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.
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