He confused the names of streets, proposed visits to buildings which had long since disappeared, and all his attempts to prove himself an expert authority on Paris were attended with disappointment.

His children, guided by recent reading up, knew Paris better than he.

He was considered a foreigner in his own country.

At first, he even felt a certain strangeness in using his native tongue, for he had remained on the ranch without speaking a word of his language for years at a time.

He was used to thinking in Spanish, and translating his ideas into the speech of his ancestors spattered his French with all kinds of Creole dialect.
"Where a man makes his fortune and raises his family, there is his true country," he said sententiously, remembering Madariaga.
The image of that distant country dominated him with insistent obsession as soon as the impressions of the voyage had worn off.