He was not the knight of her dreams awaited by the fair lady.

He was almost a servant, a blond immigrant with reddish hair, fat, heavy, and with bovine eyes that reflected an eternal fear of disagreeing with his chiefs.

But day by day, she was finding in him something which rather modified these impressions--his feminine fairness, except where he was burned by the sun, the increasingly martial aspect of his moustachios, the agility with which he mounted his horse, his air of a troubadour, intoning with a rather weak tenor voluptuous romances whose words she did not understand.
One night, just before supper, the impressionable girl announced with a feverish excitement which she could no longer repress that she had made a grand discovery.
"Papa, Karl is of noble birth! He belongs to a great family." The plainsman made a gesture of indifference.

Other things were vexing him in those days.

But during the evening, feeling the necessity of venting on somebody the wrath which had been gnawing at his vitals since his last trip to Buenos Aires, he interrupted the singer.
"See here, gringo, what is all this nonsense about nobility which you have been telling my girl ?" Karl left the piano that he might draw himself up to the approved military position before responding.