The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Vicente Blasco Ibanez
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came to the defense of his grandson. “Ah, the fine cowboy!” … Seeing him again on the ranch, he admired the dash of the good looking youth, testing his muscles in order to convince himself of their strength, and making him to recount his nightly escapades as ringleader of a band of toughs in the Capital. He longed to go to Buenos Aires himself, just to see the youngster in the midst of this gay, wild life. But alas! he was not seventeen like his grandson; he had already passed eighty.
“Come here, you false prophet! Tell me how many children you have. … You must have a great many children, you know!”
“Father!” protested Chicha who was always hanging around, fearing her parent’s bad teachings.
“Stop nagging at me!” yelled the irate old fellow in a towering temper. “I know what I’m saying.”
Paternity figured largely in all his amorous fancies. He was almost blind, and the loss of his sight was accompanied by an increasing mental upset. His crazy senility took on a lewd character, expressing itself in language which scandalized or amused the community.
“Oh, you rascal, what a pretty fellow you are!” he said, leering at Julio with eyes which could no longer distinguish things except in a shadowy way. “You are the living image of my poor dead wife. … Have a good time, for Grandpa is always here with his money! If you could only count on what your father gives you, you would live like a hermit. These Frenchies are a close-fisted lot! But I am looking out for you. Peoncito! Spend and enjoy yourself—that’s what your Granddaddy has piled up the silver for!”
When the Desnoyers children returned to the Capital, he spent his lonesome hours in going from ranch to ranch. A young half-breed would set the water for his shrub-tea to boiling on the hearth, and the old man would wonder confusedly if she were his daughter. Another, fifteen years old, would offer him a gourd filled with the bitter liquid and a silver pipe with which to sip it. … A grandchild, perhaps—he wasn’t sure. And so he passed the afternoons, silent and sluggish, drinking gourd after gourd of shrub tea, surrounded by families who stared at him with admiration and fear.
Every time he mounted his horse for these excursions, his older daughter would protest. “At eighty-four years! Would it not be better for him to remain quietly at home. …” Some day something terrible would happen. … And the terrible thing did happen. One evening the Patron’s horse came slowly home without its rider. The old man had fallen on the sloping highway, and when they found him, he was dead. Thus died the centaur as he had lived, with the lash hanging from his wrist, with his legs bowed by the saddle.
A Spanish notary, almost as old as he, produced the will. The family was somewhat alarmed at seeing what a voluminous document it was. What terrible bequests had Madariaga dictated? The reading of the first part tranquilized Karl and Elena. The old father had left considerable more to the wife of Desnoyers, but there still remained an enormous share for the Romantica and her children. “I do this,” he said, “in memory of my poor dead wife, and so that people won’t talk.”
After this, came eighty-six legacies. Eighty-five dark-hued individuals (women and men), who had lived on the ranch for many years as tenants and retainers, were to receive the last paternal munificence of the old patriarch. At the head of these was Celedonio whom Madariaga had greatly enriched in his lifetime for no heavier work than listening to him and repeating, “That’s so, Patron, that’s true!” More than a million dollars were represented by these bequests in lands and herds. The one who completed the list of beneficiaries was Julio Desnoyers. The grandfather had made special mention of this namesake, leaving him a plantation “to meet his private expenses, making up for that which his father would not give him.”
“But that represents hundreds of thousands of dollars!” protested Karl, who had been making himself almost obnoxious in his efforts to assure himself that his wife had not been overlooked in the will.
The days following the reading of this will were very trying ones for the family. Elena and her children kept looking at the other group as though they had just waked up, contemplating them in an entirely new light. They seemed to forget what they were going to receive in their envy of the much larger share of their relatives.
Desnoyers, benevolent and conciliatory, had a plan. An expert in administrative affairs, he realized that the distribution among the heirs was going to double the expenses without increasing the income. He was calculating, besides, the complications and disbursements necessary for a judicial division of nine immense ranches, hundreds of thousands of cattle, deposits in the banks, houses in the city, and debts to collect. Would it not be better for them all to continue living as before? … Had they not lived most peaceably as a united family? …
The German received this suggestion by drawing himself up haughtily. No; to each one should be given what was his. Let each live in his own sphere. He wished to establish himself in Europe, spending his wealth freely there. It was necessary for him to return to “his world.”
As they looked squarely at each other, Desnoyers saw an unknown Karl, a Karl whose existence he had never suspected when he was under his protection, timid and servile. The Frenchman, too, was beginning to see things in a new light.
“Very well,” he assented. “Let each take his own. That seems fair to me.”
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