Publisher's Synopsis
Under a gay awning of red and white which covered a portion of the famous roof-garden of the Palacete Mendoza at Rio, reclined Gideon Mendoza Morse, the richest man in Brazil, and-it was said-the third richest man in the world. He lay in a silken hammock, smoking those little Brazilian cigarettes which are made of fragrant black tobacco and wrapped in maize leaf. It was afternoon, the hour of the siesta. From where he lay the millionaire could look down upon his marvelous gardens, which surrounded the white palace he had built for himself, peerless in the whole of South America. The trunks of great trees were draped with lianas bearing brilliantly-colored flowers of every hue. There were lawns edged with myrtle, mimosa, covered with the golden rain of their blossoms, immense palms, lazily waving their fans in the breeze of the afternoon, and set in the lawns were marble pools of clear water from the center of which fountains sprang. There was a continual murmur of insects and flashes of rainbow-colored light as the tiny, brilliant humming birds whirred among the flowers. Great butterflies of blue, silver, and vermilion, butterflies as large as bats, flapped languidly over the ivory ferns, and the air was spicy and scented with vanilla.
