Page:The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - (Los cuatro jinetes de Apocalipsis) (IA cu31924014386738).djvu/104

 any headway in his engineering studies. Then, too. Chichí was now almost a woman—her robust development making her look older than she was—and it was not expedient to keep her on the estate to become a rustic señorita like her mother.

Doña Luisa had also tired of ranch life, the social triumphs of her sister making her a little restless. She was incapable of feeling jealous, but material ambitions made her anxious that her children should not bring up the rear of the procession in which the other grandchildren were cutting such a dashing figure.

During the year, most wonderful reports from Germany were finding their way to the Desnoyers home in the Capital. "The aunt from Berlin," as the children called her, kept sending long letters filled with accounts of dances, dinners, hunting parties and titles—many high-sounding and military titles;—"our brother, the Colonel," "our cousin, the Baron," "our uncle, the Intimate Councillor," "our great-uncle, the Truly Intimate." All the extravagances of the German social ladder, which incessantly manufactures new titles in order to satisfy the thirst for honors of a people divided into castes, were enumerated with delight by the old Romantica. She even mentioned her husband's secretary (a nobody) who, through working in the public offices, had acquired the title of Rechnungarath, Councillor of Calculations. She also referred with much pride to the retired Oberpedell which she had in her house, explaining that that meant "Superior Porter."

The news about her children was no less glorious. The oldest was the wise one of the family. He was devoted to philology and the historical sciences, but his sight was growing weaker all the time because of his omnivorous reading. Soon he would be a Doctor, and before he was thirty, a Herr Professor. The mother la-