One Hundred Years of Solitude

did not cause them as much
damage as the corrosive war
of eternal postponements.
Even Colonel Gerineldo
Márquez, who escaped three
attempts on his life, survived
five wounds, and emerged
unscathed from innumerable
battles, succumbed to that
atrocious siege of waiting and
sank into the miserable defeat
of old age, thinking of
Amaranta among the
diamond-shaped patches of