Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/104



74 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

ing and wearing anxiety. Her figure threatens to be bulky _, and to accompany a duplicity of chin : it is^ however^ as will be seen in the sequel, a silly rumour which reports thatj like another La Valliere^ she lost her influence over her " fickle lord '^ since she inclined to stoutness. Her manners are quiet_, and she shows a perfect self-possession : only on one occasion did she betray to my informant some anxiety as to whether the British Minister would visit Paraguay.

All are agreed that during the war Madame Lynch has done her utmost to mitigate the miseries of the captives,, and to make the so-called " detenus ^' comfortable. Before hostilities began she was ever civil to her bachelor fellow- countrymen, but the peculiarity of her position made her very jealous of wives who, in the middle classes at least, are apt to be curious about '^ marriage lines. ^^ She is said to be, when offended, very hard, and to display all the " ferocite des blondes.^" Two young Frenchmen of family, who when dunned for money which they had borrowed, applied ugly words to Madame Lynch, were at her instigation ar- rested for debt, thrown into prison, and compelled to beg their bread in the streets. This was told to me by an English lady, who ought to know the truth. The French Consul, M. Cochelet, who would not visit Madame Lynch, was kept until the arrival of the French steamer in a room at Humaita, where he and his family were exposed to the shells of the Brazilian fleet.

Madame Lynch must be somewhat ambitious. It is generally believed that she in company with the (late ?) Dean of the Cathedral, subsequently Bishop D. Manuel Antonio Palacios, a country priest who succeeded Urbieta, and with a Hungarian refugee. Colonel Wisner de Morgen- stern — his card so bears the name under his armorial de- vice — worked upon President Lopez, and persuaded him