Several months passed by.  One day the Frenchman approached him with a certain air of mystery.  “Elena has a son and has named him ‘Julio’ after you.”

“And you, you great useless hulk,” stormed the ranchman, “and that weak cow of a wife of yours, you dare to live tranquilly on without giving me a grandson! . . .  Ah, Frenchy, that is why the Germans will finally overwhelm you.  You see it, right here.  That bandit has a son, while you, after four years of marriage . . . nothing.  I want a grandson!—­do you understand that?”

And in order to console himself for this lack of little ones around his own hearth, he betook himself to the ranch of his overseer, Celedonio, where a band of little half-breeds gathered tremblingly and hopefully about him.

Suddenly China died.  The poor Misia Petrona passed away as discreetly as she had lived, trying even in her last hours to avoid all annoyance for her husband, asking his pardon with an imploring look for any trouble which her death might cause him.  Elena came to the ranch in order to see her mother’s body for the last time, and Desnoyers who for more than a year had been supporting them behind his father-in-law’s back, took advantage of this occasion to overcome the old man’s resentment.

“Well, I’ll forgive her,” said the ranchman finally.  “I’ll do it for the sake of my poor wife and for you.  She may remain on the ranch, and that shameless gringo may come with her.”

But he would have nothing to do with him.  The German was to be an employee under Desnoyers, and they could live in the office building as though they did not belong to the family.  He would never say a word to Karl.

But scarcely had the German returned before he began giving him orders rudely as though he were a perfect stranger.  At other times he would pass by him as though he did not know him.  Upon finding Elena in the house with his older daughter, he would go on without speaking to her.

In vain his Romantica transfigured by maternity, improved all opportunities for putting her child in his way, calling him loudly by name:  “Julio . . .  Julio!”

“They want that brat of a singing gringo, that carrot top with a face like a skinned kid to be my grandson? . . .  I prefer Celedonio’s.”

And by way of emphasizing his protest, he entered the dwelling of his overseer, scattering among his dusky brood handfuls of dollars.

After seven years of marriage, the wife of Desnoyers found that she, too, was going to become a mother.  Her sister already had three sons.  But what were they worth to Madariaga compared to the grandson that was going to come?  “It will be a boy,” he announced positively, “because I need one so.  It shall be named Julio, and I hope that it will look like my poor dead wife.”

Since the death of his wife he no longer called her the China, feeling something of a posthumous love for the poor woman who in her lifetime had endured so much, so timidly and silently.  Now “my poor dead wife” cropped out every other instant in the conversation of the remorseful ranchman.