And So It Came About That Even As A Very Small Shy Boy, A
Stranger In The House, I Came To Know That Don Evaristo Was Not One To
Be Afraid Of.
I hope that the reader, forgetting all he has learnt about the
domestic life of the patriarchs of an older time, will not begin to
feel disgusted at Don Evaristo when I proceed to say that he was the
husband of six wives, all living with him at that same house.
The
first, the only one he had been permitted to marry in a church, was
old as or rather older than himself; she was very dark and was getting
wrinkles, and was the mother of several grown-up sons and daughters,
some married. The others were of various ages, the youngest two about
thirty; and these were twin sisters, both named Ascension, for they
were both born on Ascension Day. So much alike were these Ascensions
in face and figure that one day, when I was a big boy, I went into the
house and finding one of the sisters there began relating something,
when she was called out. Presently she came back, as I thought, and I
went on with my story just where I had left off, and only when I saw
the look of surprise and inquiry on her face did I discover that I was
now talking to the other sister.
How was this man with six wives regarded by his neighbours? He was
esteemed and beloved above most men in his position. If any person was
in trouble or distress, or suffering from a wound or some secret
malady, he would go to Don Evaristo for advice and assistance and for
such remedies as he knew; and if he was sick unto death he would send
for Don Evaristo to come to him to write down his last will and
testament. For Don Evaristo knew his letters and had the reputation of
a learned man among the gauchos. They considered him better than any
one calling himself a doctor. I remember that his cure for shingles, a
common and dangerous ailment in that region, was regarded as
infallible. The malady took the form of an eruption, like erysipelas,
on the middle of the body and extending round the waist till it formed
a perfect zone. "If the zone is not complete I can cure the disease,"
Don Evaristo would say. He would send some one down to the river to
procure a good-sized toad, then causing the patient to strip, he would
take pen and ink and write on the skin in the space between the two
ends of the inflamed region, in stout letters, the words, _In the
name of the Father_, etc. This done, he would take the toad in his
hand and gently rub it on the inflamed part, and the toad, enraged at
such treatment, would swell himself up almost to bursting and exude a
poisonous milky secretion from his warty skin.
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