Automobiles painted green and yellow, men who smell of shaving razors and women who curve their smiles, one after another, towards the sky, stream in endless lines past the interlacing iron beams that are being raised next to the sea.

A fashionable hotel, an elegant casino in the bud. An embryonic spa for poor children, perhaps... A few of the pretty things about the invading civilization.

The workers heave the beams robustly, raise them through the air in the jaws of screeching cranes, beams intertwined with chains that wind up around slow, complaining pulleys... These are dark workers, laboring in silence. They belong to the Ironworkers' Union; and in spite of it all, they seem so tired...

The world has made great progress. Automobiles continue to stream by, green, yellow, red... Streaming by as always, with their cargoes of clean-shaven men, of women blooming with smiles.

They slow down for a moment to view the great work of civilization, turning their backs to the sea.

"Just a few years ago, this flourishing seacoast, which already appears in all the pamphlets of Cook's Tours Agency, was an uninhabitable swamp, a noxious jungle...

And soon they leave, with their backs still turned to the everlasting sea, gesturing broadly with their arms.

The beams leap into the air, the gigantic rivets are welded red-hot, the lime burns and the concrete sets, hugging onto the iron hills like dinosaur hides.

The clamor of civilization grows all up and down the startled beach. (In the midst of the sand, in the midst of the iron, scattered bits of greenness still persist.)

This afternoon, planting one foot of the framework into the shredded earth, one of the workers – the most silent, the darkest one – has found a tin disk, cut into the most perfect circle.

The tin is a bit concave towards the center, with highly polished edges, striated with bluish veins. The ironworker's hand has felt it to be exceedingly cold...

The man interrupts his job and looks for a moment at the shining circlet, which gleams in the sun; it is a curious piece... He thinks that, washed and disinfected (alloy of instinctive economy and modern hygiene campaigns), it could well serve as a durable plate for his cold and punctual lunch (his meals are disciplined as well); but then he tosses it aside with a gesture of disdain.

Bárbara, behind, above, below, forever..., sets her pallid face against the thick iron bars...