One January

Thursday at two o'clock in the morning,Amaranta was born.

Before anyone came into the room,Úrsula examined her carefully.

She was light and watery,like a newt,but all of her parts were human.

Aureliano did not notice the new thing except when the house became full of people.

Protected by the confusion,he went off in search of his brother, who had not been in bed since eleven o'clock,and itwas such an impulsive decision that he did not even have time to ask himself how he could get him out of Pilar Ternera's bedroom.

He circled the house for several hours,whistling private calls,until the proximity of dawn forced him to go home.

In his mother's room,playing with the newborn little sister and with a face that drooped with innocence,he found José Arcadio.

Úrsula was barely overher forty days' rest when the gypsies returned.

They were the same acrobats and jugglers that had brought the ice.