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 illustrious father, fearful that the war might cut off forever the dynasty of the Lacours, indispensable to the welfare of the State, had had his son mustered into the auxiliary service of the army.  By this arrangement, his heir need not leave Paris, ranking about as high as those who were kneading the bread or mending the soldiers’ cloaks.  Only by going to the front could he claim—­as a student of the Ecole Centrale—­his title of sub-lieutenant in the Artillery Reserves.

“What happiness for me that you have to stay in Paris!  How delighted I am that you are just a private! . . .”