Gustave Aimard - The Adventurers

We will, in a few words, introduce to the reader this personage, who will play so important a part in the course of the following history. 2 2 Reasons of the highest consideration oblige us to change the names and the portraits of the personages of this history, as the majority still exist. But we vouch for the correctness of the facts we relate. General Don Pancho Bustamente, who has left in Chili a reputation for cruelty so terrible that he is generally called El Verdugo , or the executioner, was a man of from thirty-five to thirty-six years of age, although he looked near fifty, a little above the middle height, well made, and of good carriage, announcing altogether great corporeal strength. His features were tolerably regular, but his prominent forehead, his grey eyes deeply set beneath the brows, and close to his hook nose, his large mouth and high cheek bones, gave him something of a resemblance to a bird of prey. His chin was square, an indication of obstinacy; his hair and moustache, beginning to be streaked with grey, were trained and cut in military fashion. He wore the magnificent uniform, covered at every seam with gold embroidery, of a general officer.

Don Bustamente was the son of his own works, which was in his favour. At first a simple soldier, he had, by exemplary conduct and more than common talents, raised himself, step by step, to the highest rank of the army, and had in the last instance been named minister-at-war. Then the jealousy which had been silent whilst he was confounded with the crowd, was unchained against him. The General, instead of despising calumnies which might have died out of themselves, gave them some degree of foundation, by inaugurating a system of severity and cruelty. Devoured by an ambition which nothing could satisfy, all means were deemed good by him for the attainment of an object he secretly aimed at, which was the overthrow of the republic and government of Chili, and the formation of Bolivia and Araucania into one state, of which he would cause himself to be proclaimed Protector – an object which, besides the almost insurmountable difficulties it presented, ever appeared – owing to the universal hatred which the General had aroused against himself – to slip further from his grasp each time he thought he was about grasping it.

At the moment we bring him on the scene, he found himself in one of the most critical circumstances of his political career. He had in vain shot the patriots en masse – conspiracies, as always happens in such cases, succeeded each other without interruption, and the system of terror which he had inaugurated, far from intimidating the population, appeared, on the contrary, to urge them on to revolt. Secret societies were formed; and one of these, the most powerful and the most terrible, that of the Dark-Hearts, enveloped him in invisible nets in which he struggled in vain. He foresaw that if he did not hasten on the coup d'état he meditated, he should be lost beyond redemption. After a rather long silence, the General placed himself by the side of the Linda.

"We will be avenged!" he said, in a deep tone; "be but patient."

"Oh!" she replied, bitterly, "my vengeance has commenced!"

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This word, which has no equivalent in English or French, is in the Spanish language the highest expression of physical beauty in woman.

Reasons of the highest consideration oblige us to change the names and the portraits of the personages of this history, as the majority still exist. But we vouch for the correctness of the facts we relate.