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The servants said that even the waters of the Orinoco obeyed Misia Schmutter,
the white-haired old lady, so proud of her Prussian ancestry, who treated
the world like her slave. She had seen a glint of her own ruthlessness in her
grandson Lucien''s eye. Worshipping and torturing him by turns she cultivated
in him a terrible understanding of tyranny and the true nature of power. She
passed on to him a love of beauty and science and of roulette.
Even after her death ''the Empress of the Orinoco'' would hold Lucien in a
relentless stranglehold, clinging like a tiger to his back, a demon people could
glimpse through Lucien''s gentleness. Misia Schmutter would be there as he set
out from the plains of San Fernando de Apure for the extraordinary journeys of
his life, first to Caracas where he lived in sumptuous excess in a gothic palace,
crowded with the human vultures who took advantage of his almost demented
generosity. Later, when he was declared a public menace and locked away,
tales of his extravagance would continue to flourish, as would the legend of his
extraordinary luck at gambling.
Like a pilgrim to a shrine, Lucien made his way to the German fatherland which
Misia Schmutter had so passionately described to him, to find the Nazis on
the verge of havoc. He returned to his beloved Venezuela, to be imprisoned for
treason and escape through the forest. Arrested and convicted for a murder he
had not committed.
