“TWELVE years since I was in Paris! Ay!... How I have changed!”
As he spoke, Robledo looked pityingly at himself in the glass; he looked pityingly at himself every morning while he dressed!
He was still in vigorous health; but unquestionably age had begun to leave its marks on him. The crown of his head was now completely bald. On the other hand he had shaved off his mustache, for the simple reason that it had come to contain more white hairs than brown ones. This change, according to Robledo, made him look like a priest or a comic actor. But it was undeniable that it had restored to his appearance a certain jovial youthfulness.
He was sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby of one of the hotels that are to be found in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe. Opposite him sat a young married couple, no other than Watson and Celinda.
The years that had passed had merely emphasized Richard’s features, bringing into sharper relief his athletic and tranquil beauty. Flor de Rio Negro had now attained the ripe sweetness of a midsummer fruit. She still preserved her youthful slimness, slightly modified; she was now the mother of four children!
She no longer wore her hair cut in the style of a medieval page, nor, in public, did she indulge in the childish exploits of the small amazon who had once been the admiration of the immigrants on the wild Patagonian plains. The time had come when she considered it her duty to assume something at least of the grave dignity to be expected in the mother of a nine year old boy. This important member of the family now sat facing his parents. His restlessness, and his impatience of maternal remonstrances soon revealed the fact that he was a self-willed and somewhat disobedient small boy; and he had already learned to seek “Uncle Manuel’s” protection whenever his less understanding parents scolded him. Meanwhile, on an upper floor of the “palace,” as most such hotels call themselves, two English nurses were occupied in watching over the play of the prosperous couple’s three younger children.
The Watsons had the characteristic appearance of those South American families who go to spend several months in Europe every year or so, and who, rich and exuberant, travel tribe-fashion, transporting their whole establishments, including all the servants, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. The Watson family was as yet but barely started, and occupied merely four staterooms on board ship, and five rooms with a general sitting room at the various hotels at which they stopped. But ten years more, with continued success in business, on its yearly trips to Europe, the family caravan would be engaging all the staterooms on one side of the steamer and occupying a whole floor in the “palaces” it patronized.
“How many things have happened since I was here last!”
Robledo’s cheerful face became grave as he remembered the struggles of those two hard years during which he had fought ill-luck and failure, in order to make it possible for the works on the Rio Negro to be taken up again.
He had known all the anxieties of rapidly accumulating debts and the demands of creditors who cannot be paid. Nearly all the inhabitants of La Presa had abandoned the town when the river destroyed the works. The infrequent travellers who journeyed that way came principally to see the ruins, like those of the dead historic cities of the old world, and viewed with astonishment here in this land where ruins were scarcely known.