After the time for conscription had long since passed, an inertness of will had made him consider a return to his country as somewhat absurd and useless.

On the other side, nothing remained to attract him.

He had even lost track of those country relatives with whom his mother had lived.

In his heaviest hours he had tried to occupy his activity by planning an enormous mausoleum, all of marble, in La Recoleta, the cemetery of the rich, in order to move thither the remains of Madariaga as founder of the dynasty, following him with all his own when their hour should come.
He was beginning to feel the weight of age.

He was nearly seventy years old, and the rude life of the country, the horseback rides in the rain, the rivers forded upon his swimming horse, the nights passed in the open air, had brought on a rheumatism that was torturing his best days.
His family, however, reawakened his enthusiasm.