of the sea
accustomed to speaking of limitless pastures and immense herds.
Their intercourse was more than the mere friendliness of a country
neighborhood, and continued on after their return to Paris. Finally Rene
visited the home on the avenida Victor Hugo as though it were his own.

The only disappointments in Desnoyers' new life came from his children.
Chichi irritated him because of the independence of her tastes. She did
not like antiques, no matter how substantial and magnificent they might
be, much preferring the frivolities of the latest fashion. She accepted
all her father's gifts with great indifference. Before an exquisite
blonde piece of lace, centuries old, picked up at auction, she made
a wry face, saying, "I would much rather have had a new dress costing
three hundred francs." She and her brother were solidly opposed to
everything old.

Now that his daughter was already a woman, he had confided her
absolutely to the care of Dona Luisa. But the former "Peoncito" was not
showing much respect for the advice and commands of the good natured
Creole. She had taken up roller-skating with enthusiasm, regarding it as
the most elegant of diversions. She would go every afternoon to the Ice
Palace, Dona Luisa chaperoning her, although to do this she was obliged
to give up accompanying her husband to his sales. Oh, the hours of
deadly weariness before that frozen oval ring, watching the white circle
of balancing human monkeys gliding by on runners to the sound of an
organ! . . . Her daughter would pass and repass before her tired eyes,
rosy from the exercise, spirals of hair escaped from her hat, streaming
out behind, the folds of her skirt swinging above her skates--handsome,
athletic and Amazonian, with the rude health of a child who, according
to her father, "had been weaned on beefsteaks."

Finally Dona Luisa rebelled against this troublesome vigilance,
preferring to accompany her husband on his hunt for underpriced riches.
Chichi went to the skating rink with one of the dark-skinned maids,
passing the afternoons with her sporty friends of the new world.
Together they ventilated their ideas under the glare of the easy life
of Paris, freed from the scruples and conventions of their native land.
They all thought themselves older than they were, delighting to discover
in each other unsuspected charms. The change from the other hemisphere
had altered their sense of values. Some were even writing verses in
French.