Long she pondered over this question, doubting within herself whether the day were come. Having decided, with resolute hand she cast aside the trammels which bound her, broke through the subterfuges of those who still sought to impose upon her ignorance, and stood forth, free herself, and the champion of freedom for all Spanish America.
As the sun, bursting through a veil of clouds, dissipates the mists of the early morn, rousing men from the slumbers of night to the active work of day, so Buenos Aires, bursting through the traditions of centuries, dissipated for ever the mists of ignorance, under which slumbered in ignoble servitude the colonies of Spain.
The sun of May, emblem of Buenos Aires, shone forth over the New World, rousing enslaved peoples to the bold assertion of their rights as men. In the struggle which followed, this emblem was ever in the fore-front of the battle, the rallying-point of a band of heroes, whose swords achieved the liberation of an entire continent.
Buenos Aires, free herself, became at once the apostle and champion of freedom for all Spanish America.
[CHAPTER I]
HOW THE LAST TIE WAS BROKEN
Spain has fallen! These words echoed through the city from end to end, but to the majority of men they were simply the proclamation of an acknowledged fact, an outburst of that jealousy of Spain, that fretfulness of Spanish domination, which had for years been growing up in Buenos Aires. But there was a minority in Buenos Aires, a minority ever increasing, a minority of men of cultivated minds, of men of far-seeing intelligence; to these men these words taught a lesson, in them they inspired a hope.
At the head of this minority were Don Carlos Evaña, Don Marcelino Ponce de Leon, and the other members of the secret committee. They consulted among themselves, asking one another, "Has not the day come?" "What shall we do?"