EL VADO DEL CABESTRO.
On the 23rd December, 1815, between two and three o'clock in the
afternoon, that is to say, at the hottest time of the day, two
travellers--coming respectively from the north and south--met face to
face on the banks of a little river, an affluent of the Río Dulce, at
the ford of the Licol, situated at an equal distance from Santiago and
San Miguel de Tucumán.
On arriving on the bank of the stream, as by one accord, the two
travellers drew bridle, and looked about them attentively for some time.
The river that both were preparing to cross in a contrary direction,
swollen by the rains from recent storms, was pretty broad at this time,
which fact hindered the two travellers from severally reconnoitring
each other sufficiently to form a decided opinion of one another.
Every stranger that one meets in the desert is, if not an enemy, at
least without information, an individual whom prudence warns the
traveller to mistrust.
After a short but decidedly perceptible hesitation, each traveller
took his fusil in his hand, from his shoulder belt, loaded it, making
the trigger snap with a sharp noise, and appearing to take a decided
resolution, lightly touched the flanks of his horse with a spur, and
entered the river.
The ford was broad and not deep, the water reached scarcely to the
belly of the horses, which permitted the horsemen to go their own way.
However, they advanced towards each other, continuing to watch each
other attentively, and ready to fire at the least suspected movement.
Suddenly they raised a joyful exclamation, and stopped, bursting out
into hearty laughter.
Several times they tried to speak, but laughter was stronger than their
will.
Meanwhile, they had suddenly dropped their fusils, which immediately
resumed their unoffensive position in the shoulder belt.
At last one of them succeeded in gaining sufficient coolness to give
expression to his thoughts.
"Pardieu!" cried he in French, stretching out his right hand to his
companion, who was still laughing; "The encounter is strange. I do
not yet dare to believe my eyes. Are you a man or a phantom? Is it
yourself, my dear sir--you whom I saw scarcely two years ago in Paris,
dancing attendance on the government for some employment or other--that
I now find in the depths of the desert, wearing poncho and sombrero?"
"Yes," answered the other, casting a look of satisfaction at himself;
"the costume suits me very well; but," added he, between two bursts of
laughter, "I have a right, it appears to me, to put the same question
to you."
"Hush!" interrupted the first speaker; "Nothing is stable in this
world, you know, M. Gagnepain."
"Alas! Who more than I has been in a position to learn that?" sadly
said the first traveller.
"You sigh. Have you become the sport of fortune?"
"Fortune and I are too little acquainted just at present," said he,
with a smile, "for her to have treated me in one fashion or the other.
In fact. I only complain about her indifference towards me. As to you,
Monsieur, I should think that the recent events of which our unhappy
country has been the theatre cannot but have favourably influenced your
fortune."
The second traveller smiled bitterly.
"Ingratitude and proscription are current money in courts," said he;
"it is in vain that man thinks himself skilful and acute in this world."
"Without reckoning the passions which influence him," interrupted the
first speaker, with a slight accent of raillery. "Where are you going,
then, in this manner?"
"To San Miguel de Tucumán; then to Chili."
"Alone?"
"Oh no; my people are coming after me. And you?"
"Oh, as to me it is different; I am nearly on my estate here."
"Indeed?"
"Ma foi, yes; only, you must understand, I do not intend to live
forever in this country; if you like, I shall be happy to invite you to
my house, from, which we are only about twenty miles distant."
"What! Your house? You have a house here?"
"Mon Dieu! Yes; it is necessary to come here to America to accomplish
that miracle of becoming landowner. That is a good joke, is it not?"
said he, laughing. "What do you say to my proposition? Does it please
you?"
The other hesitated a moment.
"Decide, sir; chance, or, if you prefer it, Providence, which has
brought us together so strangely, has perhaps some unknown plans
concerning us. Do not let us oppose it."
"Why joke on this subject. M. Gagnepain?" asked the other; "Although
you are an artist, and consequently a man of strong mind, what you say
is more true than you doubtless wish to avow."
"Pardon; I had forgotten that you were an Oratorian. Well, will you
retrace your route?"
"I am not in a hurry; I shall arrive soon enough whither I am going. I
shall have great pleasure in passing a few hours in your company."
"Come, then, we will stretch ourselves on the grass in the shade of
those magnificent palm trees, and, while our horses rest themselves,
we will pass the great heat of the day in talking and waiting for your
people."
"Your offer is so cordial that I cannot refuse it."
"Well spoken, my dear duke."
"Silence," briskly interrupted he to whom this title was given; "my
name is Dubois, and I am a naturalist; remember that, I beg."
"Ah!" said the other, with slight astonishment; "As you like. Pass as
Dubois; that name is as good as another."
"Better for me at this time."
The two travellers then regained the bank of the river, where,
according to the plan they had agreed on, they unloosed the bridle of
the horses, taking care to tie them by a strap of leather, for fear
they should wander; and after having beaten the bushes with the barrels
of their guns to frighten the reptiles, they stretched themselves on
the fresh and tufted grass, under the protecting shade of a gigantic
palm tree, giving a sigh of agreeable relief.
The country, in the centre of which our travellers had met, was,
according to all reports, far from meriting the epithet which one
of the two had conferred on it; it was on the contrary, a beautiful
country; the grand landscapes of it have always given rise, to the
admiration of explorers--very rare, by the way--whom the love of
science has induced to visit them under all their aspects.
The Tucumán, where are passing at the present time the events of our
history, is one of the most happily situated countries in South America.
Situated at the north of the province of Catamarca, this country,
crossed by a branch of the Andes, enjoys a climate temperate in summer,
and scarcely cold in winter; a great part of this territory is composed
of immense plateaux or llanos, covered with luxuriant vegetation,
intersected by numerous streams and considerable rivers, which, not
finding any outlet by reason of the want of undulation in the ground,
form numerous lakes, without any tide.
It is at the present time one of the most vast, the most thickly
populated, and the richest of the Buenos Airean confederation.
From the spot where the travellers had stopped they enjoyed an
enchanting view, and saw spread out before them a most charming
landscape. At their feet a large and deep river wound like a silver
ribbon through the plains, covered with high grass of an emerald green,
in the midst of which bounded every moment stags and sheep, playing
in troops; wild bulls raised their large heads, armed with formidable
horns, and casting about them half timid looks; flights of pigeons and
partridges were wheeling in every direction, uttering their sharp or
gentle notes, whilst magnificent black swans were playing on the river,
and allowed themselves to be carelessly carried along by the current,
defiling before the herons that were occupied in searching for fish in
the river. Immense forests spread on the background of the landscape,
and rose step by step on the far-off slopes of the Cordilleras, whose
rugged summits, covered with eternal snow, were mingled with the clouds.
The sun spread profusely its dazzling rays over this primitive scene,
and caused the incessantly moistened sand of the shores of the river to
sparkle like millions of diamonds.
A profound calm reigned in this desert, so full of animal life,
nevertheless, and from the bosom of which rose like a solemn hymn the
songs of the innumerable birds perched under the foliage.
Before proceeding farther, and reporting the conversation of our
travellers, we will make the reader more intimately acquainted with
them, by sketching their portraits in a few lines.
The first--he who did not wish to be known by the title of duke, and
who pretended to be a naturalist, calling himself Dubois--was a man
about fifty-two years of age, but who appeared more than sixty. His
body, long and lean, was slightly bent; his slender limbs were lost, so
to say, in the ample folds of his clothing; his features, fatigued by
watching and intellectual labour, without doubt, must have been at one
time handsome. His forehead was large, but furrowed by deep wrinkles;
his black and full eye, surmounted by thick eyebrows, had a fixed and
penetrating look, which, when he became animated, it was impossible to
support. His nose was straight, his mouth rather large, but furnished
with magnificent teeth; his lips, somewhat slender, on which a cold and
mocking smile appeared stereotyped. His square chin, with total absence
of beard, completed an imposing physiognomy--a little hard, perhaps,
but which, when he pleased, he could render extremely prepossessing.
All his person manifested that aristocratic, unctuous, and somewhat
sleek grace which distinguishes diplomats and the high dignitaries of
the Church. It formed, with the nobility of his gesture, a complete
contrast, not only to the costume he had thought proper to adopt, but
also with the plebeian manners which he affected, and which, like a
part badly learned, he every now and then forgot.
The other traveller was named Émile Gagnepain; he was about thirty
or thirty-two years of age, his figure was ordinary, but well and
strongly made; his shoulders were large his chest prominent; health
characterised his whole person; his arms, on which large muscles stood
out like cords, hard as iron, manifested uncommon bodily strength.
His countenance indicated frankness and good humour; his regular
features, his brown eyes full of intelligence, his laughing mouth,
his hair--tawny blonde in colour--curled like that of a Negro, his
moustache, oiled with care and coquettishly turned up; his chin shaved,
and his bushy whiskers, which reached nearly the corner of his mouth,
formed a physiognomy full of frankness and energy, which, at the first
glance, attracted sympathy. The rather rude liberty of his movements,
his rapid and decided conversation, caused him to be easily set down
as one of those privileged beings, as some say--but unfortunate as we
say--whom people call artists. In a word, he was a painter. For the
rest--a peculiarity that we have forgotten to mention--he had firmly
attached to the croup of his horse a box of colours, a large umbrella,
an easel, and a maulstick, an apparatus indispensable to all painters,
and which, in a country less savage than that in which he was, would
have immediately pronounced his profession, notwithstanding his costume
of a gaucho.
It was he who first began the conversation. Scarcely had he stretched
himself on the grass than, getting up abruptly, and tracing a circle in
space with his right arm stretched out before him--
"What an admirable thing is Nature," he cried, "and how culpable
are men in spoiling it, as they incessantly do, under pretext of
amelioration, as though Providence were not more skilful than they!"
"Bravo!" answered the other--to whom we will give, for the present,
the name of Dubois under which he made himself known to us--"Bravo!
Monsieur Émile; I see that you are still as enthusiastic as even at the
time when I had the pleasure of first meeting you."
"Eh, Monseigneur--Monsieur, I should say--pardon this involuntary
slip--do not envy us enthusiasm, we poor devils of artists; enthusiasm
is faith, is youth, is hope, perhaps."
"God preserve me from such a thought. I admire you, on the contrary--I
who, at my time of life, can drink nothing but absinthe."
"Bah!" gaily said the painter, "Tomorrow does not exist; it is a myth;
let us be merry today. Look, what a brilliant sun; what a magnificent
landscape! Will all that not make you more contented with humanity?"
"How happy is youth!" said monsieur Dubois; "Everything strikes upon
it. Even in the desert, where it runs the imminent risk of dying with
hunger."
"Allowing that, Monsieur, the man who has lived in Paris on nothing
ought not to fear any desert."
"That leads us to a question that I wish to ask," answered the other,
laughing at the artist's jest.
"Let us have the question," said the artist.
"Be so good, then, not to attribute to an indiscretion unworthy of me,
but only to the lively interest I take in you, the question I propose
to ask you."
"As to indiscretion with me, sir, you are jesting, no doubt; come, do
not fear to ask me. Whatever it may be, I will do my best to answer it
satisfactorily."
"Since our first rencontre, I have racked my brains to discover the
motive which induced you to emigrate here."
"Emigrate! Bah, Monsieur; villainous word! To travel, you wish to say,
no doubt?"
"To travel, let it be, my young friend; I will not quibble with you on
an expression that you have a right to regard as 'villainous.'"
"Why not tell me frankly that you wish to know my history, Monsieur le
Duc?"
"Hush; do forget that title!"
"To the devil with it; I shall always forget."
"I hope not, when I shall have informed you that it is of the last
importance that this unlucky title should be ignored by everyone in
this country."
"That is sufficient; I will not forget myself."
"I thank you; now, if I do not abuse your good nature, relate to me the
history I so much want to learn; for at Paris we met one another under
circumstances of too trivial a character for me even to inform myself
of your antecedents, which I do not know why, now interest me more than
I can explain to you."
"That is easy to understand, Monsieur; the distances which separate us
from each other, the insurmountable barriers which in Paris are raised
between us, exist no longer here. We are two men, face to face in the
desert, one as important as the other, and, I hasten to add, two fellow
countrymen, that is to say, two friends. Naturally, we ought to make
common cause in everything, to interest ourselves in each other, and
love one another, as a protest of dislike of the strangers in the midst
of whom fate has cast us, and who are, and ought to be, our natural
enemies."
"Perhaps you are right; but I shall be happy, if you please, to hear
your history."
"This history is very simple, Monsieur; in a few words I will relate it
to you; only I much doubt whether it will interest you."
"Tell it me, my young friend."
"Well, then, my name, you know, is Émile Gagnepain--a plebeian name it
is, is it not?"
"The name is of little consequence."
"Without doubt. In 1792, when the country was in danger, my father, a
poor devil of a first clerk to a procureur, who had been married but a
few years, abandoned his wife and child--the latter aged seven or eight
years--to engage himself as a volunteer, and fly to the defence of the
Republic. When my father announced to his wife the determination he had
taken, she answered him with quite a Spartan brevity--"
"'Go and defend your country; it ought to rank before your family,'
said my mother."
"My father left; our poor hearth, already very miserable, became still
more so; happily, I had the good fortune of being recommended to David,
in whose studio I entered. My mother could thus, by dint of economy,
wait for better times. However, years passed away, my father did not
return; we seldom received news of him; we learnt that he had been
nominated a captain in the Twenty-fifth demi-brigade."
"Sometimes, though rarely, a little aid in money reached my mother.
At the camp of Boulogne my father refused the cross of the Legion of
Honour, under pretext that the Republic had no distinctions to give to
those of her children who were doing their duty."
"Some months later he fell, pierced by the ball of Austerlitz, in the
midst of an Austrian square that he had penetrated at the head of his
company, crying, 'Vive la République!'"
"The emperor did not entertain any rancour against a soldier of '92.
He gave a pension of eight hundred francs to his widow; that was very
well, but not enough to live upon. Happily, I had grown up, and was
now in a position to do something in aid of my mother. Thanks to the
all-powerful protection of my master, although still very young, I
gained enough money, not only to support myself comfortably, but also
to give my mother a little of that comfort of which she had so much
need."
"It was then, I don't know for what reason, that I was seized with a
desire to travel in America, in order to study that scenery of which,
as people say, we have only counterfeits, more or less successful."
"You are severe, Monsieur," interrupted his companion.
"No, I am just. Nature does not exist amongst us; art alone struts in
her place; no European landscape will ever sustain a comparison with a
stage scene."
"But I resume: I then redoubled my efforts. I wished to leave, but not
before assuring my mother a position which would place her forever,
whatever might happen during my absence, above want. By dint of work
and perseverance, I succeeded in solving this almost unsolvable
problem; the efforts it was necessary to make I will not tell you, sir:
they surpass all belief; but my determination was taken."
"I wished to see that America of which travellers give us such
magnificent descriptions. At last, after ten years of incessant
struggle, I succeeded in acquiring a sum of thirty-five thousand
francs--that was very little, was it not? However, that was sufficient
for me; I kept five thousand francs for myself, and placed the rest in
my mother's name."
"I left; it is now eight months since I landed in America. I am as
happy as on the first day. Everything looks smiling to me; the future
is mine; I live like the birds, without care for the morrow. I have
purchased for the comparatively large sum of two hundred and fifty
francs, a rancho of some poor Indian Guaranis, who, frightened by the
war of the colonies against the metropolis, have taken a refuge in
the grand chaco, among their own people. That is how I have become a
landowner."
"Continually journeying hither and thither, I study the country, and I
choose the landscape that, at a later period, I shall paint. That will
last as long as it may: the future is with God; it is useless for me
to concern myself with it beforehand."
"There is my history, Monsieur; you see it is simple."
"Yes," answered his companion, with a pensive air; "too simple, in
fact. Complete happiness does not exist in the world in which we are.
Why not think a little of the adversity which may surprise you?"
"Why," said the artist, laughing, "it is because, more unhappy and
poorer than Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, I have not even a ring to
throw into the sea. Moreover, you know the end of the history; some
fish or other would bring it back to me. I prefer to wait."
"This philosophy is good; I see no fault in it. Happy are those who can
practise it; unhappily I am not of the number," said he, repressing a
sigh.
"If I did not fear to displease you, I would, in my turn, address you a
question," pursued the painter.
"I know what you wish to ask. You do not understand--is it not so?--how
it is that I, whose elevated position would seem to place me under
shelter from tempests, find myself near you today in the desert."
"Pardon me, Monsieur; if what I ask you will the least in the world
annoy you, do not tell me a word."
The old man smiled with bitterness--
"No," pursued he; "it is good sometimes to pour off the fulness of
one's heart into a pure and indulgent soul. I will only tell you a few
words which will acquaint you with all."
"Elevated summits fatally attract lightning; that is an axiom generally
acknowledged. Notwithstanding the support I gave the Bourbons, my
devotion would not convince them of my fidelity."
"Under the rule of Louis XVIII., they regained the same spirit
which had formerly voted the death of Louis XVI. Friends warned me,
condemning myself to exile, to avoid the death suspended, without
doubt, over my head."
"I abandoned all--parents, friends, fortune, even a name without stain,
and honoured up to that time--to go into another hemisphere, to conceal
my proscribed head."
"While you, young and careless, arrived by one side in America, I
arrived by another side--old, with all my illusions dispelled, cursing
the blow which struck me."
"Believe me, whatever may be their name, dynasties are all ungrateful,
because they feel themselves powerless. The people alone is just,
because it knows that it is strong."
"I pity you in a double sense," answered the young man, holding out his
hand: "first, because your proscription is iniquitous, then because you
arrive in a country in full revolution."
"I know it," answered he, smiling; "it is on this revolution that I
reckon: perhaps it will save me."
"I hope so, for your sake, although your words are so obscure to me
that I cannot understand them. It is true that up to the present time I
have never thought of politics."
"Who knows if they will not soon absorb all your thoughts?"
"God forbid, Monsieur," cried he with a sort of indignation; "I am a
painter."
"Here are my people," said M. Dubois.
"Where?"
"Why here, before us!"
"The devil! Then what are these horsemen who are coming towards us on
this side?" said the painter, indicating with his finger, diametrically
opposite to that at which appeared a group composed of some fifteen
individuals.
"Hum!" said his companion, with a shade of uneasiness; "Who can these
people be?"
"Bah!" said the young man; "We shall soon know."
"Too soon, perhaps," answered the old man, pensively shaking his head.
Two troops, in fact, were galloping down towards the river.
They were at about an equal distance from the travellers.