Now In My Wakeful Hours, With
That Tremendous Chanting In My Ears, It All Came Back To Me And Was
Like A Nightmare.
CHAPTER XIII
A PATRIARCH OF THE PAMPAS
The grand old man of the plains - Don Evaristo Penalva, the Patriarch -
My first sight of his estancia house - Don Evaristo described - A
husband of six wives - How he was esteemed and loved by every one - On
leaving home I lose sight of Don Evaristo - I meet him again after
seven years - His failing health - His old first wife and her daughter,
Cipriana - The tragedy of Cipriana - Don Evaristo dies and I lose sight
of the family.
Patriarchs were fairly common in the land of my nativity: grave,
dignified old men with imposing beards, owners of land and cattle and
many horses, though many of them could not spell their own names;
handsome too, some of them with regular features, descendants of good
old Spanish families who colonized the wide pampas in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. I do not think I have got one of this
sort in the preceding chapters which treat of our neighbours, unless
it be Don Anastacio Buenavida of the corkscrew curls and quaint taste
in pigs. Certainly he was of the old landowning class, and in his
refined features and delicate little hands and feet gave evidence of
good blood, but the marks of degeneration were equally plain; he was
an effeminate, futile person, and not properly to be ranked with the
patriarchs.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 193 of 355
Words from 53685 to 53934
of 98444
