Part 1, Chapter 3, The Desnoyers Family Summary

After Madariaga's death, Marcelo decided to retire. Marcelo leased some of plantations, handed over the inherited lands to their rightful owners, and moved his family to Buenos Aires. Soon the family began getting letters from Elena, expressing how wonderful their lives were in Germany. As was the tradition in Germany, Karl was granted the prestigious von to extinguish him from ordinary citizens due to his family's exemplary military service and his own wealth, with which he bought extensive lands and invested in munitions factories. Marcelo found all this interesting, because he knew that Karl had been run out of his country years before for stealing money from his military company.

Soon Marcelo's family started asking why they too did not live in Europe. Marcelo was from France and yet none in his family had ever...