rest themselves in present
affairs and not bother about the past.

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

After brief reflection, the ranchman added:

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

Then he suddenly seemed to repent of his suspicions.

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

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

Elena meanwhile was contemplating with increasing interest the singing
gringo. He was not the knight of her dreams awaited by the fair lady. He
was almost a servant, a blond immigrant with reddish hair, fat, heavy,
and with bovine eyes that reflected an eternal fear of disa