He had no French friends, and upon going into the street, his feet instinctively took him to the places where the Argentinians gathered together.

It was the same with them.

They had left their country only to feel, with increasing intensity, the desire to talk about it all the time.

There he read the papers, commenting on the rising prices in the fields, on the prospects for the next harvests and on the sales of cattle.

Returning home, his thoughts were still in America, and he chuckled with delight as he recalled the way in which the two chinas had defied the professional dignity of the French cook, preparing their native stews and other dishes in Creole style.
He had settled the family in an ostentatious house in the avenida Victor Hugo, for which he paid a rental of twenty-eight thousand francs.