sual, ready to get his friends out of their difficulties as if the
limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said
this-and-that!" Don Ramon would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and
finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put
this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape,
would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would
gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramon's wisdom had
deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, each one anxious to
have the privilege of annihilating the enemy with the magic words--all
talking at the same time like magpies suddenly set chattering by the
dawn of a new light.

If the opposition held its ground, again stupefaction would come over
them. Another mad dash in quest of a new consultation. Thus the sessions
would go by, to the great delight of the barber Cupido--the sharpest and
meanest tongue in the city--who, whenever the Council met, would observe
to his early morning shaves:

"Holiday today: the usual race of councilors bare-back."

When party exigencies forced don Ramon to be out of town, it was his
wife, the energetic dona Bernarda, who attended to the consultations,
issuing statements on party policy, as wise and apt as those of "the
chief" himself.

This collaboration in the upbuilding and the up-holding of the family
influence was the single bond of union between husband and wife. This
cold woman, a complete stranger to tenderness, would flush with pleasure
every time the chief approved her ideas. If only she were "boss" of "the
Party!" ...Don Andres had often said as much himself!

This don Andres was her husband's most intimate friend, one of those men
who are born to be second everywhere and in everything. Loyal to the
family to the point of sacrifice, he served, with the couple itself, to
fill out the Holy Trinity of the Brull religion that was the faith of
all the District. Where don Ramon could not go in person, don Andres
would be present for him, as the chief's _alter ego_. In the towns he
was respected as the supreme vicar of that god whose throne was in the
_patio_ of the plantain trees; and people too shy to lay their
supplications before the god himself, would seek out that jolly
advocate,--a very approachable bachelor, who always had a smile on his
tanned, wrinkled face, and a story under his stiff cigar-stained
mustache.

Don Andres had no re