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Rh should he take his defense into his own hands. Quiroga's sons were in the best schools, and he made them wear the European dress; and when one of them insisted on leaving his studies for the army, he was placed by his father in one of the regiments as drummer, until he should repent of his folly.

Quiroga used to declare that the only writers good for anything were the Varelas, who had abused him so much, and that the only honest men in the Republic were Rivadavia and Paz. To the Unitarios he said that he only wanted a secretary like Dr. Ocampo,—a politician who could write out a constitution, and he would march with it to San Luis, and thence show it to the whole Republic at the point of a lance. Quiroga represented himself as the leader of a new attempt to organize the Republic, and he might be said to have conspired openly had he done more than talk. His natural habit of idleness, and of expecting everything from terror, and perhaps the novelty of surrounding circumstances, prevented him from acting with energy, and at last put him in the power of his rival. There is no proof that Quiroga proposed any immediate action, unless it be found in his understanding with the governors of the interior, and his indiscreet words, repeated by both parties, though the Unitarios did not dare to trust their cause to such hands, and the Federals looked upon him as a deserter from their ranks.

While he thus gave himself up to dangerous indolence, the serpent which was to crush him in its folds, drew nearer and nearer. In the year 1833, Rosas, while nominally occupied with the great expedition, kept his army in the south, and narrowly watched