urope.

So he leased some of the plantations, handed over the superintendence
of others to those mentioned in the will who considered themselves
left-handed members of the family--of which Desnoyers as the Patron
received their submissive allegiance--and moved to Buenos Aires.

By this move, he was able to keep an eye on his son who continued living
a dissipated life without making any headway in his engineering studies.
Then, too, Chichi was now almost a woman--her robust development making
her look older than she was--and it was not expedient to keep her on the
estate to become a rustic senorita like her mother.

Dona Luisa had also tired of ranch life, the social triumphs of her
sister making her a little restless. She was incapable of feeling
jealous, but material ambitions made her anxious that her children
should not bring up the rear of the procession in which the other
grandchildren were cutting such a dashing figure.

During the year, most wonderful reports from Germany were finding their
way to the Desnoyers home in the Capital. "The aunt from Berlin," as the
children called her, kept sending long letters filled with accounts
of dances, dinners, hunting parties and titles--many high-sounding and
military titles;--"our brother, the Colonel," "our cousin, the Baron,"
"our uncle, the Intimate Councillor," "our great-uncle, the Truly
Intimate." All the extravagances of the German social ladder, which
incessantly manufactures new titles in order to satisfy the thirst for
honors of a people divided into castes, were enumerated with delight by
the old Romantica. She even mentioned her husband's secretary (a nobody)
who, through working in the public offices, had acquired the title of
Rechnungarath, Councillor of Calculations. She also referred with much
pride to the retired Oberpedell which she had in her house, explaining
that that meant "Superior Porter."

The news about her children was no less glorious. The oldest was the
wise one of the family. He was devoted to philology and the historical
sciences, but his sight was growing weaker all the time because of his
omnivorous reading. Soon he would be a Doctor, and before he was
thirty, a Herr Professor. The mother lamented that he had not military
aspirations, considering that his tastes had somewhat distorted the
lofty destinies of the family. Professorships, sciences and literature
were more properly the perquisites of the Jews, unable, because of their
race,