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interrupted him with a gesture of defence against the expected encomium, which would have relegated our countries of volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes to the peaceful latitude of Flemish lace makers or the aurora borealis.
    “
Il me reste beaucoup à faire
,” I said. Nevertheless I was proud—very proud—of the fact that, after a whole century of tumult and uprisings, my own country had brought the cycle of revolutions to an end—revolutions that in America were counted merely as adolescent crises, the scarlatinas and measles of young, impetuous, passionate hot-blooded races, who had to be subjected to discipline sometimes.
Dura lex, sed lex …
    There were cases when severity was necessary, the Academician thought. Besides, as Descartes put it so well: “Sovereigns have the right to modify customs to some extent.”
    Ofelia had finished her very long session with “Für Elise”—we hadn’t noticed that the piano had been silent for some while—and she now came into the library, looking dazzling but strange, dressed in light-coloured muslin, a feather boa around her neck, a hat wreathed in flowers and with a hummingbird nesting among its roses, embroidered gloves, and a parasol whose handle was made of finely carved ivory; perfumed, and with a suggestion of hidden lingerie wafting through her clothes, her hair waved, her figure enhanced by bows and tight lacing. She advanced with a lively air, like a ship before the wind, a fully rigged model of Boldini’s.
    “It’s the day of the Drags,” she said, reminding me that while I was talking to the Distinguished Academician a fewmoments before, I had in fact seen crossing the Place de la Concorde some of those old-fashioned English carriages with double doors and high box seats, drawn by four horses, which would shortly drive off amid a great turmoil of sunshades, whip-cracking, and postillions’ bugles, to where the President of the Society of Steeplechasers was awaiting them, flanked by two huntsmen in scarlet livery.
    “
Jamais je ne vous avais vu si belle
,” said the Distinguished Academician, weaving thereupon an elaborate compliment comparing my daughter to some sort of beautiful Gauguin rising from the foamy waves of a summer dawn.
    “We
are
having fun,” murmured Peralta.
    My face became serious: all this about Gauguin stressed our being foreigners—but Ofelia took it all in good part. “
Oh! Tout au plus la Noa-Noa du Seizième Arrondissement!
”
    The truth is that her smooth complexion, derived from her Indian ancestry, was a feature of my daughter’s beauty. She had inherited none of the roundness of face, thickness of thighs, and width of hips of her sainted mother, who was much more of a peasant in complexion and figure. Ofelia was long-legged with small breasts, and slenderly built—a woman of the new race springing up
over there
—nor did her straight hair, artificially waved to suit the fashion, possess any of the natural fuzziness that many of our countrywomen counteracted by using the famous Walker Lotion, invented by a chemist of New Orleans.
    Covering me in exaggerated caresses, Ofelia asked my permission to go away that same night, after the dinner at the Polo de Bagatelle to which she was invited. She wanted to be present at the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, which was opening on the following Tuesday with
Tristan und Isolde
.
    “
Œuvre sublime!
” exclaimed the Academician, starting to hum the theme of the Vorspiel with the gestures of someoneconducting an invisible orchestra. Then he spoke of the superhuman voluptuousness of the second act, of the great solo for cor anglais in the third, of the paroxysmal chromatic progression, almost cruel in its intensity, of the “Liebestod,” and went on to ask my daughter whether she would enjoy visiting the Villa Wahnfried. Gratified by Ofelia’s dramatic emotion, as she declared that the mere thought of the Famous Mansion was to her so moving and sacred that she would never dare