The Swan of Vilamorta by Emilia Pardo Bazán

The Swan has left his native lake, or rather, his pool; he has crossed the Atlantic on the wings of steam. Will he ever return? Will he come back with a sallow countenance, a disordered liver, and some thousands of dollars, in bills of exchange, in his pocketbook, to end his life where it began, as the ship disabled by storms receives its last repairs in the dockyard in which it was built? Will the black vomit, that terrible malady of the Antilles, the scourge of the Iberians who seek to emulate Columbus conquering a new world, attack him on his arrival on the young continent? Will he remain in the tropics, riding in his carriage, united in the bonds of matrimony to some Creole? Will he preside one day over one of those diminutive republics, in which the doctors are generals and the generals doctors?

Will his melancholy be cured by the salty kiss of the ocean breeze, by the contact of virgin soil, the sharp spur of necessity, that, pushing him into the conflict, will say to him, "Work"?