One Hundred Years of Solitude

herself up in the parlor at two
in the afternoon to practice
the clavichord with an
inflexible discipline. It was
obvious that she liked the
house, that she spent the
whole year dreaming about
the excitement of the young
people her arrival brought
around, and that she was not
far removed from the festive
vocation and hospitable
excesses of her father. The
first sign of that calamitous