, the flourishing
mustache, the proud, arrogant brow of don Ramon, a born fighter, an
adventurer destined from the cradle to lead men and impose his will upon
inferiors.

What would that heroic master of men have said of this? Don Ramon would
give a lot of money to a woman--granted--but he wouldn't have swapped
all the beauties on earth put together for a single vote!

But his son, the boy on whom he had grounded his fondest hopes--the
redeemer destined to raise the House of Brull to its loftiest glory--the
future "personage" in Madrid, the fondled heir-apparent, who had found
his pathway already cleared for him at birth--was throwing all his
father's labors through the window, the way you toss overboard
something it has cost you nothing to earn! It was easy to see that
Rafael had never known what hard times were--those days of the
Revolution, when the Brulls were out of power and held their own just
because don Ramon was a bad man with a gun--desperate election
campaigns, when you marched to victory over somebody's dead body, bold
cross-country rides on election night, never knowing when you would meet
the _roder_ in ambush--the outlaw sharpshooter who had vowed to kill don
Ramon; then endless prosecutions for intimidation and violence, which
had given dona Bernarda and her husband months and months of anxiety,
lest a catastrophe from one moment to the next bring prison and
forfeiture of all their property! All that his father had gone through,
for his boy's sake; to carve out a pedestal for Rafael, pass on to him a
District that would be his own, blazing a path over which he might go to
no visible limit of glory! And he was just throwing it all away,
relinquishing forever a position that had been built up at the cost of
years and years of labor and peril! That is what he would be doing,
unless that very night he returned home, refuting by his presence there
the rumors his scandalized adherents were circulating.

Rafael shook his head. The mention of his father had touched him, and he
was convinced by the old man's arguments; but none the less he was
determined to resist. No, and again no; his die was cast: he would
continue on his way.

They were now under the trees of the Alameda. The carriages were rolling
by, forming an immense wheel in the center of the avenue. The harnesses
of the horses and the lamps of the drivers' boxes gleamed in the
sunlight. Women's hats and the white lace shawls of children could be
s