The ladies of the house would talk softly in the moonlight under
the orange trees of the courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness
of their voices and the something mysterious in the quietude of their
lives. In the morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros
and embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of
their horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests before
committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God at the
boundary pillars of their estates. In all these households she
could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives, ruined,
imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously
executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the
country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let
loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases.
And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of
officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law,
without security, and without justice.
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