19. That attorney Brambila gets the most harebrained ideas! Now he’s bought that old mansion on Puente de Alvarado, sumptuous, but totally impractical, built at the time of the French Intervention. Naturally, I thought it was just another of his many deals, and that he intended, as he had on other occasions, to demolish the house and sell the land at a profit, or at least to build an office and commercial property there. That is, that’s what I thought at first. I was astounded when he told me his plan: he meant to use the house, with its marvelous parquet floors and glittering chandeliers, for entertaining and lodging his North American business associates—history, folklore, and elegance all in one package. And he wanted me to live for a while in his mansion, because this Brambila, who was so impressed with everything about the place, had noticed a certain lack of human warmth in these rooms, which had been empty since 1910, when the family fled to France. A caretaker couple who lived in the rooftop apartment had kept everything clean and polished—though for forty years there hadn’t been a stick of furniture except a magnificent Pleyel in the salon.
