He felt himself belittled, laid to one side. He thought of
Hercules dressed as a woman and spinning wool. His love of family life
had made him renounce that of a powerful man.

Only the considerate treatment of his wife, who surrounded him with
assiduous care as though wishing to compensate for their long
separations, made the situation bearable. Furthermore, his conscience
was enjoying a certain satisfaction in being a land-father, taking much
interest in the life of his son who was beginning to prepare to enter
the institute, looking over his books, and aiding him in understanding
the notes.

But even these pleasures were not of long duration. The family
gatherings in his home or at his relatives' bored him unspeakably; so
did the conversations with his cousins and nephews about profits and
business deals, or about the defects of centralized tyranny. According
to them, all the calamities of heaven and earth were coming from
Madrid. The governor of the province was the "Consul of Spain."

These merchants interrupted their criticisms only to listen in
religious silence to Wagner's music banged out on the piano by the
girls of the family. A friend with a tenor voice used to sing
_Lohengrin_ in Catalan. Enthusiasm made the most excitable roar, "the
hymn ... the hymn!" It was not possible to misunderstand. For them
there was only one hymn in existence, and in a trilling undertone they
would accompany the liturgic music of _Los Segadores_ (The Reapers).
[The revolutionary song of Catalunia, originated by a band of reapers
in the seventeenth century.]

Ulysses used to recall with homesickness his life as commander of a
transatlantic liner,--a wide, universal life of incessant and varied
horizons, and cosmopolitan crowds. He could see himself detained on
deck by groups of elegant maidens who would beg him for new dances in
the coming week. His footsteps were surrounded with white fluttering
skirts, veils that waved like colored clouds, laughter and trills,
Spanish chatter that appeared set to music:--all the frolicsome jargon
of a cage of tropical birds.

Ex-presidents of the South American republics,--generals or doctors who
were going to Europe to rest,--used to relate to him on the bridge,
with Napoleonic gravity, the principal events in their history. The
business men starting out for America confided to him their stupendous
plans:--rivers turned from their courses, railroads built across the
virgin forests, monstr