He loved Lucienne for her auburn beauty, her even temper, her grace, her humor.
He strolled down a shady street and circled back to the plaza and noticed a band of armed men alongside the church, sitting on the curb, leaning against the wall; most of them had carbines. At first he disregarded them, and then felt concerned.
In the hotel, he mentioned the band of men to Manuel and Esteban, and the three talked it over with the manager. He was a huge, high-strung Spaniard, sallow, fish-eyed, egg-chinned; he said that the hoodlums ought to be strung up and that if they entered the hotel he'd shoot them "one by one." Manuel winked at Raul.
During the night Raul heard rifle shots but in the morning no one had any information. "Drunkards," the manager conjectured.
Raul paid a call on Federicka. In her shady bamboo-slatted living room, he read a letter Lucienne had written him, telling him why she had gone hastily to Guanajuato, her handwriting more of a gardener's scribble: "They say the trains will start running regularly in 1912.... I think I had better find a lead mine, for bullets...." Her humor was there, even in her concern.
"What a foolish thing, to go to Guanajuato at this time," he said.
"I begged her not to go," Federicka said.
She gave him a venison lunch and then they went to see Vicente, at his school, where the sisters and students were blissfully unaware of Mexico's impending disaster. Federicka, too, shrugged a provincial shrug.
Raul, alone for a moment with Vicente, thought: My God, the boy resembles Angelina, face, body, her posture even! Putting a rough arm about him, he hugged him close.
Late in the afternoon, the postmaster showed Raul a newspaper from Guadalajara, brought in by a horseman. It reported street fighting. Raul found many Colima friends who were sorely distressed, who predicted tragedy, who blamed foreign governments and the hacendados.