Doña Paula Albarracine was the daughter of Don Cornelio Albarracine, who once owned half the valley of La Zonda, and troops of carts and mules, but died after being bedridden for twelve years, leaving to his fifteen children an inheritance of poverty and various portions of wild land. But I leave the son to describe his own mother.
PREFACE TO "THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A PROVINCE."
"The following pages are purely confidential, addressed to a hundred persons only, and dictated by personal considerations.
"In a letter written to a friend of my childhood, in 1832, I had the indiscretion to call Facundo Quiroga a bandit. All Argentines, both in Europe and America, now agree that it was a just epithet, but at that time my letter was shown to a bad priest, who was President of a Chamber of Representatives. It was read in full session, a sentence was decreed against me, and they had the meanness to put it into the hands of the offended one, who, meaner still than his flatterers, insulted my mother, calling her opprobrious names, and assured her that he should kill me when he pleased, and wherever I could be found. This event, which made it forever impossible for me to return to my country if God did not dispose events differently from what man purposed to do, was repeated sixteen years later with consequences apparently still more alarming. In May, 1843, I wrote another letter to an old benefactor, in which I committed the indiscretion (for which I honor myself,) of characterizing and judging the government of Rosas, according to the dictates of my conscience, and this letter, like that of 1832, was sent to the very man upon whom the judgment was pronounced. All my countrymen know what
