Je demande à l'historien l'amour de l'humanité ou de la liberté;
sa justice impartiale ne doit être impassible. Il faut, au contraire,
qu'il souhaite, qu'il espère, qu'il souffre, ou soit heureux de ce
qu'il rencontre.

Villemain, Cours de littérature ¹

Terrible specter of Facundo, I will evoke you, so that you may rise, shak-
ing off the bloody dust covering your ashes, and explain the hidden life
and the inner convulsions that tear at the bowels of a noble people! You
possess the secret: reveal it to us! Even ten years after your tragic death,
the men of the cities and the gauchos of the Argentine plains, follow-
ing different paths in the desert, were saying: “No! he has not died! He
still lives! He will return!” True! Facundo has not died. He lives on in
popular traditions, in Argentine politics and revolutions, in Rosas, his
heir, his complement; his soul has moved into that new mold, one more
perfect and finished, and what in him was only instinct, impulse, and a
tendency, in Rosas became a system, means, and end. Rural nature, co-
lonial and barbarous, was changed through this metamorphosis into art,
into a system, and into regular policy, able to present itself to the world
as the way of being of a people, incarnated in one man who has aspired
to take on the airs of a genius, dominating events, men, and things. Fa-
cundo—provincial, barbarous, brave, bold—was replaced by Rosas, son
of cultured Buenos Aires without being so himself; by Rosas, traitorous,
cold-hearted, calculating soul, who does evil without passion, and slowly

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