He was always well turned out-in his father’s clothes, altered to fit, the collars starched stiff and suits well pressed to disguise the threadbare cloth. Much later, when he had become a wealthy man to whom others doffed their hats, he confessed to me that genteel poverty is the worst of all because it must be concealed. In any case, his family was left without means and, because he was the oldest, my grandfather had to drop out of school and look for work to support his mother and educate his younger brothers. The details of what happened that fateful night were never revealed, but it could have been a duel, or revenge, or some accident of love.

My grandfather was one of the former, the good old families, but his father died young of an unexplained shotgun wound. The Basque’s descendants bought fertile land on the outskirts of the capital, which with time increased in value they became more refined and constructed lordly mansions with great parks and groves they wed their daughters to rich young men from established families they educated their children in rigorous religious schools and thus over the course of the years they were integrated into a proud aristocracy of landowners that prevailed for more than a century-until the whirlwind of modern times replaced them with technocrats and businessmen. Some few irascible types died frothing at the mouth, although the cause may not have been rage, as evil tongues had it, but, rather, some local pestilence. But why start so far back? It is enough to say that those who came after him were a breed of impetuous women and men with sentimental hearts and strong arms fit for hard work. The legend of our family begins at the end of the last century, when a robust Basque sailor disembarked on the coast of Chile with his mother’s reliquary strung around his neck and his head swimming with plans for greatness. I am going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost.

Paula by Isabel Allende