Far Away And Long Ago A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson








































































 -  At all events, they
jumped up, flinging their toys away, and rushed to the street door,
and we after them - Page 61
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At All Events, They Jumped Up, Flinging Their Toys Away, And Rushed To The Street Door, And We After Them.

Coming out we found quite a crowd of lookers-on, and then down the street, in his general's dress

- For it was one of the Dictator's little jokes to make his fool a general - all scarlet, with a big scarlet three-cornered hat surmounted by an immense aigrette of scarlet plumes, came Don Eusebio. He marched along with tremendous dignity, his sword at his side, and twelve soldiers, also in scarlet, his bodyguard, walking six on each side of him with drawn swords in their hands.

We gazed with joyful excitement at this splendid spectacle, and it made it all the more thrilling when one of the boys whispered in my ear that if any person in the crowd laughed or made any insulting or rude remark, he would be instantly cut to pieces by the guard. And they looked truculent enough for anything.

The great Rosas himself I did not see, but it was something to have had this momentary sight of General Eusebio, his fool, on the eve of his fall after a reign of over twenty years, during which he proved himself one of the bloodiest as well as the most original-minded of the Caudillos and Dictators, and altogether, perhaps, the greatest of those who have climbed into power in this continent of republics and revolutions.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TYRANT'S FALL AND WHAT FOLLOWED

The portraits in our drawing-room - The Dictator Rosas who was like an Englishman - The strange face of his wife, Encarnacion - The traitor Urquiza - The Minister of War, his peacocks, and his son - Home again from the city - The War deprives us of our playmate - Natalia, our shepherd's wife - Her son, Medardo - The Alcalde our grand old man - Battle of Monte Caseros - The defeated army - Demands for fresh horses - In peril - My father's shining defects - His pleasure in a thunder storm - A childlike trust in his fellow-men - Soldiers turn upon their officer - A refugee given up and murdered - Our Alcalde again - On cutting throats - Ferocity and cynicism - Native blood-lust and its effect on a boy's mind - Feeling about Rosas - A bird poem or tale - Vain search for lost poem and story of its authorship - The Dictator's daughter - Time, the old god.

At the end of the last chapter, when describing my one sight of the famous jester, Don Eusebio, in his glory, attended by a body-guard with drawn swords who were ready to cut down any one of the spectators who failed to remove his hat or laughed at the show, I said it was on the eve of the fall of the President of the Republic, or Dictator, "the Tyrant," as he was called by his adversaries when they didn't call him the "Nero of South America" or the "Tiger of Palermo" - this being the name of a park on the north side of Buenos Ayres where Rosas lived in a white stuccoed house called his palace.

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