Transita was in this
way taken to Buenos Ayres, where she had masters to instruct her, and
lived in great splendour. The novelty of this life charmed her for a
time; the pleasures of a large city, and the universal admiration her
beauty excited, occupied her mind and made her happy. When she was
seventeen the Senora Romero bestowed her hand on a young man of that
city, named Andrada, a wealthy person. He was a fashionable man, a
gambler, and a Sybarite, and, having conceived a violent passion for
the girl, he succeeded in winning over the senora to aid his suit.
Before marrying him Transita told him frankly that she felt incapable
of great affection for him; he cared nothing for that, he only wished,
like the animal he was, to possess her for her beauty. Shortly after
marrying her he took her to Europe, knowing very well that a man with
a full purse, and whose spirit is a compound of swine and goat, finds
life pleasanter in Paris than in the Plata. In Paris Transita lived
a gay, but an unhappy life. Her husband's passion for her soon passed
away, and was succeeded by neglect and insult. After three miserable
years he abandoned her altogether to live with another woman, and then,
in broken health, she returned with her child to her own country. When
she had been several months in Montevideo she heard casually that I
was still alive and in the besieging army; and, anxious to impart her
last wishes to a friend, had sent for me.
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