The Guide of the Desert

CHAPTER XV

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."