he had seen various heroes of novels do. But that day the wind blew from
the sea toward France. He also wished to toss up a coin in order to test
his fate. Finally he decided upon the vessel sailing first. Not until,
with his scanty baggage, he was actually on the deck of the next boat
to anchor, did he take any interest in its course--"For the Rio de la
Plata." . . . And he accepted these words with a fatalistic shrug. "Very
well, let it be South America!" The country was not distasteful to him,
since he knew it by certain travel publications whose illustrations
represented herds of cattle at liberty, half-naked, plumed Indians, and
hairy cowboys whirling over their heads serpentine lassos tipped with
balls.

The millionaire Desnoyers never forgot that trip to America--forty-three
days navigating in a little worn-out steamer that rattled like a heap
of old iron, groaned in all its joints at the slightest roughness of the
sea, and had to stop four times for repairs, at the mercy of the winds
and waves.

In Montevideo, he learned of the reverses suffered by his country and
that the French Empire no longer existed. He felt a little ashamed
when he heard that the nation was now self-governing, defending itself
gallantly behind the walls of Paris. And he had fled! . . . Months
afterwards, the events of the Commune consoled him for his flight. If
he had remained, wrath at the national downfall, his relations with his
co-laborers, the air in which he lived--everything would surely have
dragged him along to revolt. In that case, he would have been shot or
consigned to a colonial prison like so many of his former comrades.

So his determination crystallized, and he stopped thinking about the
affairs of his mother-country. The necessities of existence in a foreign