the banner of a
defeated army wet with rain.

The boy was surprised at the gestures and tears of anger with which his
mother welcomed expression of his fears.

"Well, I hope he'll die as soon as possible ... Lot's of use he is to
us!... May the Lord be merciful and take him off right now."

Rafael said nothing, not caring to pry into the conjugal drama that was
secretly and silently playing its last act before his eyes.

Don Ramon, that somber libertine of insatiable appetites, prey to a
sinister, mysterious inebriation, was tossing in a last whirlwind of
tempestuous desire, as though the blaze of sunset had set fire to what
remained of his vitality.

With a deliberate, determined lustfulness, he went scouring the
District like a wild satyr, and his brutish assaults, his terrorism and
abuse of authority, were reported back by scurrilous tongues to the
seignorial mansion, where his friend don Andres was trying in vain to
pacify the wife.

"That man!" dona Bernarda would stammer in her rage. "That man is going
to ruin us! Doesn't he see he's compromising his son's future?"

His most enthusiastic adherents, without losing their traditional
respect for him, would speak smilingly of his "weaknesses"; but at
night, when don Ramon, exhausted by his struggle with the insatiable
demon gnawing at his spirit, would be snoring painfully away, with a
disgusting rattle that made it impossible for people in the house to
sleep, dona Bernarda would sit up in her bed with her thin arms folded
across her bosom, and pray to herself:

"My Lord, My God! May this man die as soon as possible! May all this
come to an end soon, oh Lord!"

And Bernarda's God must have heard her prayer, for her husband got
rapidly worse.

"Take care of yourself, don Ramon," his curate friends would say to him.
They were the only ones who dared allude to his disorderly life. "You're
getting old, and boyish pranks at your age are invitations to Death!"

The _cacique_ would smile, proud, at bottom, that all men should know
that such exploits were possible for a man at his age.

He had enough strength left for one more caress the day when, escorted
by don Andres, Rafael entered with his degree as a Doctor of Law. He
gave the boy his shotgun--a veritable jewel, the admiration of the
entire District--and a magnificent horse. And as if he had been waiting
around just to see the realization of old Don Jaime's ambition, which he
himself had not been able to