Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/78



48 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

exaggerate themselves. The national mind had become torpid and paralysed under his reign of rigour,, and thence- forward he became a kind of modern Dionysius. He established a " Chamber of Truth" in which men were questioned. He supported every Creole against any *' old Spaniard/^ and he permitted the latter to marry only Negresses, China girls^ or " Indians." His administration was remarkable for its eternal suspicion^ even after he had slowly but relentlessly degraded all not sufficiently docile functionaries. Arrogating the right to nominate Cabildos, he had raised to power the blind instruments of his will. All his orders passed through an ^^ Actuario/^ or Prepose aux actes. This subaltern, who alone had access to the Dictator, became a " tyran fantastique/^ who refused to receive a petition, even if the ink did not please him, and who kept the petitioners awaiting an answer for months. The bruit of a conspiracy at times enabled him to order a cer- tain number of executions, and to fill with terror a people who, like the Egyptians, apparently love to be tyrannized over. He witnessed his own flogging-tortures and execu- tions, and he became intolerably fierce when the east wind blew. He never left his palace save on horseback, followed by a guard that made the citizens range themselves in re- spectful files, and the boys were forced to wear pour toute toilette straw-hats, with which he was to be complimented. And at last his orders drove all from the streets whilst his cortege was passing ; doors and windows were shut, and the Dictator traversed thoroughfares dreary and desert as those of Valparaiso on a dusty Sunday.

Yet he was wonderful in matters of detail : he knew exactly the cost of hoe or axe, and he used to count and measure the needles and thread necessary for a uniform. In 1829 he compelled, under heavy penalties, every householder to sow a certain quantity of maize, which con-