After the death of the woman he loved with all the strength of his soul, Don Eustaquio, crushed by sorrow, only dragged on a wretched existence, which terminated exactly one year after his wife's death. Her name was the last word that wandered on his pallid lips as he drew his parting breath.
Don Sebastian, who was scarce twenty years of age, was left an orphan. Alone, without relatives or friends, the young man shut himself up in his hacienda, where he silently bewailed the two beings he had lost, and on whom he had concentrated all his affections.
Don Sebastian would probably have remained for many years in retirement, without seeing the world, or caring how it went on—leading the careless, idle, and brutalising life of those great land-holders whom no idea of progress or amelioration impels to trouble themselves about their estates, timid and fearful, like all men who live alone, spending his days in hunting and sleeping—had not chance, or rather his lucky star, brought to Palmar an old partisan chief who had long fought by the side of Don Eustaquio, and who, happening to pass a few leagues from the place, felt old reminiscences aroused in him, and determined to press the hand of his old comrade, whose death he was not aware of.
The name of this man was Don Isidro Vargas. He was of lofty stature, his shoulders were wide, his limbs athletic, and his features imprinted with an uncommon energy; in a word, he presented in his person the type of that powerful and devoted race which is daily dying out in Mexico, and of which, ere long, not a specimen will be left.
The unexpected arrival of this guest, whose heavy spurs and long steel-scabbarded sabre re-echoed noisily on the tiled floors of the hacienda, brought life into the mansion which had been so long devoted to silence and the gloomy tranquillity of the cloister.
Like all old soldiers, Captain Don Isidro had a rough voice and sharp way of speaking; his manners were brusque, but his character was gay, and gifted with a rare equanimity of temper.
When he entered the house Don Sebastian was out hunting, and the hacienda seemed uninhabited. The captain at first found enormous difficulty in meeting with anyone to address. At length, by careful search, he detected a peon half asleep under a verandah, who gave some sort of answer to the questions asked him. By great patience and questions made with that craft peculiar to the Mexicans, the captain succeeded in obtaining some valuable information.
The death of Don Eustaquio only astonished the worthy soldado slightly; he expected it, indeed, from the moment he learnt the death of the señora, for whom he knew his old comrade professed so deep a love; but on learning the idle life Don Sebastian had led since his father's death, the captain burst out in a furious passion, and swore by all the saints in the Spanish calendar (and they are tolerably numerous), that this state of things should not last much longer.
The captain had known the young man when he was but a child. Many times he had dandled him on his knee, and thus, with his ideas of honour and generosity, he thought himself obliged, as an old friend of his father, to remove the son from the slothful existence he led.
Consequently the old soldier installed himself authoritatively in the hacienda, and firmly awaited the return of the man he had been accustomed to regard for a long time almost in the light of a son.