he club, in
the theatre, wherever he went, the people were talking about purchases
of lands, of sales of stock, of quick negotiations with a triple profit,
of portentous balances. The amount of money that he was keeping idle in
the banks was beginning to weigh upon him. He finally ended by involving
himself in some speculation; like a gambler who cannot see the roulette
wheel without putting his hand in his pocket.

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

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

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

His family, however, reawakened his enthusiasm. "To Paris!" . . . He
began to fancy that he was twenty again, and forgetting his habitual
parsimony, wished his household to travel like royalty, in the