trepid sub-lieutenant who was persisting in his daring deeds with the
heroic nerve of a musketeer.

Dona Luisa received a letter from Germany. Her sister wrote from Berlin,
transmitting her letters through the kindness of a South American in
Switzerland. This time, the good lady wept for some one besides her son;
she wept for Elena and the enemies. In Germany there were mothers, too,
and she put the sentiment of maternity above all patriotic differences.

Poor Frau von Hartrott! Her letter written a month before, had contained
nothing but death notices and words of despair. Captain Otto was dead.
Dead, too, was one of his younger brothers. The fact that the latter
had fallen in a territory dominated by their nation, at least gave the
mother the sad comfort of being able to weep near his grave. But the
Captain was buried on French soil, nobody knew where, and she would
never be able to find his remains, mingled with hundreds of others.
A third son was wounded in Poland. Her two daughters had lost their
promised lovers, and the sight of their silent grief, was intensifying
the mother's suffering. Von Hartrott continued presiding over patriotic
societies and making plans of expansion after the near victory, but he
had aged greatly in the last few months. The "sage" was the only one
still holding his own. The family afflictions were aggravating the
ferocity of Professor Julius von Hartrott. He was calculating, in a book
he was writing, the hundreds of thousands of millions that Germany must
exact after her triumph, and the various nations that she would have to
annex to the Fatherland.

Dona Luisa imagined that in the avenue Victor Hugo, she could hear the
mother's tears falling in her home in Berlin. "You will understand,
Luisa, my despair. . . . We were all so happy! May God punish those
who have brought such sorrow on the world! The Emperor is innocent. His
adversaries are to blame for it all . . ."

Don Marcelo was silent about the letter in his wife's presence. He
pitied Elena for her losses, so he overlooked her political connections.
He was touched, too, at Dona Luisa's distress about Otto. She had been
his godmother and Desnoyers his godfather. That was so--Don Marcelo had
forgotten all about it; and the fact recalled to his mental vision the
placid life of the ranch, and the play of the blonde children that he
had petted behind their grandfather's back, before Julio was born. For
many years, he had lavished grea