Two miles from the estate there was an observatory in the lonely pampas. A wealthy German cattle-man had built it, and now a German professor with his two assistants lived there and watched the firmament. Letitia had often asked to see the observatory, but Stephen had always refused to let her visit it. Now she intended to make it the scene of her meeting with Friedrich Pestel. She yearned for a long talk with him. To use an observatory as a refuge for forlorn lovers--it was a notion that delighted Letitia and made her ready to run any risk. The day and the hour were set, and all circumstances were favourable. Riccardo and Paolo had gone hunting; Demetrios had been sent by his father to a farm far to the north; the old people slept. Esmeralda alone had to be deceived. Fortunately the girl had a headache, and Letitia persuaded her to go to bed. When twilight approached, Letitia put on a bright, airy frock in which she could ride. She did not hesitate in spite of her pregnancy. Then, as though taking a harmless walk, she left the house and proceeded to the avenue of palms, where the Indian boy awaited her with two ponies. It was beautiful to ride out freely into the endless plain. In the west there still shone a reddish glow, into which projected in lacy outline the chain of mountains. The earth suffered from drought; it had not rained for long, and crooked fissures split the ground. Hundreds of grasshopper traps were set up in the fields, and the pits behind them, which were from two to three metres deep, were filled with the insects. When she reached the observatory, it was dark. The building was like an oriental house of prayer. From a low structure of brick arose the mighty iron dome, the upper part of which rotated on a movable axis. The shutters of the windows were closed, and there was no light to be seen. Friedrich Pestel waited at the gate; he had tethered his horse to a post. He told her that the professor and his two assistants had been absent for a week. She and he, he added, could enter the building nevertheless. The caretaker, an old, fever-stricken mulatto, had given him the key. The Indian boy lit the lantern that he had carried tied to his saddle. Pestel took it, and preceded Letitia through a desolate brick hallway, then up a wooden and finally up a spiral iron stairway. “Fortune is kind to us,” he said. “Next week there’s going to be an eclipse of the sun, and astronomers are arriving in Buenos Ayres from Europe. The professor and his assistants have gone to receive them.” Letitia’s heart beat very fast. In the high vault of the observatory, the little light of the lantern made only the faintest impression. The great telescope was a terrifying shadow; the drawing instruments and the photographic apparatus on its stand looked like the skeletons of animals; the charts on the wall, with their strange dots and lines, reminded her of black magic. The whole room seemed to her like the cave of a wizard.