the lead cover and saw Don Fernando, dressed in black and with a crucifix on his chest, his skin broken out in
pestilential sores and cooking slowly in a frothy stew with bubbles like live pearls.
A short time after the birth of their daughter, the unexpected jubilee for Colonel Aureliano, Buendaa, ordered
by the government to celebrate another anniversary of the Treaty of Neerlandia, was announced. It was a
decision so out of line with official policy that the colonel spoke out violently against it and rejected the homage.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of the word ‘jubilee,??he said. “But whatever it means, it has to be a trick.?The
small goldsmith shop was filled with emissaries. Much older and more solemn,rappelz rupees, the lawyers in dark suits who in
other days had flapped about the colonel like crows had returned. When he saw them appear the same as the
other time, when they came to put a stop to the war, he could not bear the cynicism of their praise. He ordered
them to leave him in peace, insisting that he was not a hero of the nation as they said but an artisan without
memories whose only dream was to die of fatigue in the oblivion and misery of his little gold fishes. What made
him most indignant was the word that the president of the republic himself planned to be present at the
ceremonies in Macondo in order to decorate him with the Order of Merit. Colonel Aureliano,buy rs money, Buendaa had him
told, word for word, that he was eagerly awaiting that tardy but deserved occasion in order to take a shot at him,
not as payment for the arbitrary acts and anachronisms of his regime,runescape power leveling, but for his lack of respect for an old man
who had not done anyone any harm. Such was the vehemence with which he made the threat that the president of
the republic canceled his trip at the last moment and sent the decoration with a personal representative. Colonel
Gerineldo Mrquez, besieged by pressures of all kinds, left his bed of a paralytic in order to persuade his former
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companion in arms. When the latter saw the rocking chair carried by four men appear and saw the friend who
had shared his victories and defeats since youth sitting in it among some large pillows, he did not have a single
doubt but that he was making that effort in order to express his solidarity. But when he discovered the real
motive for his visit he had them take him out of the workshop.
“Now I’m convinced too late,?he told him, “that I would have done you a great favor if I’d let them shoot
So the jubilee was celebrated without the attendance of any members of the family. Chance had it that it also
coincided with carnival week, but no one could get the stubborn idea out of Colonel Aureliano Buendaa’s head
that the coincidence had been foreseen by the government in order to heighten the cruelty of the mockery. From
his lonely workshop he could hear the martial music, the artillery salutes, the tolling of the Te Deum, and a few
phrases of the speeches delivered in front of the house as they named the street after him. His eyes grew moist
with indignation, with angry impotence, and for the first time since his defeat it pained him not to have the
strength of youth so that he could begin a bloody war that would wipe out the last vestiges of the Conservative
regi me. The echoes of the homage had not died down when 2rsula knocked at the workshop door.
“Don’t bother me,rs gold,?he said. “I’m busy.?
“Open up,?2rsula insisted in a normal voice. “This has nothing to do with the celebration.?
Then Colonel Aureliano Buendaa took down the bar and saw at the door seventeen men of the most varied
increased his curiosity. He demanded so much, promised with such insistence that he would not mistreat the
things, that 2rsula, gave him the keys. No one had gone into the room again since they had taken Melquaades?
body out and had put on the door a padlock whose parts had become fused together with rust. But when
Aureliano Segundo opened the windows a familiar light entered that seemed accustomed to lighting the room
every day and there was not the slightest trace of dust or cobwebs, with everything swept and clean, better swept
and cleaner than on the day of the burial, and the ink had not dried up in the inkwell nor had oxidation
diminished the shine of the metals nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jos?Arcadio Buendaa
had vaporized mercury. On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard-like material, pale, like tanned
human skin, and the manuscripts were intact. In spite of the room’s having been shut up for many years, the air
seemed fresher than in the rest of the house. Everything was so recent that several weeks later, when 2rsula went
into the room with a pail of water and a brush to wash the floor, there was nothing for her to do. Aureliano
Segundo was deep in the reading of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the
boy enjoyed the story of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up
with a pin,luna online gold, and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he gave
him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that fulfilled wishes and
about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked 2rsula if all that was true and she answered him that it was, that many
years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats to Macondo.
“What’s happening,?she sighed, “is that the world is slowly coming to an end and those things don’t come
here any more.?
When he finished the book, in which many of the stories had no endings because there were pages missing,
Aureliano Segundo set about deciphering the manuscripts. It was impossible. The letters looked like clothes hung
out to dry on a line and they looked more like musical notation than writing. One hot noontime, while he was
poring over the, manuscripts, he sensed that he was not alone in the room. Against the light from the window,
sitting with his hands on his knees, was Melquaades. He was under forty years of age. He was wearing the same
old-fashioned vest and the hat that looked like a raven’s wings, and across his pale temples there flowed the
grease from his hair that had been melted by the heat,runescape power leveling, just as Aureliano and Jos?Arcadio had seen him when they
were children. Aureliano Segundo recognized him at once, because that hereditary memory had been transmitted
from generation to generation and had come to him through the memory of his grandfather.
“Hello,?Aureliano Segundo said.
“Hello, young man,?said Melquaades.
From then on, for several years, they saw each other almost every afternoon. Melquaades talked to him about
the world, tried to infuse him with his old wisdom, but he refused to translate the manuscripts. “No one must
know their meaning until he has reached one hundred years of age,?he explained. Aureliano kept those meetings
secret forever. On one occasion he felt that his private world had fallen apart because 2rsula came in when
Melquaades was in the room. But she did not see him.
“Who were you talking to??she asked him.
“Nobody,?Aureliano Segundo said.
“That’s what your great-grandfather did,cheap lord of the rings gold,?2rsula, said. “He used to talk to himself too.?
Jos?Arcadio Segundo,l2 power leveling, in the meantime, had satisfied his wish to see a shooting. For the rest of his life he
would remember the livid flash of the six simultaneous shots-and the echo of the discharge as it broke against the
domestic nature. Little by little, however, and as the war became more intense and widespread, his image was
fading away into a universe of unreality. The characteristics of his speech were more and more uncertain, and
they cam together and combined to form words that were gradually losing all meaning. Colonel Gerineldo
Mrquez limited himself then to just listening, burdened by the impression that he was in telegraphic contact
with a stranger from another world.
“I understand, Aureliano,?he would conclude on the key. “Long live the Liberal party!?
He finally lost all contact with the war. What in other times had been a real activity, an irresistible passion of
his youth, became a remote point of reference for him: an emptiness. His only refuge was Amaranta’s sewing
room. He would visit her every afternoon. He liked to watch her hands as she curled frothy petticoat cloth in the
machine that was kept in motion by Remedios the Beauty. They spent many hours without speaking, content
with their reciprocal company, but while Amaranta was inwardly pleased in keeping the fire of his devotion
alive, he was unaware of the secret designs of that indecipherable heart. When the news of his return reached her,eq platinum,
Amaranta had been smothered by anxiety. B ut when she saw him enter the house in the middle of Colonel
Aureliano Buendaa’s noisy escort and she saw how he had been mistreated by the rigors of exile, made old by
age and oblivion, dirty with sweat and dust, smelling like a herd,eq power leveling, ugly, with his left arm in a sling, she felt faint
with disillusionment. “My God,?she thought. “This wasn’t the person I was waiting for.?On the following day,runescape power leveling,
however, he came back to the house shaved and clean, with his mustache perfumed with lavender water and
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without the bloody sling. He brought her a prayerbook bound in mother-of-pearl.
“How strange men are,?she said, because she could not think of anything else to say. “They spend their lives
fighting against priests and then give prayerbooks as gifts.?
From that time on, even during the most critical days of the war,rs gold, he visited her every afternoon. Many times,
when Remedios the Beauty was not present, it was he who turned the wheel on the sewing machine. Amaranta
felt upset by the perseverance, the loyalty, the submissiveness of that man who was invested with so much
authority and who nevertheless took off his sidearm in the living room so that he could go into the sewing room
without weapons, But for four years he kept repeating his love and she would always find a way to reject him
without hurting him, for even though she had not succeeded in loving him she could no longer live without him.
Remedios the Beauty, who seemed indifferent to everything and who was thought to be mentally retarded, was
not insensitive to so much devotion and she intervened in Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez’s favor. Amaranta
suddenly discovered that the girl she had raised, who was just entering adolescence, was already the most
beautiful creature that had even been seen in Macondo. She felt reborn in her heart the rancor that she had felt in
other days for Rebeca, and begging God not to impel her into the extreme state of wishing her dead, she banished
her from the sewing room. It was around that time that Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez began to feel the boredom of
the war. He summoned his reserves of persuasion, his broad and repressed tenderness, ready to give up for
Amaranta a glory that had cost him the sacrifice of his best years. But he could not succeed in convincing her.
death of Jos?Arcadio. But Rebeca was already beyond any vanity. After searching for it uselessly in the taste of
earth, in, the perfumed letters from Pietro Crespi, in the tempestuous bed of her husband, she had found peace in
that house where memories materialized through the strength of implacable evocation and walked like human
beings through the cloistered rooms, Leaning back in her wicker rocking chair, looking at Colonel Aureliano
Buendaa as if he were the one who looked like a ghost out of the past, Rebeca was not even upset by the news
that the lands usurped by Jos?Arcadio would be returned to their rightful owners.
“Whatever you decide will be done,cheap rs money, Aureliano,?she sighed. “I always thought and now I have the proof that
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you’re a renegade.?
The revision of the deeds took place at the same time as the summary courts-martial presided over by Colonel
Gerineldo Mrquez, which ended with the execution of all officers of the regular army who had been taken
prisoner by the revolutionaries. The last court-martial was that of Jos?Raquel Moncada. 2rsula intervened. ‘”His
government was the best we’ve ever had in Macondo,?she told Colonel Aureliano Buendaa. “I don’t have to tell
you anything about his good heart, about his affection for us, because you know better than anyone.?Colonel
Aureliano Buendaa gave her a disapproving look.
“I can’t take over the job of administering justice,?he replied. “If you have something to say, tell it to the
court-martial.?
2rsula not only did that she also brought all of the mothers of the revolutionary officers who lived in Macondo
to testify. One by one the old women who had been founders of the town, several of whom had taken part in the
daring crossing of the mountains, praised the virtues of General Moncada. 2rsula was the last in line. Her
gloomy dignity, the weight of her name, the convincing vehemence of her declaration made the scale of justice
hesitate for a moment. “You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you
are doing your duty,?she told the members of the court. “But don’t forget that as long as God gives us life we
will still be mothers and no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and
give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect.?The court retired to deliberate as those words still echoed in
the school that had been turned into a barracks. At midnight General Jos?Raquel Moncada was sentenced to
death. Colonel Aureliano Buendaa, in spite of the violent recriminations of 2rsula,runescape power leveling, refused to commute the
sentence. A short while before dawn he visited the condemned man in the room used as a cell.
“Remember, old friend,?he told him. “I’m not shooting you. It’s the revolution that’s shooting you.?
General Moncada did not even get up from the cot when he saw him come in.
“Go to hell, friend,dfo gold,?he answered.
Until that moment, ever since his return. Colonel Aureliano Buendaa had not given himself the opportunity to
see him with his heart. He was startled to see how much he had aged, how his hands shook,dragon oath gold, and the rather
punctilious conformity with which he awaited death, and then he felt a great disgust with himself, which he
mingled with the beginnings of pity.
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of 2rsula with the certainty that he was fighting a losing battle.
“I pray to God that you won’t have Aureliano in the house tonight,?he said. “If it does happen that way, give
him an embrace for me, because I don’t expect ever to see him again.?
That night he was captured when he tried to escape from Macondo, after writing a long letter to Colonel
Aureliano Buendaa in which he reminded him of their common aim to humanize the war and he wished him a
final victory over the corruption of the militarists and the ambitions of the politicians in both parties. On the
following day Colonel Aureliano Buendaa had lunch with him in 2rsula’s house, where he was being held until a
revolutionary court-martial decided his fate. It was a friendly gathering. But while the adversaries forgot the war
to remember things of the past, 2rsula had the gloomy feeling that her son was an intruder. She had felt it ever
since she saw him come in protected by a noisy military retinue, which turned the bedrooms inside out until they
were convinced there was no danger. Colonel Aureliano Buendaa not only accepted it but he gave strict orders
that no one should come closer than ten feet,achat kamas, not even 2rsula, while the members of his escort finished placing
guards about the house. He was wearing an ordinary denim uniform with no insignia of any kind and high boots
with spurs that were caked with mud and dried blood. On his waist he wore a holster with the flap open and his
hand, which was always on the butt of the pistol, revealed the same watchful and resolute tension as his look. His
head, with deep recessions in the hairline now, seemed to have been baked in a slow oven. His face, tanned by
the salt of the Caribbean, had acquired a metallic hardness. He was preserved against imminent old age by a
vitality that had something to do with the coldness of his insides. He was taller than when he had left, paler and
bonier, and he showed the first symptoms of resistance to nostalgia. “Good Lord,ddo power leveling,?2rsula said to herself. “Now
he looks like a man capable of anything.?He was. The Aztec shawl that he brought Amaranta, the remembrances
he spoke of at lunch,warcraft gold, the funny stories her told were simple leftovers from his humor of a different time. As soon
as the order to bury the dead in a common grave was carried out, he assigned Colonel Roque Carnicero the
minion of setting up courts-martial and he went ahead with the exhausting task of imposing radical reforms
which would not leave a stone of the reestablished Conservative regime in place. “We have to get ahead of the
politicians in the party,?he said to his aides. “When they open their eyes to reality they’ll find accomplished
facts.?It was then that he decided to review the titles to land that went back a hundred years and he discovered
the legalized outrages of his brother, Jos?Arcadio. He annulled the registrations with a stroke of the pen. As a last
gesture of courtesy, he left his affairs for an hour and visited Rebeca to bring her up to date on what he was
determined to do.
In the shadows of her house, the solitary widow who at one time had been the confidante of his repressed
loves and whose persistence had saved his life was a specter out of the past. Encased in black down to her
knuckles, with her heart turned to ash, she scarcely knew anything about the war. Colonel Aureliano Buendaa had
the impression that the phosphorescence of her bones was showing through her skin and that she moved in an
atmosphere of Saint Elmo’s fire,runescape power leveling, in a stagnant air where one could still note a hidden smell of gunpowder. He
began by advising her to moderate the rigor of her mourning, to ventilate the house, to forgive the world for the
make the country believe in reconciliation, he attempted seven other revolts. One night he bombarded Riohacha
from a schooner and the garrison dragged out of bed and shot the fourteen best-known Liberals in the town as a
reprisal. For more than two weeks he held a customs post on the border and from there sent the nation a call to
general war. Another of his expectations was lost for three months in the jungle in a mad attempt to cross more
than a thousand miles of virgin territory in order to proclaim war on the outskirts of the capital. On one occasion
he was lea than fifteen miles away from Macondo and was obliged by government patrols to hide in the
mountains,cheap wow gold, very close to the enchanted region where his father had found the fossil of a Spanish galleon many
years before.
Visitaci?n died around that time. She had the pleasure of dying a natural death after having renounced a throne
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out of fear of insomnia, and her last wish was that they should dig up the wages she had saved for more than
twenty years under her bed and send the money to Colonel Aureliano Buendaa so that he could go on with the
war. But 2rsula did not bother to dig it up because it was rumored in those days that Colonel Aureliano Buendaa
had been killed in a landing near the provincial capital. The official announcement?athe fourth in less than two
years?awas considered true for almost six months because nothing further was heard of him. Suddenly,wow power leveling, when
2rsula and Amaranta had added new mourning to the past period, unexpected news arrived. Colonel Aureliano
Buendaa was alive, but apparently he had stopped harassing the government of his country and had joined with
the victorious federalism of other republics of the Caribbean. He would show up under different names farther
and farther away from his own country. Later it would be learned that the idea that was working on him at the
time was the unification of the federalist forms of Central America in order to wipe out conservative regimes
from Alaska to Patagonia. The first direct news that 2rsula received from him, several years after his departure,
was a wrinkled and faded letter that had arrived, passing through various hands, from Santiago, Cuba.
“We’ve lost him forever,?2rsula exclaimed on reading it. “If he follows this path he’ll spend Christmas at the
ends of the earth.?
The person to whom she said it, who was the first to whom she showed the letter, was the Conservative
general Jos?Raquel Moncada, mayor of Macondo since the end of the war. “This Aureliano,?General Moncada
commented, “what a pity that he’s not a Conservative.?He really admired him. Like many Conservative civilians,runescape power leveling,
Jos?Raquel Moncada had waged war in defense of his party and had earned the title of general on the field of
battle, even though he was not a military man by profession. On the contrary, like so many of his fellow party
members, he was an antimilitarist. He considered military men unprincipled loafers, ambitious plotters, experts
in facing down civilians in order to prosper during times of disorder. Intelligent, pleasant, ruddy-faced,runescape gold, a man
who liked to eat and watch cockfights, he had been at one time the most feared adversary of Colonel Aureliano
Buendaa. He succeeded in imposing his authority over the career officers in a wide sector along the coast. One
time when he was forced by strategic circumstances to abandon a stronghold to the forces of Colonel Aureliano
Buendaa, he left two letters for him. In one of them quite long, he invited him to join in a campaign to make war
morning with their coat collars turned up about their ears, rubbing their hands, whispering, taking refuge in
dreary early-morning caf|s to speculate over what the president had meant when he said yes, or what he had
meant when he said no, and even to imagine what the president was thinking when he said something quite
different, as he chased away mosquitoes at a temperature of ninety-five degrees, feeling the approach of the
fearsome dawn when he would have to give his men the command to jump into the sea.
One night of uncertainty, when Pilar Ternera was singing in the courtyard with the soldiers, he asked her to
read the future in her cards. “Watch out for your mouth,?was all that Pilar Ternera brought out after spreading
and picking up the cards three times. “I don’t know what it means, but the sign is very clear. Watch out for your
mouth.?Two days later someone gave an orderly a mug of black coffee and the orderly passed it on to someone
else and that one to someone else until,cheap world of warcraft gold, hand to hand, it reached Colonel Aureliano Buendaa office. He had not
asked for any coffee, but since it was there the colonel drank it. It had a dose of nux vomica strong enough to kill
a horse. When they took him home he was stiff and arched and his tongue was sticking out between his teeth.
2rsula fought against death over him. After cleaning out his stomach with emetics, she wrapped him in hot
blankets and fed him egg whites for two days until his harrowed body recovered its normal temperature. On the
fourth day he was out of danger. Against his will, pressured by 2rsula and his officers, he stayed in bed for
another week. Only then did he learn that his verses had not been burned. “I didn’t want to be hasty,?2rsula
explained to him. “That night when I went to light the oven I said to myself that it would be better to wait until
they brought the body.?In the haze of convalescence, surrounded by Remedios?dusty dolls, Colonel Aureliano
Buendaa, brought back the decisive periods of his existence by reading his poetry. He started writing again. For
many hours, balancing on the edge of the surprises of a war with no future, in rhymed verse he resolved his
experience on the shores of death. Then his thoughts became so clear that he was able to examine them forward
and backward. One night he asked Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez:
“Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting??
“What other reason could there be??Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez answered. “For the great liberal party.?
“You’re lucky because you know why,runescape power leveling,?he answered. “As far as I’m concerned,runescape gold, I’ve come to realize only just
?62 312188 3
now that I’m fighting because of pride.?
“That’s bad,?Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez said. Colonel Aureliano Buendaa was amused at his alarm.
“Naturally,cheap aion kinah,?he said. “But in any case, it’s better than not knowing why you’re fighting.?He looked him in the
eyes and added with a smile:
“Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn’t have any meaning for anyone.?
His pride had prevented him from making contact with the armed groups in the interior of the country until the
leaders of the party publicly rectified their declaration that he was a bandit. He knew, however, that as soon as he
put those scruples aside he would break the vicious circle of the war. Convalescence gave him time to reflect.
Then he succeeded in getting 2rsula to give him the rest of her buried inheritance and her substantial savings. He
named Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez civil and military leader of Macondo and he went off to make contact with
The messenger even went to the extreme of violating a military secret so that they would believe his identity. He
?53 312188 3
revealed that he was on a mission to Cura ao,cheap runescape money, where he hoped to recruit exiles from all over the Caribbean and
acquire arms and supplies sufficient to attempt a landing at the end of the year. With faith in that plan, Colonel
Aureliano Buendaa was not in favor of any useless sacrifices at that time. But Arcadio was inflexible. He had the
prisoner put into the stocks until he could prove his identity and he resolved to defend the town to the death.
He did not have long to wait. The news of the Liberal defeat was more and more concrete. Toward the end of
March, before a dawn of premature rain, the tense calm of the previous weeks was abruptly broken by the
desperate sounds of a cornet and a cannon shot that knocked down the steeple of the church. Actually,runescape power leveling, Arcadio’s
decision to resist was madness. He had only fifty poorly armed men with a ration of twenty cartridges apiece.
But among them, his former pupils, excited by the high-sounding proclamations, the determination reigned to
sacrifice their skins for a lost cause. In the midst of the tramping of boots, contradictory commands, cannon shots
that made the earth tremble, wild shooting, and the senseless sound of cornets,wow power leveling, the supposed Colonel Stevenson
managed to speak to Arcadio. “Don’t let me undergo the indignity of dying in the stocks in these women’s
clothes,?he said to him. “If I have to die, let me die fighting.?He succeeded in convincing him. Arcadio ordered
them to give him a weapon and twenty cartridges, and he left him with five men to defend headquarters while he
went off with his staff to head up the resistance. He did not get to the road to the swamp. The barricades had been
broken and the defenders were openly fighting in the streets, first until they used up their ration of rifle bullets,
then with pistols against rifles, and finally hand to hand. With the imminence of defeat, some women went into
the street armed with sticks and kitchen knives. In that confusion Arcadio found Amaranta, who was looking for
him like a madwoman, in her nightgown and with two old pistols that had belonged to Jos?Arcadio Buendaa. He
gave his rifle to an officer who had been disarmed in the fight and escaped with Amaranta through a nearby street
to take her home. 2rsula was, in the doorway waiting, indifferent to the cannon shots that had opened up a hole
in the front of the house next door. The rain was letting up, but the streets were as slippery and as smooth as
melted soap, and one had to guess distances in the darkness. Arcadio left Amaranta with 2rsula and made an
attempt to face two soldiers who had opened up with heavy firing from the corner. The old pistols that had been
kept for many years in the bureau did not work. Protecting Arcadio with her body, 2rsula tried to drag him
toward the house.
“Come along in the name of God,?she shouted at him. “There’s been enough madness!?
The soldiers aimed at them.
“Let go of that man,mabinogi gold, ma’am,?one of them shouted, “or we won’t be responsible!?
Arcadio pushed 2rsula toward the house and surrendered. A short time later the shooting stopped and the bells
began to toll. The resistance had been wiped out in less than half an hour. Not a single one of Arcadio’s men had
survived the attack, but before dying they had killed three hundred soldiers. The last stronghold was the barracks.
Before being attacked, the supposed Colonel Gregorio Stevenson had freed the prisoners and ordered his men to
COLONEL AURELIANO BUENDaA organized thirty-two armed uprisings and he lost them all. He had
seventeen male children by seventeen different women and they were exterminated one after the other on a
single night before the oldest one had reached the age of thirty-five. He survived fourteen attempts on his life,
seventy-three ambushes,buy runescape money, and a firing squad. He lived through a dose of strychnine in his coffee that was enough
to kill a horse. He refused the Order of Merit, which the President of the Republic awarded him. He rose to be
Commander in Chief of the revolutionary forces, with jurisdiction and command from one border to the other,
and the man most feared by the government, but he never let himself be photographed. He declined the lifetime
pension offered him after the war and until old age he made his living from the little gold fishes that he
manufactured in his workshop in Macondo. Although he always fought at the head of his men, the only wound
that he received was the one he gave himself after signing the Treaty of Neerlandia, which put an end to almost
twenty years of civil war. He shot himself in the chest with a pistol and the bullet came out through his back
without damaging any vital organ. The only thing left of all that was a street that bore his name in Macondo. And
yet, as he declared a few years before he died of old age,buy tales of pirates money, he had not expected any of that on the dawn he left with
his twenty-one men to join the forces of General Victorio Medina.
“We leave Macondo in your care.?was all that he said to Arcadio before leaving. “We leave it to you in good
shape, try to have it in better shape when we return.?
Arcadio gave a very personal interpretation to the instructions. He invented a uniform with the braid and
epaulets of a marshal, inspired by the prints in one of Melquaades?books, and around his waist he buckled the
saber with gold tassels that had belonged to the executed captain. He set up the two artillery pieces at the
entrance to town, put uniforms on his former pupils, who had been amused by his fiery proclamations, and let
them wander through the streets armed in order to give outsiders an impression of invulnerability. It was a
double-edged deception, for the government did not dare attack the place for ten months, but when it did it
unleashed such a large force against it that resistance was liquidated in a half hour. From the first day of his rule
Arcadio revealed his predilection for decrees. He would read as many as four a day in order to decree and
institute everything that came into his head. He imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen,
declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were
overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and
prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one
would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot at a
scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously. They were, after all, schoolchildren playing at being grown-ups.
But one night,runescape power leveling, when Arcadio went into Catarino’s store,cheap runescape gold, the trumpeter in the group greeted him with a fanfare
that made the customers laugh and Arcadio had him shot for disrespect for the authorities. People who protested
were put on bread and water with their ankles in a set of stocks that he had set up in a schoolroom. “You
murderer!?2rsula would shout at him every time she learned of some new arbitrary act. “When Aureliano finds
out he’s going to shoot you and I’ll be the first one to be glad.?But it was of no use. Arcadio continued tightening
the tourniquet with unnecessary rigor until he became the cruelest ruler that Macondo had ever known. “Now let
them suffer the difference,?Don Apolinar Moscote said on one occasion. “This is the Liberal paradise.?Arcadio
found out about it. At the head of a patrol he assaulted the house, destroyed the furniture, flogged the daughters,
and dragged out Don Apolinar Moscote. When 2rsula burst into the courtyard of headquarters, after having gone
through the town shouting shame and brandishing with rage a pitch-covered whip, Arcadio himself was
the dancing and the mechanism did not work. Melquaades, almost blind by then,wow power leveling, crumbling with decrepitude,
used the arts of his timeless wisdom in an attempt to fix it. Finally Jos?Arcadio Buendaa managed, by mistake, to
move a device that was stuck and the music came out, first in a burst and then in a flow of mixed-up notes.
Beating against the strings that had been put in without order or concert and had been tuned with temerity,buy warcraft gold, the
hammers let go. But the stubborn descendants of the twenty-one intrepid people who plowed through the
mountains in search of the sea to the west avoided the reefs of the melodic mix-up and the dancing went on until
dawn.
Pietro Crespi came back to repair the pianola. Rebeca and Amaranta helped him put the strings in order and
helped him with their laughter at the mix-up of the melodies. It was extremely pleasant and so chaste in its way
that 2rsula ceased her vigilance. On the eve of his departure a farewell dance for him was improvised with the
pianola and with Rebeca he put on a skillful demonstration of modern dance, Arcadio and Amaranta matched
them in grace and skill. But the exhibition was interrupted because Pilar Ternera, who was at the door with the
onlookers, had a fight, biting and hair pulling, with a woman who had dared to comment that Arcadio had a
woman’s behind. Toward midnight Pietro Crespi took his leave with a sentimental little speech, and he promised
to return very soon. Rebeca accompanied him to the door, and having closed up the house and put out the lamps,
she went to her room to weep. It was an inconsolable weeping that lasted for several days, the cause of which
was not known even by Amaranta. Her hermetism was not odd. Although she seemed expansive and cordial, she
had a solitary character and an impenetrable heart. She was a splendid adolescent with long and firm bones, but
she still insisted on using the small wooden rocking chair with which she had arrived at the house, reinforced
many times and with the arms gone. No one had discovered that even at that age she still had the habit of sucking
her finger. That was why she would not lose an opportunity to lock herself in the bathroom and had acquired the
habit of sleeping with her face to the wall. On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the
begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when
she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those
secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to
weep. She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity,runescape power leveling, sure that the bad taste would
be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered,
overcome by the growing anxiety,aoc gold, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of
primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. She would put handfuls of earth in her
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pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused feeling of pleasure and rage, as she
instructed her girl friends in the most difficult needlepoint and spoke about other men, who did not deserve the
sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man
who deserved that show of degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his
fine patent leather boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature of
his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in her heart. One