Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/143



THE MURDER OF GENERAL ELORES. 113

but personality. With tlicm the question narrows itself to â€” " Is Jack or is Jim to be or not to be ?^^ When their party is in office, all are of the party and in ; vice versd being of course also the rule.

The storm that ended in the murder of Flores began to growl about the middle of 1867. On Sunday, June 30, of that year, the Chief of Police, D. Jose Candido Bustamente, discovered a mine which, passing under the Calle de Maio, had nearly reached the cellars of the Forte or Government House. " Blowings-up^^ appear to be growing into fashion. Here had been placed an infernal machine â€” a RuhmkorfF^s "electric multiplier^' â€” ready to explode two barrels (250 lbs.) of gunpowder. This plot purposing to blow up Flores and his Ministry is said to have been organized, doubtless under higher inspiration, by one Eduardo Beltan the ringleader, who bought the houses through which the mine was to pass : under him were Paul Nieumayer, a land surveyor, and Jules Gassen, an Austrian engineer. It is reported that all these men were allowed to escape punish- ment.

After the meeting of the Chambers on February 15, 1858, the Provisional President of the Republic, General D. Venancio Flores, would cease to hold office. D. Pedro Varela, to the great discontent of the many, would thus become ex-officio, as President of the Senate, acting Presi- dent of the Republic ; and D. Hector Varela was expected to be his Minister of Government and for foreign affairs. Meanwhile, on February 6, D. Fortunato Flores, the eldest of the ex-President^s three sons, a man tres repandu at Buenos Aires, and who vastly enjoyed a little murder, had a violent altercation with his father, insisting upon the latter re-offering himself for the chief magistracy. Instigated by his mother, D. Maria G. de Flores, who has been mildly de- scribed as a " tigress/' and who, if truth be told about her,

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