One Hundred Years of Solitude

she tried to take refuge in the
calm and virile protection of
Colonel Gerineldo Márquez,
but she had not been able to
overcome them, not even
with the most desperate act of
her old age when she would
bathe the small José Arcadio
three years before he was sent
to the seminary and caress
him not as a grandmother
would have done with a
grandchild, but as a woman
would have done with a man,