thousands of masks shout, sing, form circles and chains, or perform mock courtesies to the public. This represents a break for them. Then, as soon as one of the processionâs bands starts playing , they advance through the streets dancing, and those on the floats begin to jump like elastic puppets. And so they continue for hours and hours, causing astonishment at such tireless and tenacious rejoicing. No one gets angry; violent incidents rarely occur. It is a Carnival of noisy people seeking each other out for fun, but without losing their good manners. The masks, when they accidentally bump into each other, apologize through their masks. Love comes punctually to the party every year. Many two-person novels, which will remain ignored and no one will write about, had their first chapter at the Nice Carnival, during the parade or the nighttime festivities in the Casinoâs hall, as huge as A cathedral. The masked traveler speaks to the female dominoes marching beside him. They approach each other to defend themselves from each otherâs shoves; they end up linking arms and jumping simultaneously; then they dance, ask each otherâs names, give each other false names, and declare their eternal love before even seeing each other. All this, pushed by the carnival torrent through avenues and promenades, defending themselves with their backs against the human surge, avoiding the hooves of horses hitched to the floats or the unexpected attacks of the chauffeurs who guide them. In other countries, a Carnival like this would provoke fights and crimes. In Nice, the police rarely have to intervene. They and the detachments of Alpine hunters charged with maintaining order are only concerned that the large floats do not damage the facades of the houses or the arches of lights that adorn the streets. People have fun and donât quarrel because they ignore the fear of ridicule, which so embitters the life of our race. Whoever here seeks to have fun thinks only of obtaining the desired pleasure. They seek it in their own way and ignore the existence of others, disregarding what they might think of them. We are afraid of âwhat people will say,â of someone âtaking us for a ride,â and this restrains us, crushing all initiative. We can only have fun by all doing the same thing, like a falsely joyful, suspicious, and suspicious flock, looking at each other out of the corner of our eyes while we laugh. And when we vaguely suspect that someone might be having a little fun at our expense, goodbye joy! We believe it necessary to bite. _II_ THE WAY OF ALL If a Roman from the time of Augustus or Tiberius were to resurrect in our days, we would not ask him about the episodes of ancient history, which was contemporary to him, and the public customs of the time. We know all this from historians and Roman laws. We would be more interested in knowing the secrets and particularities of private life ; How people enjoyed themselves in Cumae, Baia, Pompeii, and other elegant cities located on the edge of what is now the Gulf of Naples. We would like to hear the scandals, the gossip, the eccentricities of the great Roman world that moved for a few months to the smiling shores of the Parthenopean Sea; we would like to observe up close the same sumptuous life that the melancholic and retired âProcurator of Judea,â described by Anatolius France, saw glide by. But if the Roman, returned to the world, were to tell us that he had never been to these cities, the joy and solace of ancient life, we would be indignant with him. âSo, what did you do in your previous existence? How could you remain calm, without seeing up close one of the most interesting aspects of that time?â The same could be said of a man of our time who, having a certain personal fortune and being fit enough to undertake travels, was not curious about the cosmopolitan and joyful life of the so-called French Riviera, which is now equivalent to the cities of the ancient Gulf of Naples, founded or enlarged by the Caesars. The landscape of the French Riviera inspires admiration. It has the luminous sweetness of the Mediterranean coasts. The Alps, upon reaching the sea, plunge abruptly into its abyss, forming rosy promontories or graceful bays fringed by gardens. But undoubtedly there are other landscapes in the Mediterranean basin similar to these, or perhaps more original. The true charm of the French Riviera is the work of man. The most interesting thing about it is the humanity that populates it during the winter months . It is astonishing to calculate how much work has been done in just half a century to beautify this mountain range. Former fishing or farming villages are now elegant towns, home to the most famous shops in London and Paris. Rocky fields once planted with centuries-old olive trees, split and mediocre in yield, have been sold off in batches for unheard-of sums, turning the grandchildren of their ancestors into millionaires. cultivators. There is no hilly village without a good road for automobiles. Three roads cut longitudinally through the foothills of the Alps from Nice to Menton: the one that follows the winding seashore, the so-called Middle Corniche, and the Grand Corniche, which meanders over the peaks and is often optically cut off, by a mass of clouds, from the lower shore, where people swarm like an anthill. Daring viaducts cross the precipices to avoid long detours for traffic. If the roads encounter a mountain protrusion, they pierce it in the form of a tunnel. Other times they need to extend along the Mediterranean and develop their ribbon on long embankments. It is difficult to calculate the money invested here by those who came, for half a century, in search of sun and blue horizons. Nice, a small Savoyard city, is now the fifth or sixth largest city in France. From HyĂšres to Menton stretch thousands upon thousands of rich villas and palaces. Those keen on calculations claim that 5 or 6 billion euros have been built on the French Riviera. This is the work of private individuals alone, and to this enormous sum must be added the public works carried out by governments and municipalities: water pipelines, bridges, roads, and railways. Those born in a sunny country cannot feel the attraction of the French Riviera as northern Europeans do. Hence, neither the Spanish nor the Italians, despite being neighbors, frequent it much. It has always found its most faithful admirers in the northern nations . Before the war, the French Riviera was Russian. The privileged of the Tsarist Empire came here to squander their fortunes, considering a regime wisely organized for the happiness of the few to be endless. It was also German a few years before 1914. The Germans and Austrians flocked to it in great numbers, and perhaps by now they would be its masters. The current rulers are the English and the Americans. Their flags fly everywhere alongside the French flag. Traveling around the world is how one can become enamored of the distant and mysterious prestige enjoyed by these towns on the French Riviera. Many times, in the United States, Canada, Mexico, or in Northern European nations, when I mention that I have my home on the French Riviera, I have seen those listening to me narrow their eyes with dreamy expressions, men and women alike, murmuring nostalgically: âNice!⊠Monte Carlo!â Some were reminiscing about their lives here; others longed to come here, and feared they would never make it. They all wore the same expression as someone who hears the name of Baghdad and immediately evokes the wonders of *Arabian Nights*. This fragment of Mediterranean coastline is as universal as the Boulevard des Italianes in Paris, the Piccadilly in London, or the Broadway in New York. I live in the quietest of the French Riviera cities , in poetic Menton, a retreat for writers and artists, where people go to bed early and rise very early to enjoy its admirable gardens. And yet, I am in the flow of European traffic, on âeveryoneâs path,â more so than if I lived in Madrid, a populous city and the capital of a nation. To go to Spain, you have to specifically propose this journey and feel a true interest in it. You have to advance to one end of Europe and then retrace your steps, crossing the Pyrenees again. Spain offers only one way out for those who do not want to turn back: embark for America, and our ports are not frequented by any of the great shipping companies famous for their tonnage and luxury. Our homeland is like a street with only one entrance and no continuation. In contrast, the French Riviera is the path to Italy, to central Europe, to the countries of the far Mediterranean and the Far East. You find here, every day, friends that you left in remote places on the planet, believing you would never see them again, and who emerge unexpectedly as we passed by. Everyone who lands in Europe brings a few weeks of life on the French Riviera with them, as a must . The most famous figures parade through this land. No English ruler can do without playing tennis in Cannes during the winter. Beside the tables of the casinos on the French Riviera, one can rub shoulders with the most celebrated women. Some time ago, having lunch one morning at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, I got a glimpse of life in this corner of the world. Near me, a tall, thin man with a blond and gray beard and gold-plated glasses was eating. Noticing the extraordinary greetings from the maĂźtre dâhĂŽtel and the servants, I felt the need to ask. âItâs the King of Sweden,â they told me, âwho comes incognito every year . â Then another table was occupied by a robust man, with a military air, his complexion reddened by the tropical sun. âI know this one,â I said to the servant. âHeâs the Duke of Connaught, the uncle of the King of England, who owns a villa at Cap Ferrat and has just returned from the Indies. â Several gentlemen occupied another table. One of them, with glasses and a gray beard, seemed to dominate them all, smiling delicately. Next to him, and sharing his importance, was another, with a white mustache. The one with the beard was Venizelos, and his neighbor was the famous Anglo-Hellenic businessman Sir Basil Zaharoff, the greatest capitalist in Europe at the moment, the only one regarded as an equal by the multimillionaires of the United States. And all this in a small Club dining room, which contains no more than a dozen tables. I was reminded of Candide, the protagonist of Voltaireâs novel, when he visits 18th-century Venice for its famous Carnival, and upon dining at the inn, finds that his four table companions are four kings who have come incognito to have fun. _III_ THE ONE WHO WANTED TO MARRY THE PRINCESS The Russian Revolution has scattered thousands upon thousands of people throughout the world who once enjoyed the delights of wealth or power, and now live in doubly painful misery, due to the memory of the past and the lack of hope. They are similar to the emigrants of the French Revolution, who tasted the âsweetness of lifeâ under the old monarchy installed in Versailles, and then had to work vile jobs in England and Germany, often suffering the torments of hunger. This Russian emigration is especially concentrated on the so-called French Riviera. The dream of all Russian refugees in Berlin, London, or Paris is to be able to move to Nice. Children of a wintry land, they think of the gratuitous sun that gilds the shores of this violet-colored sea, famous since the first wails of Greek poetry. Living in Nice means doing without heating, eating cheap oranges, settling into a miserable hovel on the outskirts with other compatriots, unafraid of the harsh temperatures. Besides, many of todayâs poor lived in this country ten or twelve years ago, when they spent thousands upon thousands of rubles. Here they left memories of love, vanity, or pride, and are drawn to these fragments of life that represent the full glory of their past. Before the war, Russians on the French Riviera were the great spendthrift lord or the somewhat mad, always elegant lady, who astonished people by throwing money around by the handful. Today they form a sad chorus, and against their sorrowful mass, the prodigality of the North Americans and the lordly opulence of the English, the current rulers of the land, seem to stand out in starker relief . Many of these emigrants bravely accepted their misfortune. In Menton, near my house, there are farms cultivated by Russian generals and colonels; but truly cultivated, for these men who commanded regiments or divisions are now laborers in order to eat, and they turn the earth with a shovel, open furrows, load carts, raise poultry . Others, less energetic or vigorous, work as porters of hotel or simple dining-room boys. Often, some English or French ladies think they recognize the old servant in a striped waistcoat and blue apron who cleans their room. They finally learn that they once danced with him in Monte Carlo, when he was called a prince or a count, was a captain in the Imperial Guard, and came every winter to squander his fortune on the French Riviera. Others are hesitant to work and resort to all sorts of expedients, representing a dangerous nuisance to whoever receives them in their home. With Slavic slowness, they tell the story of their past and end up quietly asking for one or two thousand francs, as if they were still living in their days of magnificence. It is true that they are finally content with twenty francs; but so many arrive believing that each one is the only one deserving of protection!⊠In Nice, ladies of the former imperial court invent raffles to make a living. Others have a guesthouse or a small hat shop. Before the triumph of Bolshevism, my novels were widely translated and read in Russia. I should note in passing that Spain never had an intellectual property treaty with Russia, and our books were freely reproduced. One of my novels was published simultaneously by five different publishers, without any of them asking my permission. Since I live surrounded by so many survivors of the Russian catastrophe who in their happy times were my readers, I frequently receive their visits. Great ladies seek me out for help selling rich miter-shaped diadems , similar to those worn by Byzantine virgins, which they often wore at the feasts of the imperial court. Others show me capes of sable and ermine, and jewels of a somewhat barbaric magnificence. Itâs the last thing they have left. They fear the scandalously low offers from the usurers who threaten their death throes, and they come to me, as if a novelist could fix everything. Some offer me the purchase of these mementos of their luxurious life, now gone forever, quoting prices that are truly extraordinary given their modest nature. But Iâm not going to parade around my study dressed and adorned like a lady of Nicholas II on a grand ceremony, and I renounce such âoccasions.â Others, younger than me, whose husbands, killed by firing squad, owned platinum mines in Siberia, come to me to recommend them for work in cinematography. As if improvising as a film artist were such a simple matter! Some of these ruined great ladies can support themselves modestly with what they possessed abroad, and they still find ways to help their fellow sufferers. Since they consider themselves poor and unable to sustain the luxurious existence of their former days, they want to work and have opened several restaurants in Nice, which they run themselves. They are inexpensive establishments where you can eat for four and a half francs , the equivalent in France of a Spanish meal of two pesetas. For such a price, culinary miracles cannot be expected; But one can notice in the atmosphere of the room and in the arrangement of its tables a certain special distinction, what people call chic, something that reveals the good taste of the invisible owner, who is in the kitchen directing everything. The ill-bred poor do not feel at home in these restaurants, and they abandon them. Their clientele is automatically selected, and ends up consisting only of down-and-out characters, novel heroes, very interesting if there were only two or three of them. But there are many of them, and their lives, which fifteen years ago would have seemed extraordinary, end up becoming monotonous. The manager of one of these restaurants is a Princess Murat. The Murat family is divided into several branches, and one of them married in Russia. Hence the fate of many descendants of the former King of Naples is linked to that of the Russian aristocrats . This princess, born, I believe, in the United States, possesses a natural elegance and still retains the calm and distinguished beauty of her second youth, after having lost the freshness of the first. With an American energy, she has accepted the duties and hardships of her new situation. Every morning, at sunrise, she is already at the market, along with the buyers from the large palaces, the cooks from the medium-sized hotels, and the owners of inns and guesthouses. She wants her customers to eat cheaply and well. She argues with the vendors or smiles at them, employing the persuasive force of a woman who knows how to make herself pleasant. Her presence attracts everyoneâs attention, even those who donât know who she is. The Nice market is reminiscent of the ancient markets of Valencia and Barcelona. The vendors are outdoors, behind barricades of vegetables, which spread the scent of prolific earth or pungent, vigorous sap. Through the gates of the nearby wall, one can see the luminous plain of the Mediterranean shine, all blue and all quicksilver. The air is filled with scents of garlic and mimosas, onions and carnations, violets and sea salt. Every woman, after filling her shopping basket with groceries, considers it essential to buy a bouquet of flowers. This marketâso different from the enclosed, iron-roofed markets âpredisposes people to love, and makes one think that there is more to life than filling oneâs stomach. The princess found herself detained one morning by one of her âcolleagues.â He was a mustachioed Frenchman, with the air of a former gendarme, the owner of a diner for workers near the port. He needed to speak to her. He had been watching her for many weeks. He had admired her shopping skills and the great command she exercised over people. âI like serious women; I am a widower, and perhaps we could be well-suited to each other. I wonât talk to you about love; that is for comedies. Life is no joke⊠You have your establishment, I have mine.â We can get married, and by helping each other like two sensible people, weâll even manage to save enough money to retire to the country in our old age. The owner of the restaurant replied with one of her sweet smiles: âWho knows!⊠Itâs worth thinking about. Now the owner of the inn at the port goes to the market later, because he doesnât want to run into her. Besides, he puts on a sullen face so that the fishmongers and vegetable sellers wonât dare joke with him. He knows that when he turns his back, they all smile and call him by the same nickname: âThe One Who Wanted to Marry the Princess.â _IV_ AROUND THE âCHEESEâ It is well known that when you want to find someone of a certain social position and you donât know where their address is in Europe or America, all you have to do is sit next to the âcheeseâ in the Place de Monte Carlo. You may wait ten, fifteen, or twenty years; but one day the desired friend will eventually show himself. Many people consider this indisputable, even if it seems false. Anyone with a little money and a love of travel eventually makes a trip around the âcheese,â mingling for a few hours with the crowds circulating in front of the Casino. Before moving on, I feel it necessary to explain that this famous âcheeseâ is a small garden or flowerbed in the center of the square. Its round shape has led it to be compared to a box of Camembert cheese. On the circular sidewalk of this garden, conversations in every language can be heard, and as if Carnival lasted here all year, Hindustani ladies in long blue veils, their noses pierced by brilliant studs, Asian figures with feline gait and mysterious eyes, Arab chieftains in white robes, and Chinese and Japanese figures whose mouse-like heads, cunning or intelligent, seem to want to escape from the Western garments that disguise the rest of their bodies, circulate among the ladies dressed in European fashion. I have had many unexpected encounters in this square and have made perhaps the most novel friendships of my life. A questioning smile and an outstretched hand provoke geographical doubts in such a place that span the entire planet. Where could the friend who has just recognized us have come from? We must let him speak in order to gradually guess his identity. He could be a forgotten schoolmate from our youth, or someone we met in Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, or Mexico. He could also be a gentleman with whom we had lunch at the Toledo station restaurant ; but Toledo, in the State of Ohio, one of the most important railway cities in the United States. During the winter, one of those ocean liners from North America, truly floating cities, anchors off Monte Carlo every week, landing two thousand passengers. For twenty-four hours, the area surrounding the âcheeseâ resembles Fifth Avenue in New York. At midday, the âblueâ train from Calais invariably arrives, a train that only has sleeping cars, and the British recognize each other and shake hands vigorously, as if they were on Piccadilly in London. The uncertain past of our adolescent years, the illusions we cherished then as something impossible to achieve, the things most admired by the good faith and enthusiasm of early youth, can come our way in this square. I have often seen, sunbathing on its benches, old gentlemen, trembling and sagging like plucked birds, and the names of these human ruins revived in me past admiration. They were politicians no one remembers, generals who won forgotten victories, fictional leaders of British Africa or South America. Shrunken old women, with humble airs, or painted and cadaverous like mummies, evoke with their warlike surnames the memory of famous beauties, whose portraits we adored on matchboxes when we were schoolchildren. Among this crowd of figures who âwereâ and are now nothing more than simple winterers on the French Riviera, fit to occupy a chair in the Monte Carlo square or in the halls of the Casino, there was, until last year, one outstanding personality, restless, overwhelming, tireless, who seemed to fill everything with her presence and was simultaneously in various places, with infinite ubiquity. She was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, blood aunt of Tsar Nicholas II, executed by the Bolsheviks; sister of the former Tsar and mother of the Crown Princeâs wife . A daughter of hers currently occupies one of the thrones of Europe. Her other daughter would have been Empress of Germany had the last war not occurred. In her youth, she enjoyed a reputation for beauty and elegance, according to those who knew her at the Russian court. Being extremely tall, nearly two meters, perhaps this beauty was effective in the days when the influence of old Queen Victoria and other plump, curvaceous sovereigns still lingered, that is, when it was not fashionable for women to starve themselves to the angularities and bony roughness of the male body. But Anastasiaâas the people of Monte Carlo familiarly called herâdespite her age, had wanted to slim down like the girls of today, and her exaggerated thinness seemed to further extend her stature. This daughter of emperors and mother of queens lived outside the tyranny of dressmakers, dressing as she pleased, according to the same pattern, as if she were in a uniform. During the day, she invariably wore a black, tailored suit that seemed to float over her long, gaunt body, like a sextonâs cassock. For anyone seeing her for the first time, the most extraordinary thing about her were her ears, sticking out of her skull, dead and insensitive, as if made of cardboard. Her feet were extremely long, so long that any shoemaking artifice was impossible, and convinced of the futility of trying to disguise her limbs, she shoed them without any care. Many ladies claimed that the Grand Duchess had the same shoemaker as the provincial gendarmes. She could almost be seen gambling in the private rooms of the Casino. and circling the square, with a swiftness that swirled her black skirt around her legs. They were so thin they seemed about to break with every step. Then she danced at the CafĂ© de Paris, at hotel dances, at elegant tea parties, wherever the out-of-tune instruments of a jazz band sounded. There was something of the fury of the romantic drunk, who drinks to forget, in the tireless mobility of this âvitalist,â eager to experience all the violent pleasures. Her family had been slaughtered. Brothers and nephews had all been killed by order of the Soviets. Only she and certain relatives remained, whom the communist revolution caught âoutside their home.â Moreover, this Russian, who had lived most of her life in Germany because she had married a German prince, disdained the German imperial family, which included her daughter. Unforgettable Anastasia! One should have heard the old Grand Duchess, dressed in the dark modesty of a schoolmistress, speak of her German relatives. She censured the Crown Prince⊠Thereâs nothing unusual about this . It would be extraordinary for a mother-in-law to speak well of her son-in-law. But she was most interesting when she spoke of her father-in-law, Wilhelm II. She was born a Romanov and was a descendant of countless emperors. The dynasty of the Tsars is lost in the mists of history. On the other hand, the Hohenzollerns are kings of a century and a half, as it were, of yesterday, and their title of emperor dates from 1870. She sniffed disdainfully through her wide nostrils as she said this, and added, like a noble lady speaking of a ânouveau richeâ: âWhen my daughter was married, I had to attend the ceremony and accept Wilhelmâs arm. I couldnât refuse. Never had that upstart, that one -armed âfancyâ man felt so honored.â To give her arm to a granddaughter of Peter the Great!⊠The French government let her live in France during the war. How else could she do anything else with a German princess, mother-in-law of the Crown Prince, but Russian by birth, who called her father-in-law âsnobbyâ!⊠Although she spent the day and often the night within the Principality of Monaco, her home was in Eze, that is, on French territory. Lately, she complained of a shortage of money. In Russia and Germany, all her possessions had been lost. But individuals related to numerous royal houses are like large ships, which, after running aground on the coast and being lost forever, still carry with them the spoils of those who approach them. The Grand Duchess guarded her little house in Eze, situated between the railway line and the foaming line of the waves, until the last moment . She owned a small automobile, which she often drove herself. She always had money for gambling, and especially for dining at the dance halls . In the last days of her life, she was very Spanish. âLand of hidalgos and gentlemen!â she told me repeatedly in broken Spanish, with admiring glances. There is a restaurant in Monte Carlo where the nighttime festivities last until sunrise, and every year in this public place two Spanish dancers work, two âboysâ from Seville, small in stature, graceful, and well-mannered, who go by the name of âthe Titos.â This pair of smoking Andalusians, who, according to the ladies, are invaluable for getting their companions to dance well, inspired the Grand Duchess with an almost maternal enthusiasm. She spent her evenings devoted to them, not missing a single one of the dances played simultaneously and without interruption by the establishmentâs two orchestras. She would leave one Tito to take the other, and the tallest of the brothers couldnât touch the bony chest of the two-meter-tall princess with his head . Such a passion for Spanish affairs ended the life of William IIâs mother-in-law. One day last winter, âthe Titosâ prepared a Valencian-style rice dish in her honor. It was a rice dish âtranslatedâ from Valencia to Seville, and made with what can be found in Monte Carlo; But the Grand Duchess knew no other, and she always lavished endless praise on this dish. She fainted after the desserts of the Spanish meal ; she was rushed to the Hotel Paris, and within a few hours she passed away. This woman, who in a few years witnessed so many family tragedies and suffered such enormous emotions, could only die suddenly. Moreover, its pleasures were so violent that a heart could not endure them without injury. After the war, the famous âcheeseâ no longer saw many of the characters who used to visit it in the past. My friend Luciano Guitry, the greatest of contemporary actors, once told me something that happened right here. This was years before the war. The great French comedian was approached by one of those Parisian girls who call themselves âartistsâ and, in reality, maintain their luxury and attend to the expensive entertainment of their beauty with resources other than those of art. They come to Monte Carlo to amuse gambling men, reminding them that there is more to the world than the pleasures of chance; but they are often tempted by roulette, just like other mortals, and what they have won with their own resources they leave on the green table. âMonsieur Guitry,â she asked, âwho is that short, bald, ill -colored man who was conversing with you a moment ago? I spent an hour with him the other day, and he talked nothing but about you, as if you were the center of the world. When we said goodbye, he said to me: âI wonât reveal my name to you, because if you knew it, you would be so surprised and proud to have met me that you would faint with emotion on your⊠natural pillows.â Who is he, Monsieur Guitry? Is he the son of a king? A millionaire from New York? A president of a South American republic? A faint smile altered the episcopal serenity of the distinguished actorâs face. His eyes flickered maliciously, and he dropped these words: âHeâs an Italian poet named Gabriel dâAnnunzio.â The girl remained undecided, mentally reviewing her memories while she scratched her pretty brow with her polished nails. Then she said simply: âDâAnnunzio? No way.â I repeat, this was before the war; before the poet achieved true fame by accompanying Italian aviators on their flights, or by undertaking the noisy and sterile adventure of Fiume. Fragility of literary vanities! To believe oneself equal to Dante; to carry oneâs head on oneâs shoulders with the same solemnity as if it were a holy urn; invent something extraordinary and rare every day to attract the publicâs attention, only for one of those girls fluttering around the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo to say indifferently: âDâAnnunzio? I donât know him. â _V_ THE SOULS OF PURGATORY Of the benches that form a circle in the center of the Monte Carlo square, two or three located opposite the Casino steps bear the name âPurgatory.â And by inference, the people who occupy them, as if they were their property, keeping a place for each other, are called the âsoulsâ of said âPurgatory.â It is easy to guess their past. They are gamblers who long to enter the Casino but cannot, despite being convinced that Fortune awaits them beyond its doors. The directors of the establishment, taught by experience, make sure that no trace of the daily battle between man and Fortune remains in Monte Carlo . Few cities in Europe are as clean as this one. At no time of day or night can you find a piece of paper, a dry leaf, or a cigarette butt on its sidewalks, polished like the floor of a saloon. They also ensure that no one is injured or bruised from the roulette and âtreinte-fortieâ matches. Anyone who loses their money can turn to the Casino Management, a loving mother, who will provide them with the necessary amount for the trip to their home country. In this way, the victim will be able to tell far and wide about their disappointments, and if they decide to commit suicide, Others arrange for his burial. This aid given by the Casino for the injured person to retire is called a âviaticum.â Sometimes this âviaticumâ amounts to thousands of francs, depending on the playerâs rank or the importance of the journey. I have seen a Dutchman pay the price of his passage to Java; but he had previously left hundreds of thousands of francs on the green tables. The administration also grants lifelong pensions to famous gamblers who frequented the establishment for thirty or forty years, losing many millions there . I know a great Russian gentleman who comes to the Casino every day and follows the game at the important tables with anxious eyes; but he doesnât dare to put down even a single chip on the white ones, which are the most modest. The Casino gives him a pension of 1,000 francs a month, after he has left in Monte Carlo the proceeds of his mines in Siberia and the harvests of territories as vast as provinces, populated by thousands of muzhiks. But this generosity comes with the condition that the winner will never gamble. If a bet is placed on a number, the employees are ordered not to accept it. Many players who received the âviaticumâ to return to their homeland feel the whiplash of inspiration before leaving and risk the entire trip in a final gamble, convinced that this money, because it belongs to the Casino, will attract Luck. If they lose it, they remain prisoners in Monte Carlo, and yet another desperate person comes to sit on the benches of âpurgatory.â Everyone who took the âviaticumâ finds the doors of the cathedral of Red and Black closed until they repay the loan received. And these poor, tormented souls seek each other out and support each other with the brotherhood of misfortune. Before ten in the morning, the time for the game to begin, they already occupy the benches they consider their property. Those who leave at noon to eat lunch are replaced by others who donât know where a hungry person can get something to eat. The green seats, from which they seem to spy the steps of the prodigious temple, are politely given up, and thus they remain in groups, some huddled, others standing, until nightfall and they disband with the hope that the next day will be more propitious. While they recall their past or tell stories of marvelous winnings at the roulette wheel, they look with envy at the happy people who go up and down the carpeted steps of the staircase. Their eyes are admiring and sad, like those of a drunk in front of a closed cellar door, like those of a penniless morphine addict standing next to a pharmacy window. From time to time, these people, battered by Luck, try to return to her, hoping that she will caress them, on a sudden whim. They scratch the bottom of their pockets. The men take out coins or tiny bills among bread crumbs and tobacco stubs. The women take money stained with rice powder or lip rouge from their purses. The âsouls in purgatoryâ suddenly feel a sense of faith in a certain number, or accept as unquestionable the new move proposed by the oldest member of the group. They always find a friend who hasnât taken the âviaticumâ and can enter the public rooms. The capital of the society is handed over to him without fear , repeating, in abundant detail, how he must risk it. No one even thinks of feeling distrustful. This ambassador cannot fail in the loyalty the unfortunates owe each other. Everyone remains in anguished silence. They stare at the doors of the Casino, believing they see the reappearance of the envoy at the top of the steps at any moment. When he delays, confidence grows in âpurgatory.â Undoubtedly, the common capital is growing with a progressive gain. If he reappears within a few minutes, everyone guesses his misfortune long before seeing the pained expression with which he announces from afar the sudden collapse of the society. I sometimes speak with the âsoulsâ who wander in pain through the square of Monte Carlo, with Fate unwilling to redeem them. Many of them are older than I in the country. I also enjoy the honor of being admired by these âsoulsâ as a person almost as interesting as they are. Although some may accuse me of being immodest, I declare that I have achieved a certain celebrity in Monte Carlo. I even have a nickname that those who cannot pronounce my Spanish surname use for me. I am âthe gentleman who has never gambled.â A popularity that not everyone can achieve. I have frequented Monte Carlo for five years and enter its casino every day, apart from the months I spend traveling. One year I even visited the gaming rooms morning, noon, and night, to make a direct study of the gamblersâ lives for my novel *The Enemies of Women*⊠And in those five years I never gambled, I have not felt the curiosity to call Fortune even once, and the public and the employees have finally noticed such abstention, which is extraordinary here. Whenever I enter the Casino now, I find myself sought out and threatened by the flattery or ambushes that pursue every virginity. The superstition of gamblers blindly believes in the good fortune of novels. Many ladies, friends of mine, offer me money to place at my whim on the green table. âEven if itâs just a _luis_,â they say with a smile that incites sin. I will never gamble. I confess my weakness in the face of many vices and seductions of life; but the temptation of gambling inspires me with no anxiety. I know well that I cannot be a gambler; that I will not be one, even if I set my mind to it with all the strength of my will. I have made my tests, and I can affirm it without fear of being wrong. In 1896, when I was involved in the adventures and risks of a policy of action, I had the honor of being a prisoner. A court martial sentenced me to several years of confinement, and although the newspapers took an interest in my fate until they obtained a pardon, I was still held for more than a year. This is easy to say; but you have to know from experience what twelve months are like, one after the other, always in the same building and among unwelcome people. The penitentiary was a former convent in Valencia, which no longer exists. This ancient building only had hygienic capacity for three hundred men, and sometimes there were a thousand of us. As a great favor, they left me in the infirmary, where two or three consumptives died each month, and half a dozen more were prepared to follow. If death occurred in the evening, the body remained in a nearby bed until the following morning. A most entertaining existence! From time to time, to make my confinement more pleasant, orders arrived from outside recommending that the employees not allow me to receive books or write anything other than letters to my family. Political passions almost always advise absurd measures. During one of these periods, the employees, taking pity on my boredom, found me something to divert. âYou could amuse yourself with gambling. That will distract you as much as reading.â And secretly they supplied me with cards, dominoes, a checkers board, and other recreational instruments that I donât recall. They did more: without leaving âthe house,â they found me a distinguished professor, a famous thief with a long history, who had dedicated himself solely to robbing banks and had traveled halfway around the world, knowing all the gambling dens of Spain and adjacent nations. It was impossible to learn in a better school! It wasâand I apologize for the irreverenceâas if they had me study bacteriology with Pasteur or versification with Victor Hugo. But barely having begun his lessons, the eminent professor must have realized that he was dealing with a fool, completely lacking in aptitude. He learned everything and forgot it with equal ease. I lacked faith in the teachings I had received⊠And half an hour later, the teacher, abusing the kind tolerance of my protectors, played peseta a la golpe with the sick, while I, standing next to a fence, followed, enraptured, the sliding of the clouds and the fluttering of two doves, across the bars that cut the blue of a rectangle of sky. I must confess that it represents for me a somewhat cruel and selfish voluptuousnessâand pleasures are sometimes more intense when seasoned with a little of this malignant sauceâthe fact that I can stroll through Monte Carlo, being the only manâthe only one!âwho lives in this city without ever having gambled. Many dreamers from various nations take care of paying for the comforts that surround me. The gardens of tropical vegetation, the luxurious rooms of the Casino, the white harbor filled with yachts, the orchestras, the opera subsidized with millionsâeverything is paid for by the gamblers for my enjoyment. The green tables have not received a single cent from me. But one day when I made this declaration of independence before an old employee of the Casino, the old man laughed sarcastically: âThere are those who have done more than you,â he said. You simply give nothing, while the Russian teacher⊠And he told me the brief story of the Russian schoolteacher, known only to the high officials of Monte Carlo, for it would be dangerous to divulge it. This was before the war. A shaggy, bearded, and greasy Russian, with an innocent smile and the eyes of a Byzantine cherub, managed to enter the gaming rooms only once, and placed a five-franc coin on a number on the roulette wheel. The dollar was scandalously counterfeit, but he got the âfullâ number, and they gave him thirty-five more dollars, indisputably legitimate. After he had eaten his winnings, the teacher requested an audience with the Casino Administration. He considered himself an important player, âeveryone had seen him play,â and he demanded the same as the others, a âviaticumâ to return to his homeland⊠And the Administration, which doesnât want any ânoise,â paid for his trip. As the employee continues smiling after finishing his story, I humbly bow my head: âI acknowledge my inferiority to the Russian teacher.â _VI_ THE NEW COMPANIONS A few days ago I spoke with the manager of one of the most famous and expensive palaces on the French Riviera, and this representative figure of our times, who has his own car, earns more than a prime minister, is a friend of several kings, and confidently shakes the hands of millionaires from Europe and America, told me this: âA new worry is now afflicting hoteliers. Many guests bring an animal with them, and these beasts give us more work than people.â I immediately thought of dogs, unable to understand how this famous figure considered them a novelty in hotel life. The French Riviera is the place on earth where dogs are most abundant. There are dozens of them in the palaces, in the houses, on the walks, in the most secluded spots on the riverbank or in the mountains. They make a long, silent contemplation of nature impossible . Just when you think youâre alone and begin to savor the murmuring calm of the landscape, immersed in profound peace, the grotesque bark of some gozque, the last love of its aging owner, sounds nearby. With the rapidity of a burning gunpowder trail , this barking expands, multiplies as it races toward infinity, as from all sides other howls begin to answer it, high-pitched or low, from parlor dogs, fishermenâs dogs, farm dogs, or dogs pulling on their leashes by the gates of elegant gardens. In this slice of France, a land of winter retreat, where seven out of ten sun seekers speak English and three only French, the old lady with her little dog is the eternal figure who lends a human value to the scene. Itâs well known what the respectable ladies who live during the winter on the French Riviera and spend the spring in Florence generally represent. Although they may be of different languages ââand nations, they all look the same. They all own a blond wig, false teeth, a âvery moralâ English novel, which they never finish reading, because although it Change, he always says the same thing⊠and a dog. Because of them, hoteliers, who occasionally hold their international assemblies in some Swiss cityâjust as League of Nations diplomats meet in Genevaâ have been forced to deal with dogs and their inconveniences, combating their existence through taxes. A few years ago, dogs, which had always lived free of charge in hotels, were taxed at two francs a day. Now they pay five, and in certain âPalacesâ ten and even fifteen francs, without this having had any effect on their decline. On the contrary: keeping a dog in a luxury hotel represents a considerable expense; it costs more than the maintenance of a Christian cost before the war, and reveals great wealth in its owner. But the famous personage smiles disdainfully when he hears me speak of dogs. Who remembers these animals? They have gone out of fashion, and can only interest disoriented people who are several years behind the advances of our time. The tall Russian greyhounds, narrow, silky, distinguished or imbecile; the police dog, ferocious and intelligently aggressive; the âPomeranian lulu,â hairy and small like a muff with paws and eyes; the Lilliputian goslings, capable of having a handbag at home; all these privileged beasts, which cost thousands of francs and were once welcomed with clapping and feminine cries of enthusiasm, are now considered vulgar gifts, good for bourgeois who have no idea what chic is. âOther animals,â he adds, âare now fashionable companions, especially for women.â These words come from a man in close contact with privileged humanity who comes from all over the French Riviera, lives there for a few months, and then spreads out again throughout the world. No one can know her better⊠And they make me see, suddenly, with luminous concreteness, images that had previously glided before my eyes, without my having retained them. I remember the warm and elegant hour of midday, when foreigners circulate along the docks of Menton, the terraces of Monte Carlo, the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, and the esplanades of the port of Cannes. Ladies pass by with Japanese parasols in their right hands, carrying on one shoulder or elbow the trained parrot that accompanies them on their travels. Others pull at a chain, at the end of which a monkey marches on all fours or rests on its hind legs, raising its round-eared, pyramid-shaped head above the hood of a habit made of chasuble material. Other ladies, younger and sportingly arrogant, stroke with the tip of their canes the wild cat, the fox, the wolf, the panther, or the small tiger that follows them everywhere, like the lapdog in the past. These are the traveling companions who can be seen. The famous hotelier tells me about others who stay at home, that is, those who remain hidden in the room at the Palace and force the servants to rush through the cleaning of the room, if they donât remain hesitant and fearful at the door: sleepy lizards, buried in the cotton that serves as their bed; turtles that slowly emerge from the warmth of the sofa; reptiles with grid-like skinâdifficult to nameâthat, upon feeling the caress of the rectangle of sunlight from the window extended to their basket, uncoil themselves, lift the rush lid, and, expanding their coils, begin to climb the legs of the furniture. Since people travel more now than in the past, and traveling around the world is a diversion that has nothing extraordinary about it, wandering and capricious people , driven by an unhealthy desire for originality, choose the strangest companions for their comfortable, boring, and wandering existence. A memory suddenly stirs me inside, with that explosive emotion that accompanies unexpected discoveries. I see myself, nights before, at a party in a grand hotel in Nice. Couples dance under a shower of streamers and golden confetti. Domestics go from table to table offering party favors. People adorn themselves grotesquely with them. Grave gentlemen, decorated with lapels, have adorned their heads with clown hats, cockscombs, or Indian plumage, all made of tissue paper. Ladies with a million pearls or diamonds on their chests proudly display in their hair the tin tiaras or little cardboard parasols the maĂźtre dâhĂŽtel has just given them. Between dances, people devour. The vegetal acidity of the champagne spilled on the tablecloths mixes with the human acidity of sweaty armpits. At a table opposite mine, a solitary young man of âexoticâ appearance is dining. He is undoubtedly dressed by a London tailor; But, despite his correct smoking, he evokes memories of paradisiacal islands in Asia, cinnamon forests, pagodas of rustling bluebells, because of the indolence of his movements and the color of his face. He may be the son of a European and an Oriental; he may have been born in England and his face darkened by the causticity of the tropical atmosphere. If this lazy, athletic young man were to undress, he might reveal a feminine whiteness, altered only by the copper mask that descends halfway down his neck. With his right hand, he catches in the air the colored balls sent his way from the nearby tables, and throws them back effortlessly . His left hand remains motionless and falls on a plate with the remains of the dessert. Something is alive and stirring beneath this hand⊠I remember it clearly now; I see it as if it were still before my eyes. A little turtleâs head moves between his fingers and the porcelain rim. It moves forward, sniffing at the remains of the sweet dessert; then it hides⊠I know this triangular head; I know his forked thread-like tongue ; I know his protruding eyes, which seem to cloud over with white as the membranous veil of his eyelids descends upon them. I have lived in the jungles of America, breaking ground for the first time on soil that had been virgin for millions of years. My home was a ranch of stakes and mud. An Indian servant rubbed garlic on the legs of my cot to keep out the reptiles that hunt at night and enter dwellings seeking human society. At daybreak, before putting on high pigskin boots, I had to turn them upside down, in case any of these visitors had fallen asleep inside . More than once, when turning on a light in the middle of the night, I have caught this same head for a moment in a hole in the ceiling or the floor. The gentleman suddenly seems to forget the festivities and, smiling, raises his left hand to his face. A cold breath, something like a caress âfrom the other world,â must pass over his closely trimmed mustache. He didnât want to leave his friend upstairs in the hotel room he occupies . He fears for her, and has brought her to the party, wrapped around his arm. She peeks gently out from the cuff of his shirt; she leans on the edge of his plate; she greedily searches for the man-made sweets that her owner offers her surreptitiously. Perhaps this is how this cinnamon-faced gentleman roams the world, going from grand hotel to grand hotel⊠A bad roommate. _VII_ HOW AMERICANS CINEMATOGRAPH A NOVEL Eleven oâclock at night. Autumn is a second spring on the French Riviera. Itâs November, but I walk through my garden, breathing in the light night freshness, laden with the aromas of flowers and fruits. All thatâs missing is the blue glow of the fireflies, night flies that weave and unweave their flying dances in the spring darkness. Suddenly, an unusual crash breaks the silence of the sleepy garden. My house is on the outskirts of Menton, on an avenue that, starting from the edge of the Mediterranean, winds along the foothills of the Maritime Alps, lined with gates and country fences. As soon as night falls, this street, open between two masses of trees that hide the buildings, becomes as silent as a forest path. It seems to be heard the The heartbeat and breathing of Nature at rest. The most ordinary of noises takes on the importance of an event. Thatâs why I couldnât help feeling a look of surprise and unease when I saw the vegetation reddening under the violent light of dawn, simultaneously cutting through the calm of the night with incessant bellows. Several cars had just pulled up, bloodying everything with their headlights and blaring their sirens. Shortly after, the bell on my garden gate began to ring madly. Who could announce themselves at this hour and with such a racket? I thought about the possibility of an invasion of fascists who had crossed the immediate border of Italy in pursuit of fugitive enemies. As I cautiously approached the gate, a young voice spoke to me in Spanish, with a slight English accent. âMr. Ibåñez: weâre from New York, sent by Cosmopolitan Production to film your novel *The Enemies of Women*.â This presentation was a bit American, at such an hour and without further ado⊠The house servants and the gardeners, awakened by the ringing of bells, left their beds. I switched on the garden lights, while the servants did the same in the bedrooms. The automobiles entered, and gentlemen dressed in tuxedos and elegant and beautiful ladies with low cuts in evening gowns began to get out. The one who had spoken in Spanish continued to explain to me to justify this extraordinary visit. He was a handsome young man with an arrogant presence, an artist, the son of Spaniards but born in the United States : Pedro de CĂłrdoba, whose name is known to all who enjoy watching films made in America. They thought I was traveling in Spain, and an hour earlier they had learned that I was still living in Menton. They arrived from Paris at dusk, immediately putting on their ceremonial attire for dinner and dancing at the CafĂ© de Paris in Monte Carlo. âWhen we learned you were at home,â CĂłrdoba continues, âwe said to ourselves, âLetâs pay Mr. Ibåñez a visitâŠâ And here we are. A drink is being hastily improvised in the dining room for the invaders. Meanwhile, the low-cut ladies run around the garden like little girls, chasing each other, searching for flowers, and laughing at their discoveries with a healthy and noisy ingenuity. The gentlemen continue talking to me. They have a boss, the renowned stage director Alan Crosland, a smiling young man, sparing with his words, and with the tenacious demeanor of a man accustomed to command. Iâd like to know when these people, who arrived a few hours ago from Paris, will start working . To recharge their batteries after a night on the train, theyâve dressed up, dancing between courses of their dinner. I offer to serve as an intermediary to smooth out any difficulties that might delay their work. â âDo you think youâll be able to start within three or four days?â Alan Crosland looks at me with his clear eyes and answers simply: âWeâll start tomorrow at six oâclock, in the square of the Casino in Monte Carlo. At six oâclock in the morning, and itâs almost midnight!⊠Besides, we must bear in mind that many of the artists who came from the United States have stayed in Nice, and only a few live in Monte Carlo. The conductorâs assistants, who came with him from America, and the French attachĂ©s who follow him from Paris are currently recruiting hundreds of men and women in Nice to act as extras. They also have to find an orchestra, since the ones in Monte Carlo, since they operate until midnight, refuse to take on this morningâs work.â Crosland, sensing the doubt on my face, calmly repeats: âWeâll start at six oâclock.â And Pedro de CĂłrdoba, more expansive, more âLatin,â adds, smiling delicately: âWhen thereâs money to spend, you know, when thereâs plenty of money , nothing is impossible. â He woke me up the next day at six in the morning. He was in no hurry to get to Monte Carlo. The French Riviera is far from the United States, and The miracles of prodigious American activity cannot be repeated there . I would certainly arrive before work had even begun. Upon entering Monte Carlo, I noticed a special liveliness in its streets, which were rarely frequented at that hour. The residents of the great roulette metropolis get up late. Everyone has spent the night at the green tables, and the Casino only opens its doors at ten. But this morning the few who were out on the streets were talking to each other, pointing into the distance, as if something extraordinary were happening. Some were retracing their steps to return home and give their families news that would wake them up . When my car arrived at the Casino Square, I couldnât contain a naive admiration, similar to that of the Monte Carlo street sweepers, who, leaning on their brooms and shovels, stood in groups, looking eagerly from side to side. The order of the hours of the day was completely disrupted. The Casino clock read six-thirty; An adolescent sun was beginning to rise over the palm trees on the terraces that cut the blue sea with their dark colonnades⊠But at the same time, it was five in the afternoon, tea time. Chapter 26. The square was occupied by hundreds and hundreds of people; perhaps more than a thousand; and all of them, men and women, were dressed with a certain elegance, like unemployed people who can afford to live in Monte Carlo. These people were coming and going from the Casino, strolling around the squareâs little central garden, called âthe cheeseâ; they were sitting at the tables of the CafĂ© de Paris. An orchestra was playing on the terrace of that establishment. Everything you see in this place, but in the middle of the afternoon or at sunset!⊠The order of the years also seemed reversed, as did that of the hours. It was the Casino square just as I had seen it during the war. Convalescing officers were strolling in groups. Several invalids in barracks caps were sunbathing on the benches. This entire crowd was fake, or, to put it crudely, a âpaidâ crowd. Behind the Grand Hotel de Paris were dozens of trucks, the kind that transport tourists along the French Riviera. This convoy of vehicles had brought the human avalanche that filled the square from Nice to evolve under Croslandâs orders . As we approached the Casino, the main characters of *The Enemies of Women* began to meet me . I kissed the right hand of a grand lady coming down the steps, luxuriously dressed. It was Duchess Alice, played by the beautiful Californian artist Alma Rubens. A gentleman in a tailcoat flung back the wings of his black and white cape to greet me. It could only be Prince Lubimoff. And I recognized the feline, mysterious eyes, the Hamlet-like expression of the great American actor Lionel Barrymore, hero of the New York theaters. I also began to recognize many famous artists I had seen in American films who were now playing characters in my novel. A row of cinematographic equipment was in operation, as was a battery of machine guns, under the command of cameraman Morgan, a colleague of Croslandâs. The extras were also extraordinary. They were all made up of artists who normally work for French cinematography. Among these ladies and gentlemen, now reduced to mere extras , there were some who were accustomed to being lead characters in films made in Nice. âThese Americans pay so well!â said one of the several ladies pretending to be having tea at the outdoor tables of the CafĂ© de Paris. A young protagonist of French comedies, who in this work was simply âone of many,â gave me advice: âYou should write a lot of novels set on the French Riviera, so that American filmmakers will come and work here. What I like most about them is that they pay promptly.â I have been the hero of two films made in partnership with other comrades, and I have not yet received a single payment. cent. The invalids strolling or sunbathing were real invalids: artists who were in the war, and now, with an arm or a leg missing, can only work on a piece that evokes the memory of the past tragedy. Among the officers, there were those who wore their uniforms with martial ease; but all of them, despite the meticulousness of the details, revealed the actor who knows how to change his outfit. Only one commander seemed to stand out from the rest. He was truly a French commander, lean, with an aquiline profile and a white mustache, just like Foch. He was elegantly gloved and had a medal bar across his chest. He looked like a real soldier⊠And indeed he was. His comrades always called him âCommander.â Before the war, he was a reserve officer. He fought in numerous sectors of the front and earned the Legion of Honor with the rank of commander. In French films, he plays various characters, for he is a talented actor. In _The Enemies of Women_, no one could dispute his role as MartĂnezâs comrade-in-arms, the Spanish officer of the Foreign Legion. And he only had to put on his own uniform to stand out from the other, purely cinematic, soldiers. For several days, part of the Monte Carlo neighborhood changed its existence. Many women went to bed earlier or cut short their sleep to wake up at hours they would have considered unheard of a week earlier. Crosland, with his army of artists and extras, brought to life all the scenes in _The Enemies of Women_ that take place outdoors. He worked in the Casino squareâinside the building it was impossibleâand in the gardens that descend to the Mediterranean, forming terraces. The Casino management could only tolerate this work, in the areas under its control, from six to nine in the morning. Then they had to make room for the cleaners, because the games begin at ten. I had to speak with the sovereign princeâs government to allow artists to work in the ancient city of Monaco. The hectic life of Monte Carlo doesnât extend to the quiet Monegasque capital, which is opposite, across the harbor. To ensure that the principalityâs police wouldnât interfere with our work in the beautiful San Martino Gardens, near the Oceanographic Museum, in the square in front of the princely castle palace, which looks like a Renaissance decoration and where cinematographers were never tolerated , the Minister of the Interior had to issue nothing less than a decree. Thereâs no need to smile. In small states, things must be done with more ceremony and gravity than in large ones. The same is true in our lives. A poor person must observe more dignity and restraint in his actions than a rich person if he wants to be respected. Only the powerful can live without scruples or consideration. If a small government , like Monacoâs, didnât proceed with minutiae and solemnity, the people who arrive from outside, prone to jokes and disrespect, would end up trampling everything underfoot. These days I didnât write or do anything other than follow Crosland, serving as his intermediary, putting at his disposal all the knowledge and experience that several years of life on the French Riviera have provided me. The director and his artists astonished me upon leaving as much as upon arriving. âWeâll finish next Sunday,â Crosland said. I felt doubts again, just as I had the night of their unexpected presentation. They did, indeed, need to leave the following Sunday. They had to get on the train at dusk and go straight from Monte Carlo to Le Havre to catch the ocean liner that would take them to New York the next day . But there was so much left to do!⊠These Americans, men and women, after working from sunrise to sunset, would gamble at night in the Casino or dine in all the fashionable restaurants where they danced, giving themselves over to the dance. until after midnight. Things couldnât go as the director had planned on paper. Someone would fall ill. Unexpected obstacles would arise. It began to rain, and they continued working. Some actors, indeed, felt ill, but this didnât stop them from continuing their nightlife. They wanted to see everything, to make the most of their trip to the French Riviera⊠And none of them failed to show up punctually for work: six in the morning. What discipline and what health! When did these people sleep? On Sunday, as the sun set, they were still working. But at the time Crosland set, everything was finished. Some of the actors didnât have time to undress, and they boarded the train dressed like in * Enemies of Women*. And off they went to New York in one fell swoop!⊠Later, I received hundreds of photographs depicting the âinteriorsâ of the play, the scenes performed in the United States, with prodigious sets, which make this film something extraordinary. They have even reconstructed there, based on the notes they took, several of the Casino âs most elegant gaming rooms . On the French Riviera, there are many ladies who still remember, with amazement and delight, the time when they used to get up at six in the morning, able to watch the sunrise. Sometimes, when I find myself at the Casino, they tell me about this extraordinary period in their lives. âWhy get up early now? What can a decent person do at such an hour? Only if the Americans came again to make a film!⊠In that case, let us know. â BIOGRAPHY Vicente Blasco Ibåñez was born in Valencia in January 1867. He was a lawyer and journalist, and dedicated a good part of his life to politics, within the Republican Party, which he joined at a very young age. His political life was turbulent. The same violence with which he denounced injustice in his works, the same brilliant and colorful language with which he described the landscapes of his homeland, emerge in his political pamphlets, which led to his arrest several times and forced him into exile as many times. In 1884, he served as secretary to the writer FernĂĄndez y GonzĂĄlez in Madrid, but he soon left this position to dedicate himself to politics, which, in Blascoâs view, meant making the revolution triumph. His ideas and the violent writings they inspired against the corruption of local and national politicians forced him into exile in Paris in 1889, and he did not return to Spain until 1891. Once in Valencia, he devoted himself entirely to politics, founded the newspaper El Pueblo, the organ of the Republican Party, and was prosecuted several times for journalistic campaigns. He served as a representative for his province for seven terms, and in 1909 he resigned his seat to devote himself entirely to an enterprise that some have described as crazy and even criminal, but which he undertook convinced it would succeed: he went to South America with six hundred peasants to found a colony in Patagonia, which he named Cervantes, where he would implement one of the many socialist social projects being formulated at the time. The essay turned out well, although it garnered little sympathy from his coreligionists. Back in Europe, he took up residence in Paris in 1914 and put his pen to the service of the Allies, whom he saw as the defenders of democracy in that first great war. In return, the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, and at the end of the war, he traveled to the United States, where he received a triumphant reception and was named an honorary doctorate by George Washington University. He returned to Spain, but was soon forced to leave, this time never to return, when the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera came to power in 1923. He spent the rest of his days, until his death on January 28, 1928, on the French Mediterranean coast, surrounded by respect and admiration. of all those in the world who knew his work. During his exile, he did not cease to harshly attack the successive powers in Spain, who did nothing but persecute, with ever-changing methods, everything in which Blasco believed. He thus joined the tragic list of great and humble Spaniards who died in exile. This is the concise biography of a man who has been presented as a writer of violent and sensual novels, without any mention , generally, of his political activity. As if his work, especially his early work, the one usually referred to as âof regional atmosphere,â had been born from the simple contemplation of the light of his land, or from the whim of his Mediterranean fantasy. His political ideas, in addition to imprisonments, trials, and exiles, led him to various challenges from which he was sometimes seriously wounded. And in the midst of this life devoted to action, Blasco still found the time and energy to write one of the most ambitious works in Spanish literature and to become the only Spanish writer who has been able to live comfortably abroad from the proceeds of his books, amidst the respect and admiration of the world. This aspect of his life is highlighted here not out of frivolity, but because, after having had to suffer here, like so many others, through imprisonment or official scorn for his ideas; after having had to live in exileâlike so many othersâfor expressing and defending them, And after many years of trying to make him a second-class novelist, also because of his ideas, hiding him behind the label of âcostumbrista writerâ so as not to recognize the true scope of his social ideas, it is time for the average reader to abandon the idea of ââBlasco that has been imposed on them: that of a writer of strong inks, violent colors and risquĂ© descriptions, all under the academic name of ânaturalism,â and learn to see the real Blasco Ibåñez. It is not possible to list all of Blasco Ibåñezâs works, but we will cite those that, in addition to making him famous, have defined him as one of the great contemporary novelists. First, and in order of appearance, his works of a social nature, such as _Rice and Tartana_ 1894, _May Flower_ 1895, _The Shack_ 1898, _Among Orange Trees_ 1901, _Reeds and Mud_ 1902, _The Cathedral_ 1903, _The Horde_ 1905, _The Cellar_ 1905, _Blood and Sand_ 1908, which are precisely his major works, along with the war novels _The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse_ 1916 and _Mare Nostrum_ 1918, and the historical ones _SĂłnnica the Courtesan_ 1901, _The Pope of the Sea_ 1925 and _At the Feet of Venus_ 1926, as well as _Around the World as a Novelist_ 1925. The reader can find a complete list of his works in any encyclopedia. His other works. What is being highlighted here is precisely the seriousness and tragic depth, as well as his social and political commitment, in an author who has been accused of sensuality, local color, light and color, Mediterranean joy, and other clichĂ©s. It is true that our author loved life and enjoyed it as much as he could; it is true that in his novels the light and charm of his homeland are silent and constant protagonists; it is also true that Blasco uses violent color and contrasts to grip the reader with tense action and vivid, brilliant language. But to pretend that this, and only this, is all that Blasco has contributed to literature and to the understanding of the people of his homeland is not only blindness, but injustice, even premeditated injustice. It is, of course, less risky to attribute to the credits or debits of the âpsychologyâ of a character or a social class what are merely consequences of the environment in which they are forced to remain, because that way thereâs no need to name the real culprits. Itâs more convenient to blame the earth, the sun, or hot blood for the violent reactions of a peasant fed up with suffering injustice. In each of the novels mentioned, there is a denunciation that Blasco dares to shout. C. Ayala Thank you for joining us in this fascinating story. We hope you enjoyed the tale of the French Riviera, a place full of beauty, but also of secrets and tensions. Donât forget to subscribe to our channel to continue exploring more stories that awaken the imagination and the senses. See you in the next story.
ÂĄBienvenidos a un viaje literario a la Costa Azul! đïž En âNovelas de la Costa Azulâ de Vicente Blasco Ibåñez, nos sumergimos en historias apasionantes que exploran la vida en este fascinante rincĂłn del MediterrĂĄneo. đ
Con una narrativa rica y envolvente, Blasco Ibåñez nos lleva por un recorrido lleno de amor, misterios y paisajes que capturan la esencia de la costa mĂĄs famosa de Europa. Desde las bellas playas hasta las complejas relaciones humanas, cada capĂtulo es una ventana abierta a un mundo lleno de emociones. đ
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**En esta novela encontrarĂĄs**:
â Descripciones detalladas de la vida en la Costa Azul đïž
â Personajes que te harĂĄn reflexionar sobre el destino y las pasiones humanas đ
â Un estilo literario Ășnico de Blasco Ibåñez, reconocido por su habilidad para crear historias intensas y conmovedoras đïž
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â Amantes de la literatura española đ
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