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The Senor Manager would refuse, and soon after Madariaga would rush in in a furious temper, but measuring his words, nevertheless, remembering that his son-in-law's disposition was as serious as his own. "I like you very much, my son, but here no one overrules me. . . . Ah, Frenchy, you are like all the rest of your countrymen!
Madariaga had joyously expended upon this courtesan many thousands of dollars.
Besides, they are so like their father, so fair, with hair like a shredded carrot, and the two oldest wearing specs as if they were court clerks! . . . They don't seem like folks with those glasses; they look like sharks." Madariaga had never seen any sharks, but he imagined them, without knowing why, with round, glassy eyes, like the bottoms of bottles.
He had carried a sword as a lieutenant. Bored with all this grandeur, Madariaga interrupted him. "Lies . . . nonsense . . . hot air!"
He was no longer allowed to eat in the administration building, the proprietor insisting imperiously that henceforth Desnoyers should sit at his own table, and thus he was admitted into the intimate life of the Madariaga family. The wife was always silent when her husband was present.
Their only disagreements were about the expenses established by Madariaga during his regime. Since the son-in-law was managing the ranches, the work was costing less, and the people working more diligently; and that, too, without yells, and without strong words and deeds, with only his presence and brief orders.
"Where a man makes his fortune and raises his family, there is his true country," he said sententiously, remembering Madariaga. The image of that distant country dominated him with insistent obsession as soon as the impressions of the voyage had worn off.
His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions, this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria. "Yes," he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; "a Peralta and not a Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra. Do I not know a Peralta when I see one?"
"And how many are you able to sell, my good man?" "About thirty thousand, sir." It was not necessary to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from his desk, and obsequiously offered him a seat. "You can be no other than Don Madariaga." "At the service of God and yourself, sir," he responded in the manner of a Spanish countryman. That was the most glorious moment of his existence.
And she felt a deep gratitude toward her brother-in-law when he broke through his usual reserve in order to come to the rescue of the German. "Oh, yes, of course, he's a good-enough fellow," said Madariaga, excusing himself. "But he comes from a land that I detest." When Desnoyers made a trip to Buenos Aires a few days afterward, the cause of the old man's wrath was explained.
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