Ponce de Leon: The Rise of the Argentine Republic

by William Pilling

Don Fausto left them at sundown, feeling no anxiety for Don Alfonso, whose prostration in the morning he attributed solely to the effects of solitary confinement upon one who was accustomed to live much in the open air.

Soon after dark Magdalen who was setting out her tea-things, was startled by a shrill cry which came from her father's room. Running in she could see nothing, there being no light in the room, but she could hear a low moaning. She called aloud for her father, but there was no answer. Attracted by her cries, the single maid-servant who lived in the house with them came running with a lighted candle in her hand, to know what was the cause of the alarm, then Magdalen saw her father stretched, apparently lifeless, on the floor. Beside him stood the black coffer, open and with the lid thrown back; on the floor lay a small hand-lamp, broken; strewn about lay a number of silver coins, and under her father's hand there lay something which had been wrapped in paper, but from which the paper was partly torn away.

The two had great difficulty in raising Don Alfonso and laying him upon his bed, and for long all their efforts to restore consciousness were in vain. When at last he opened his eyes he gazed vacantly round him, answering nothing to Magdalen's eager questions, till he saw the black coffer which they had left untouched. Then he started up, and struggling from their hands staggered to it, throwing himself upon his knees before it, and groping with his hands inside of it. He pulled out handfuls of silver coins, throwing them on the floor, and several packages wrapped in paper, like the one Magdalen had noticed lying on the floor when she had discovered her father's state. From each of these packages he tore off the wrapper as he took it out and threw it from him. Each package as it fell upon the floor gave a dull, heavy sound, as though it were a block of lead. As he threw from him the last package, he started to his feet, clutching his hair with both hands, and uttering a wild cry like that which had brought Magdalen to him.

Then he burst out with foul curses and imprecations, grinding his teeth, and stamping his feet in his rage, while Magdalen and the maid both looked upon him in terror, thinking he had gone mad. When at last his rage subsided, he clasped his hands together and bent over the coffer once more.

"Not one! not one have they left me!" he exclaimed. "Fool that I was, ever to let a Spaniard inside my house!"

With a hollow groan he fell forward over the coffer, striking his head upon the floor. Again Magdalen and her maid lifted him up and laid him upon his bed, where for hours he lay insensible, breathing heavily, and when at last he began to speak it was in incoherent words, mingled with curses, which made Magdalen shudder as she listened.

So the weary night wore through, and with the day came more efficient help, but days and days passed ere Don Alfonso knew anything of what went on about him, or recognised his daughter. These days were a fearful trial to Magdalen, yet there was one who came to see her every day, whose loving words strengthened her and encouraged her in her arduous duty. Not a day passed that Marcelino Ponce de Leon did not sit with her for at least an hour, by the bedside of her unconscious father, telling her of all that was happening in those days, big with the destiny of a young nation, seeking counsel and solace from her in the sore struggle which was going on within himself. Years before he had thought of the day when he must decide between his father and his country, he had thought of it with trembling and dismay, and pondered long and anxiously of how he might avert it. Now the day was come, his resolution was fixed, yet it was none the less painful to him to array himself in direct opposition to his father, that his resolve was the result of mature deliberation.

Magdalen fully sympathised with him in his anxious wish, if it were yet possible, so to arrange matters that Don Roderigo might yield a tardy assent to a new order of affairs, and forget that he was a Spaniard for the sake of his children, who were Americans. But as she listened to the incoherent words and occasional curses which fell from the lips of her own suffering father, her heart refused to let her counsel Marcelino to give up one iota of what he considered his rights as a free-born citizen of Buenos Aires, or to shrink from any duty, however painful, which the assertion of those rights for himself and others might entail upon him.

And through all those days between those two there passed no word of love, yet were their hearts open to one another, the most simple words that all the world might hear, yet bore from one heart to the other a message of love, the most common act of politeness became a caress.

A week after the return of Don Alfonso to the Miserere, Don Baltazar de Cisneros, the Viceroy, gave audience in one of his private apartments, to two in whom he placed great confidence, Don Roderigo Ponce de Leon and Don Ciriaco Asneiros.