blasphemies.
The kind Dona Luisa always sought her out afterwards in the retirement
of her room, believing it necessary to give sisterly counsel to one
living so far from home. The Romantica did not maintain her austere
silence before the sister who had always venerated her superior
instruction; so now the poor lady was overwhelmed with accounts of the
stupendous forces of Germany, enunciated with all the authority of a
wife of a great Teutonic patriot, and a mother of an almost celebrated
professor. According to her graphic picture, millions of men were now
surging forth in enormous streams, thousands of cannons were filing by,
and tremendous mortars like monstrous turrets. And towering above all
this vast machinery of destruction was a man who alone was worth an
army, a being who knew everything and could do everything, handsome,
intelligent, and infallible as a god--the Emperor.
"The French just don't know what's ahead of them," declared Dona Elena.
"We are going to annihilate them. It is merely a matter of two weeks.
Before August is ended, the Emperor will have entered Paris."
Senora Desnoyers was so greatly impressed by these dire prophecies that
she could not hide them from her family. Chichi waxed indignant at her
mother's credulity and her aunt's Germanism. Martial fervor was flaming
up in the former Peoncito. Ay, if the women could only go to war! . . .
She enjoyed picturing herself on horseback in command of a regiment of
dragoons, charging the enemy with other Amazons as dashing and buxom as
she. Then her fondness for skating would predominate over her tastes for
the cavalry, and she would long to be an Alpine hunter, a diable bleu
among those who slid on long runners, with musket slung across the back
and alpenstock in hand, over the snowy slopes of the Vosges.
But the government did not appreciate the valorous women, and she
could obtain no other part in the war but to admire the uniform of her
true-love, Rene Lacour, converted into a soldier. The senator's son
certainly looked beautiful. He was tall and fair, of a rather feminine
type recalling his dead mother. In his fiancee's opinion, Rene was just
"a little sugar soldier." At first she had been very proud to walk the
streets by the side of this warrior, believing that his uniform had
greatly augmented his personal charm, but little by little a revulsion
of feeling was clouding her joy. The senatorial prince was nothing but
a common soldier. His
|