e married, about
two years ago, this pretty girl whom I saw. She is Spanish. He met her
somewhere in Southern Spain, and it was a desperate love match. The
first child was born about six weeks before the war broke out. Of
course the young husband was in the first class mobilized. The young
wife is not French. She doesn't care at all who governs France, so
that her man were left her in peace. I imagine that the old father
suspected this. He had never been happy that his one son married a
foreigner. The instant the young wife realized that her man was
expected to put love of France before love of her, she began to make
every effort to induce him to go out of the country. To make a long
story short, the son went to his mother, whom he adored, made a clean
breast of the situation, and proposed that, to satisfy his wife, he
should start with her for the Spanish frontier, finding means to have
her brother meet them there and take her home to her own people. He
promised to make no effort to cross the frontier himself, and gave his
word of honor to be with his regiment in time. He knew it would not be
easy to do, and, in case of accident, he wished his mother to be able
to explain to the old veteran. But the lad had counted without the
spirit that is dominant in every French woman to-day. The mother
listened. She controlled herself. She did not protest. But that night,
when the young couple were about to leave the house, carrying the
sleeping baby, they found the old man, pistol in hand, with his back
against the door. The words were few. The veteran stated that his son
could only pass over his dead body--that if he insisted, he would
shoot him before he would allow him to pass: that neither wife nor
child should leave France. It was in vain that the wife, on her knees,
pleaded that she was not French--that the war did not concern
her--that her husband was dearer to her than honor--and so forth. The
old man declared that in marrying his son she became French, though
she was a disgrace to the name, that her son was a born Frenchman;
that she might go, and welcome, but that she would go without the
child, and, of course, that ended the argument. The next morning the
baby was christened, but the tale had leaked out. I suppose the
Spanish wife had not kept her ideas absolutely to herself--and the son
joined his regiment. The Spanish wife is still here, but, needless to
say, she is not at all loved by her husband's family, who watch