dings. Accompanying them were the bridal party, his padrino (groomsman) and her madrina (bridesmaid), the respective parents, all their cousins and their aunts, and a multitude of friends. As they crossed the Lake to the town the importance of the coming ceremonies calmed the exuberant spirits of the younger members, though sly remarks were continually whispered about. At the City Hall the bridal couple signed their names in a big ledger, and the Clerk pronounced them married by the civil law of Mexico. Then all wound their way up the hill to the church, where the priest recited the marriage ritual. With lighted candles and swinging censers, the Church proclaimed them man and wife. On the return trip the flotilla of boats was joined by more friends, and as the formalities of the wedding ceremonies wore off the bridal couple returned home amid singing and the firing of rockets. It was ten o'clock and still morning when they stepped once more onto their native island. The wedding party made a gay sight as the bride and groom, decorated with flowers, danced along the paths singing. They sashayed back and forth between the two houses and ended at Pepe's, where he presented his best man with the proverbial charanda. From now on it was a continuous feast and fête.

Soon Asunción took up her almost endless task of making atole (a corn gruel), necessary to help abate the hunger and thirst of the ever increasing multitude. Buckets of this tepid drink and bottle after bottle of charanda were consumed. Dancing, drinking, and the hot air in one small room made for much gayety. At nine o'clock a quiet fell over the assembly. It announced that the Tarascan ceremony of abasement would take place. Timidly Asunción rose, and leaving the half-circle of her own family went and stood before her father-in-law. Slowly she sank to the ground, and in abasement leaned forward and kissed his bare feet. Next she went to her mother-in-law and kissed hers, then repeated the ceremony along the line, which included all of Pepe's relations. This over, she retreated and Pepe stepped forward from his family group, and prostrated himself before the bare feet of his mother-in-law and repeated the kissing ceremony, which included the feet of his father-in-law and all of his wife's relatives.

With the osculatory ceremony over, Asunción continued to brew atole until the dawn of the next day, when the guests finally left. At last the three wedding ceremonies were over, and she and Pepe were married by the rites of Church, state, and tribal custom.

WHEN the old man said with melancholy presentiment that it was the last day of the year and also the last day of his life, his little granddaughter went up to his bed and tried to comfort him in her childish way: "No, granddaddy, you're going to live until 1943." It was the afternoon of December 31, 1942. The house was full of sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughtersin-law, and friends. Among the friends. was the kindly giant Pedro Nava, the physician who had the duty of deciding on all emergency treatments in the early dawn or in sudden crises.

In the house on Copacabana Avenue in Rio de Janeiro calm seemed to reign, but it was only a disguise for anxiety.

Could the citizen of the world be desperately ill? Everyone perceived it. The physicians implied the truth. The telephone rang all day long and even late at night. The members of the family who answered it said with suppressed emotion: "Thank you very much. He seems to be better now." Through the always open dining-room door came in on tiptoe intimate friends of the family. They, too, were old like the sick man, some of them judges, others lawyers, former members of Congress, famous figures in the political world and others not so well known—usually people from Minas Gerais, as could be

Translated from "Revista da Academia Brasileira de Letras," Anais de 1943, Janeiro a Junho; first published in "A Manhã," Rio de Janeiro, 3 de janeiro de 1943.

seen immediately by their air of unswerving loyalty, few words, and long glances.

The sick man suffered no pain. There were only weakness, a catch in his breath, an uneven pulse, and fading vitality. His unimpaired memory brought back diplomatic episodes, his work, his travels.

Cities

There was fighting in the world. were burning, continents were at warand he was helpless. His whole being revolted. The physicians came and prepared his arm for an injection. "How are you? Are you better?" In a faint voice he replied as logically and clearly as if he were in a meeting, "I feel nothing. If I am better, it is you who can tell me so.”

A bird began to sing in an acacia tree in the garden. Could it be one of "his" patativas come back for a visit? Some time before he had let all the birds out of his aviary, a sad farewell, which to the family seemed an anticipation of another and more poignant one. For the friend of all those men who at Geneva from 1924 to 1932 had tried to save the future of Europe through formulas of understanding and good will was an enthusiastic lover of birds. He might be at his desk drafting a confidential note which would bring war ΟΙ peace, as in the Leticia case, but if a goldfinch sang he would go down into the garden, even perhaps in his pajamas. An expert in songbirds, he could distinguish a curió from a sabiá at a distance, simply by its flight, with the same legal precision with which he could say of an unsigned paragraph

whether it was an article from the Czechoslovakian constitution or part of a boundary agreement between Hungary and Yugoslavia. In world capitals, Washington or Buenos Aires, Bucharest or Prague, his daily dealings were with men who governed nations, but when he was once home again, after congresses in which he had talked to the world on the destinies of mankind, he would go immediately to his aviary to see the curupião that imitated the trumpet call in the barracks of his beloved Belo Horizonte.1

He had had more than half a century of public life. Congress, embassies, revolutions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international conferences, the authorship of theories of international law were familiar to him, but nothing had changed his love of home or the simplicity of a great gentleman. He unfailingly knew how to put out a friendly hand to the humble. With the same courtesy with which he might have addressed Mr. Kellogg to discuss questions of world disarmament, he would speak to a servant: "Have you changed the canary's water?"

In these pleasant summer days no one wishes to die. At the foot of the hills there is the ringing of hammers and the rasping of saws. New skyscrapers begin to rise. I do not know what glory seems to imbue the city's labor. Can it be the light? Perhaps it is the contentment that fills men's hearts, that contentment of knowing that finally they deserve life, because they are living with full awareness of risk and struggle.

Neither did the former President of the League of Nations Council want to die. It

Of the songbirds named in this paragraph, the sabiá is probably dearest to the hearts of Brazilians. It is a sort of nightingale, celebrated a century ago by Gonçalves Dias in a famous poem, "Canção do Exilio." The text of this poem is on p. 455.— EDITOR.

was only a little while ago that he had been drafting principles to govern the future of the American continent and the democracies. What would be the end of the gov ernments of force, the instigators of this horrible conflagration? He hated force; the only violence ever known in him was the irresistible kick that he gave a fierce sharplyspurred young cock to save a favorite old rooster from unequal combat. His energy was enveloped in tolerance, gentleness, and courtesy, like those sheets of fine Renaissance steel preserved in museums between folds of beautiful velvet.

Must he die before seeing the end of the war and the victory of the democracies, before he knew the fate of the Americas and of those civilizations yet to be born or to disappear? "Oh, never to die like this...."

A few minutes before midnight of December 31 all the members of the family entered his room. Each in turn kissed him. There were joyful exclamations. The citizen of the world was so much better, so placid, and so cheerful, that it seemed as if his convalescence had begun. For the first time after many anxious, weary nights, everyone would sleep peacefully.

About three o'clock in the morning the physician and nurse became alarmed. There was a new crisis, the patient's pulse was failing, his extremities were cold. "Everything is useless, my body will respond no more," he said gently from the threshold of death. Calmly he watched the hurried attempts to relieve him. The faithful Mauricio was preparing a poultice and the doctor, standing in an uncomfortable position, was giving an emergency injection. The sick man said to the nurse: "Mauricio, never mind the poultice; bring a chair so that Dr. Nava can sit down"-last words

that expressed a supreme and innate courtesy. A few moments later he died, in the third hour of the new year, confirming