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Updated: May 26, 2025
Thus he went on prospering. Nor was all the scoffing of city people of any avail in shaking the confidence reposed in him by that flock of rustics, who feared him as they feared the Law itself and believed in him as they believed in God. A loan to a spendthrift eldest son made him the proprietor of the fine city mansion, which came to be known as "the Brull place."
The angry glances, the gestures of impatience, the wordless arguments between mother and son, which the household had formerly witnessed in such terror, had come to an end. The boy had not been visiting the Blue House for some time. She knew that with absolute certainty, thanks to the gratuitous espionage conducted for her by persons attached to the Brull family.
Don Andrés, who resembled Rafael's father as the cat resembles the tiger, could think of nothing but Brull politics; and he was almost sobbing as he saw the danger which the prestige of the Brull House was running. With bowed head, crushed by the realization of the scene that had followed his flight, Rafael did not notice where they were going.
I am sure of it he took the money!" While the others were getting the sobbing mother to bed, and sending for the doctor, don Andrés had made for the station to catch the express. He could tell from the way people looked at him that everybody knew what had been going on. Gossip had already connected the excitement in the Brull mansion with Rafael's taking the early train!
Doña Bernarda's harshness of disposition broke the young man's spirit, making him realize with what good reason he had always feared his mother. That uncompromising pietist, with her armorplate of impeccable virtue and "sound principles" about her, crushed him flat with her very first words. What in the world was he thinking of? Was he bound to dishonor the name of Brull?
But after a first fever of passion had passed, she had proved to be a cold, calculating child-bearer, hostile to expansiveness of love out of religious scruples, viewing it her duty to bring new offsprings into the world to perpetuate the House of Brull and to fill "grandaddy" don Matías with pride at sight of a nursery full of future "personages" destined to the heights of political greatness in the District and in the nation.
He had very little to do with Rafael, guessing that the youth's mother would not regard such a friendship with any too much favor; but he displayed a certain liking for the boy; and addressed him familiarly, having known him as a child. Of Rafael he said everywhere: "He's the best one in the family; the only Brull with more brains than crookedness."
Don Andrés, who, at the death of his master, had succeeded to the authority of a second father in the Brull house, saw to the maintenance of relations with the authorities at the provincial capital and with the still bigger fish in Madrid. Petitions were heard in the patio the same as ever.
Brull was the strategist who directed the campaign; don Andrés the tactician who commanded actual operations and cleaned up behind the lines when the enemy was divided and undone. Don Ramón was given to settling everything in a violent manner, and drew his gun at the slightest provocation. If his methods had been followed, "the Party" would have murdered someone every day.
He would never take the floor without prefacing his remarks with: "My understanding is ...," or "I have my own humble opinion on this matter...." And this was what don Rafael Brull had learned in eight years of parliamentary assiduity!
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