No one was scandalized. Since Aureli-ano Segun-do had taken charge the house those festivities were a common thing, even when there was no motive as proper as the birth of a Pope. In a few years, without effort, simply by luck, he had accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the swamp thanks to the supernatural proliferation of his animals. His mares would bear triplets, his hens laid twice a day, and his hogs fattened with such speed that no one could explain such disorderly fecundity except through the use black magic. "Save something now," úrsula would tell her wild great-grandson.

"This luck is not going to last all your life." But Aureli-ano Segun-do paid no attention to her. The more he opened champagne to soak his friends, the more wildly his animals gave birth and the more he was convinced that his lucky star was not a matter of his conduct but an influence of Petra Cotes, his concubine, whose love had the virtue of exasperating nature. So convinced was he that this was the origin of his fortune that he never kept Petra Cotes far away from his breeding grounds and even when he married had children he continued living with her with the consent Fernanda. Solid, monumental like his grandfathers, but with a joie de vivre and an irresistible good humor that they did not have, Aureli-ano Segun-do scarcely had time to look after his animals Where youput youreye,youput your bullet..

All he had to do was to take Petra Cores to his breeding grounds and have her ride across his land in order to have every animal marked with his brand succumb to the irremediable plague of proliferation.Like all the good things that occurred in his long life, that tremendous fortune had its origins in chance.Until the end of the wars Petra Cotes continued to support herself with the returns from her raffles and Aureli-ano Segun-do was able to sack úrsula's savings from time to time. They were a frivolous couple, with no other worries except going to bed every night, even on forbidden days, and frolicking there until dawn. "That woman has been your ruination," úrsula would shout at her great-grandson when she saw him coming into the house like a sleepwalker.

"She's got you so bewitched that one of these days I'm going to see you twisting around with colic and with a toad in your belly." José Arcadio Segun-do, who took a long time to discover that he had been supplanted, was unable to understand his brother's passion. He remembered Petra Cotes as an ordinary woman, rather lazy in bed, and completely lacking in any resources for lovemaking. Deaf to úrsula's clamor and the teasing of his brother, Aureli-ano Segun-do only thought at that time of finding a trade that would allow him to maintain a house for Petra Cotes, and to die her, on top of her and underneath her, during a night of feverish license. When Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía opened up his workshop again, seduced at last by the peaceful charms of old age, Aureli-ano Segun-do thought that it would be good business to devote himself to the manufacture of little gold fishes. He spent many hours in the hot room watching how the hard sheets of metal, worked by the colonel with the inconceivable patience of disillusionment, were slowly being converted into golden scales.