“Look out for that Ramon ...  He’s a tough proposition.”

Along with all this combativeness, he sought to win friends by a lavish hand that was his father’s torment.  He “did favors,” assured a living, that is, to every loafer and bully in town.  He was ready to be “touched” by anyone who could serve, in tavern and cafe, as advertising agent of his rising fame.

And he rose rapidly, in fact.  The old folks who had pushed him forward with influence and counsel soon found themselves left far behind.  In a short time he had become alcalde; his prestige outgrew the limits of the city, spread over the whole district, and eventually reached the capital of the province itself.  He got able-bodied men exempted from military service; he winked at corruption in the city councils that backed him, although the perpetrators deserved to go to prison; he saw to it that the constabulary was not too energetic in running down the roders, the “wanderers,” who, for some well-placed shot at election time, would be forced to flee to the mountains.  No one in the whole country dared make a move without the previous consent of don Ramon, whom his adherents always respectfully called their quefe, their “chief.”

Old Brull lived long enough to see Ramon reach the zenith of his fame.  That scallawag was realizing the old man’s dream:  the conquest of the city, ruling over men where his father had gotten only money!  And, in addition don Jaime lived to see the perpetuation of the Brull dynasty assured by the birth of a grandson, Rafael, the child of a couple who had never loved each other, but were united only by avarice and ambition.

Old Brull died like a saint.  He departed this life with the consolation of all the last sacraments.  Every cleric in the city helped to waft his soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies.  And, though the rabble—­the political opponents of the son, that is—­recalled those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock’s office, all safe and sane people—­people who had something in this world to lose—­mourned the death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate a fortune by hard work, honest hard work!

In Rafael’s father there still remained much of the wild student who had caused so many tongues to wag in his youthful days.  But his doings with peasant girls were hushed up now; fear of the cacique’s power stifled all gossip; and since, moreover, affairs with such lowly women cost very little money, dona Bernarda pretended to know nothing about them.  She did not love her husband much.  She was leading that narrow, self-centered life of the country woman, who feels that all her duties are fulfilled if she remains faithful to her mate and keeps saving money.

By a noteworthy anomaly, she, who was so stingy, so thrifty, ready to start a squabble on the public square in defense of the family money against day-laborers or middlemen, was tolerance itself toward the lavish expenditures of her husband in maintaining his political sovereignty over the region.