n one of the rainy nights a patrol of soldiers
had searched the house looking for Jose Arcadio Segundo and
had been unable to find him.
"Lord save usl" she exclaimed, as if she could see everything. "So much trouble teaching you good manners and you end up living like a pig."
Jose Arcadio Segundo was still reading over the parchments. The only thing visible in the intricate tangle of hair was the teeth striped with green slime and his motionless
eyes. When he recognized his great-grandmother''s voice he
turned his head toward the door, tried to smile, and without
knowing it repeated an old phrase of Ursula''s.
"''What did you expect" he murmured. "Time passes."
"That''s how it goes," Ursula said, "but not so much."
When she said it she realized that she was giving the same
reply that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had given in his
death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence
that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it
was turning in a circle. But even then she did not give resignation a chance. She scolded Jose Arcadio Segundo as if he were a child and insisted that he take a bath and shave and
lend a hand in fixing up the house. The simple idea of abandoning the room that had given him peace terrified Jose Arcadio Segundo. He shouted that there was no human
power capable of making him go out because he did not want