he was married at the age of fourteen, he being
over twenty.

"So young for a bride!" many of my readers will exclaim. But that is
rather a question of race and climate. In Spanish America, land of
feminine precocity, there is many a wife and mother not yet entered on
her teens!

For nigh ten years Halberger lived happily with his youthful _esposa_;
all the happier that in due time a son and daughter--the former
resembling himself, the latter a very image of her mother--enlivened
their home with sweet infantine prattle. And as the years rolled by, a
third youngster came to form part of the family circle--this neither son
nor daughter, but an orphan child of the Senora's sister deceased. A
boy he was, by name Cypriano.

The home of the hunter-naturalist was not in Assuncion, but some twenty
miles out in the "_campo_." He rarely visited the capital, except on
matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual
character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and
insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and
beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns
the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the
dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show himself
in the streets of Assuncion; for, like all true naturalists, he had no
affection for city life. Assuncion, however, being the only shipping
port in Paraguay, he had no choice but repair thither whenever his
collections became large enough to call for exportation.

Beginning life in South America with moderate means, the Prussian
naturalist had prospered: so much, as to have a handsome house, with a
tract of land attached, and a fair retinue of servants; these last, all
"Guanos," a tribe of Indians long since tamed and domesticated. He had
been fortunate, also, in securing the services of a _gaucho_, named
Gaspar, a faithful fellow, skilled in many callings, who acted as his
_mayor-domo_ and man of confidence.

In truth, was Ludwig Halberger in the enjoyment of a happy existence,
and eminently prosperous. Like Aime Bonpland, he was fairly on the road
to fortune; when, just as with the latter, a cloud overshadowed his
life, coming from the self-same quarter. His wife, lovely at fourteen,
was still beautiful at twenty-four, so much as to attract the notice of
Paraguay's Dictator. And with Dr Francia to covet was to possess,
where the thing c