The only disappointments in Desnoyers’ new life came from his children.  Chichi irritated him because of the independence of her tastes.  She did not like antiques, no matter how substantial and magnificent they might be, much preferring the frivolities of the latest fashion.  She accepted all her father’s gifts with great indifference.  Before an exquisite blonde piece of lace, centuries old, picked up at auction, she made a wry face, saying, “I would much rather have had a new dress costing three hundred francs.”  She and her brother were solidly opposed to everything old.

Now that his daughter was already a woman, he had confided her absolutely to the care of Dona Luisa.  But the former “Peoncito” was not showing much respect for the advice and commands of the good natured Creole.  She had taken up roller-skating with enthusiasm, regarding it as the most elegant of diversions.  She would go every afternoon to the Ice Palace, Dona Luisa chaperoning her, although to do this she was obliged to give up accompanying her husband to his sales.  Oh, the hours of deadly weariness before that frozen oval ring, watching the white circle of balancing human monkeys gliding by on runners to the sound of an organ! . . .  Her daughter would pass and repass before her tired eyes, rosy from the exercise, spirals of hair escaped from her hat, streaming out behind, the folds of her skirt swinging above her skates—­handsome, athletic and Amazonian, with the rude health of a child who, according to her father, “had been weaned on beefsteaks.”

Finally Dona Luisa rebelled against this troublesome vigilance, preferring to accompany her husband on his hunt for underpriced riches.  Chichi went to the skating rink with one of the dark-skinned maids, passing the afternoons with her sporty friends of the new world.  Together they ventilated their ideas under the glare of the easy life of Paris, freed from the scruples and conventions of their native land.  They all thought themselves older than they were, delighting to discover in each other unsuspected charms.  The change from the other hemisphere had altered their sense of values.  Some were even writing verses in French.  And Desnoyers became alarmed, giving free rein to his bad humor, when Chichi of evenings, would bring forth as aphorisms that which she and her friends had been discussing, as a summary of their readings and observations.—­“Life is life, and one must live! . . .  I will marry the man I love, no matter who he may be. . . .”

But the daughter’s independence was as nothing compared to the worry which the other child gave the Desnoyers.  Ay, that other one! . . .  Julio, upon arriving in Paris, had changed the bent of his aspirations.  He no longer thought of becoming an engineer; he wished to become an artist.  Don Marcelo objected in great consternation, but finally yielded.  Let it be painting!  The important thing was to have some regular profession.  The father, while he considered property and wealth as sacred rights, felt that no one should enjoy them who had not worked to acquire them.