Paquita had more than her share of it, but was made
no wiser as to the cause of this feud of long standing; for, though
Dona Isidora had evidently been nursing her wrath all those years to
keep it warm, she could not, for the life of her, remember how the
quarrel originated.
After breakfast each morning I would kiss her and hand her over to the
tender mercies of her Isidora, then go forth on my fruitless
perambulations about the town. At first I only acted the intelligent
foreigner, going about staring at the public buildings, and collecting
curios--strangely marked pebbles, and a few military brass buttons,
long shed by the garments they once made brave; rusty, misshapen
bullets, mementoes of the immortal nine or ten years' siege which had
won for Montevideo the mournful appellation of modern Troy. When I had
fully examined from the outside the scene of my future triumphs--for
I had now resolved to settle down and make my fortune in Montevideo--
Ibegan seriously to look out for employment. I visited in turn every
large mercantile establishment in the place, and, in fact, every house
where I thought there might be a chance of lighting on something to
do. It was necessary to make a beginning, and I would not have turned
up my nose at anything, however small, I was so heartily sick of being
poor, idle, and dependent. Nothing could I find.
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