any of his subjects, whether great or
small. Ever since his visit to France Napoleon had constituted his ideal
of manhood, and it was upon the conduct of the great Corsican that he
loved to think he modelled his own.

Certainly Lopez was utterly free from any dread of holocaust. In a very
short while the prisons had been filled to overflowing, and the red soil
of Paraguay grew redder with the blood of hundreds of executions. Once
again the barriers began to be set up between Paraguay and the outer
world, and once again it became almost impossible for one who had
crossed its frontiers to return to his native land. But, since it was
the fate of Lopez to have lived in a later age than Francia, the
ambitions of this third Dictator were correspondingly enlarged. It was
not his design ultimately to shut off Paraguay from the rest of the
Continent; it was his plan rather to cause the frontiers of his country
to spread until they had enveloped all the other lands. Thus he
considered he was acting in conformity with the true Napoleonic
tradition, and also, incidentally, with his own desires and dreams.

In order to be prepared for the great day which was to come to Paraguay,
the army was increased, trained, and drilled until it became one of the
most important and efficient military organizations in the Continent.
This army was completely and entirely the toy of Lopez. The men were his
to be shot or promoted at his slightest whim, and the officers were
subjected to precisely the same irresponsible but merciless discipline.

Even at this period in no other country of South America, perhaps, would
such a state of affairs have continued. Paraguay, however, as has been
explained, differed in its ethics from any of the neighbouring States.
The population was largely composed of civilized Guarani Indians, and
the section of this great family in these latitudes had from the
earliest days of the Continent been noted for its easy-going and
somewhat indolent qualities.

The result of the intercourse between the Spaniards and Indians had
produced a small minority of _mestizos_, whose enterprise scarcely
exceeded that of the natives. The soft and enervating climate was, of
course, largely responsible for this; indeed, it was inevitable that a
beautiful and lotus-eating land of the kind should have produced
inhabitants to match. A few only of the Paraguayans had had the
advantage of travelling in Europe, and on their return to their nativ