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Updated: October 2, 2025
No wonder that the moments of mutual congratulation between the Senora Halberger and those just returned to her are brief, and but little joyful. The fugitives have reached home, but not to find it a refuge. For them it is no more a place of safety; instead, the most perilous in which they could now or ever after sojourn. But where are they to go whither further flee?
Beyond doubt, it is an absolute abandonment of the place; perhaps with no intention of returning to it; or not for a very long time. Revolving these thoughts through his mind, Halberger climbs back into his saddle, and sits further reflecting.
Its influence is irresistible, as sinister; and when he and his followers take departure from that spot which they do almost on the instant it is to recross the stream, and head their horses homeward Francesca Halberger carried captive along with them.
Aware of this, warned also of Francia's partiality by frequent visits with which the latter now deigned to honour him, Ludwig Halberger saw there was no chance to escape domestic ruin, but by getting clear out of the country. It was not that he doubted the fidelity of his wife; on the contrary, he knew her to be true as she was beautiful.
If not at once impaled on an Indian spear held in the hand of "Tova" or "Guaycuru," he would be carried into a captivity little preferable to death. For all this, Ludwig Halberger had no fear of crossing over to the Chaco side, nor penetrating into its interior. He had often gone thither on botanising and hunting expeditions.
Ludwig Halberger was a foreigner, his wife native born, and the Head of the State Executive, as in every other sense, was Jose Gaspar Francia! The case was conclusive. For the Prussian to have sought permission to depart, taking his wife along with him, would have been more than folly madness hastening the very danger he dreaded. Flight, then? But whither, and in what direction?
They exchange thoughts on the subject the child equally perplexed with the parent; and after an interval passed in conjecturing, all to no purpose, Halberger is about to turn and ride home again, when it occurs to him he had better find out in what direction the Indians went away from their village.
The first, his fear of the Chaco savages, instinctive to every Paraguayan; the second, his want of faith, shared by Francia himself, that Halberger had fled thither. Neither could for a moment think of a white man seeking asylum in the Gran Chaco; for neither knew of the friendship existing between the hunter-naturalist and the Tovas chief.
But although dead, strange to say, in the land he so long ruled with hard ruthless hand, still dreaded almost as much as when living; his cowed and craven subjects speaking of him with trembling lips and bated breath, no more as "El Supremo," but "El Defunto!" The Senora Halberger believes she may now return to her native country, without fear of further persecution from him.
But then only one of the two would be likely to stand against him, the other being too far gone for light. Indeed, Halberger for Valdez naturally supposes it to be he sits drooped in his saddle, as though he had difficulty in keeping to it. Not that he has any idea of attacking them does the vaqueano take note of this, nor has he the slightest thought of attempting to overtake them.
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