If it pleased such a man as that to have six wives instead of one it
was right and
Proper for him to have them; no person would presume to
say that he was not a good and wise and religious man on that account.
It may be added that Don Evaristo, like Henry VIII, who also had six
wives, was a strictly virtuous man. The only difference was that when
he desired a fresh wife he did not barbarously execute or put away the
one, or the others, he already possessed.
I lost sight of Don Evaristo when I was sixteen, having gone to live
in another district about thirty miles from my old home. He was then
just at the end of the middle period of life, with a few grey hairs
beginning to show in his black beard, but he was still a strong man
and more children were being added to his numerous family. Some time
later I heard that he had acquired a second estate a long day's
journey on horseback from the first, and that some of his wives and
children had emigrated to the new esctancia and that he divided his
time between the two establishments. But his people were not wholly
separated from each other; from time to time some of them would take
the long journey to visit the absent ones and there would be an
exchange of homes between them. For, incredible as it may seem, they
were in spirit, or appeared to be, a united family.
Seven years had passed since I lost sight of them, when it chanced
that I was travelling home from the southern frontier, with only two
horses to carry me. One gave out, and I was compelled to leave him on
the road. I put up that evening at a little wayside pulperia, or
public-house, and was hospitably entertained by the landlord, who
turned out to be an Englishman. But he had lived so long among the
gauchos, having left his country when very young, that he had almost
forgotten his own language. Again and again during the evening he
started talking in English as if glad of the opportunity to speak his
native tongue once more; but after a sentence or two a word wanted
would not come, and it would have to be spoken in Spanish, and
gradually he would relapse into unadulterated Spanish again, then,
becoming conscious of the relapse, he would make a fresh start in
English.
As we sat talking after supper I expressed my intention of leaving
early in the morning so as to get over a few leagues while it was
fresh, as the weather was very hot and I had to consider my one horse.
He was sorry not to be able to provide me with another, but at one of
the large estancias I would come to next morning I would no doubt be
able to get one.
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