“Ah, what they would give in Berlin for my treasures!” . . .

Never had Argensola eaten with greater avidity.  Consideration of the great privations suffered by the adversary was sharpening his appetite to a monstrous capacity.  White bread, golden brown and crusty, was stimulating him to an almost religious ecstasy.

“If friend William could only get his claws on this!” he would chuckle to his companion.

So he chewed and swallowed with increasing relish; solids and liquids on passing through his mouth seemed to be acquiring a new flavor, rare and divine.  Distant hunger for him was a stimulant, a sauce of endless delight.

While France was inspiring his enthusiasm, he was conceding greater credit to Russia.  “Ah, those Cossacks!” . . .  He was accustomed to speak of them as intimate friends.  He loved to describe the unbridled gallop of the wild horsemen, impalpable as phantoms, and so terrible in their wrath that the enemy could not look them in the face.  The concierge and the stay-at-homes used to listen to him with all the respect due to a foreign gentleman, knowing much of the great outside world with which they were not familiar.

“The Cossacks will adjust the accounts of these bandits!” he would conclude with absolute assurance.  “Within a month they will have entered Berlin.”

And his public composed of women—­wives and mothers of those who had gone to war—­would modestly agree with him, with that irresistible desire which we all feel of placing our hopes on something distant and mysterious.  The French would defend the country, reconquering, besides the lost territories, but the Cossacks—­of whom so many were speaking but so few had seen—­were going to give the death blow.  The only person who knew them at first hand was Tchernoff, and to Argensola’s astonishment, he listened to his words without showing any enthusiasm.  The Cossacks were for him simply one body of the Russian army—­good enough soldiers, but incapable of working the miracles that everybody was expecting from them.

“That Tchernoff!” exclaimed Argensola.  “Since he hates the Czar, he thinks the entire country mad.  He is a revolutionary fanatic. . . .  And I am opposed to all fanaticisms.”

Julio was listening absent-mindedly to the news brought by his companion, the vibrating statements recited in declamatory tones, the plans of the campaign traced out on an enormous map fastened to the wall of the studio and bristling with tiny flags that marked the camps of the belligerent armies.  Every issue of the papers obliged the Spaniard to arrange a new dance of the pins on the map, followed by his comments of bomb-proof optimism.

“We have entered into Alsace; very good! . . .  It appears now that we abandon Alsace.  Splendid!  I suspect the cause.  It is in order to enter again in a better place, getting at the enemy from behind. . . .  They say that Liege has fallen.  What a lie! . . .  And if it does fall, it doesn’t matter.  Just an incident, nothing more!  The others remain . . . the others! . . . that are advancing on the Eastern side, and are going to enter Berlin.”