And yet, at the same time, Chichi was thinking enviously of her friends whose lovers and brothers were officers.  They could parade the streets, escorted by a gold-trimmed kepis that attracted the notice of the passers-by and the respectful salute of the lower ranks.

Each time that Dona Luisa, terrified by the forecasts of her sister, undertook to communicate her dismay to her daughter, the girl would rage up and down, exclaiming:—­

“What lies my aunt tells you! . . .  Since her husband is a German, she sees everything as he wishes it to be.  Papa knows more; Rene’s father is better informed about these things.  We are going to give them a thorough hiding!  What fun it will be when they hit my uncle and all my snippy cousins in Berlin! . . .”

“Hush,” groaned her mother.  “Do not talk such nonsense.  The war has turned you as crazy as your father.”

The good lady was scandalized at hearing the outburst of savage desires that the mere mention of the Kaiser always aroused in her daughter.  In times of peace, Chichi had rather admired this personage.  “He’s not so bad-looking,” she had commented, “but with a very ordinary smile.”  Now all her wrath was concentrated upon him.  The thousands of women that were weeping through his fault!  The mothers without sons, the wives without husbands, the poor children left in the burning towns! . . .  Ah, the vile wretch! . . .  And she would brandish her knife of the old Peoncito days—­a dagger with silver handle and sheath richly chased, a gift that her grandfather had exhumed from some forgotten souvenirs of his childhood in an old valise.  The very first German that she came across was doomed to death.  Dona Luisa was terrified to find her flourishing this weapon before her dressing mirror.  She was no longer yearning to be a cavalryman nor a diable bleu.  She would be entirely content if they would leave her, alone in some closed space with the detested monster.  In just five minutes she would settle the universal conflict.

“Defend yourself, Boche,” she would shriek, standing at guard as in her childhood she had seen the peons doing on the ranch.

And with a knife-thrust above and below, she would pierce his imperial vitals.  Immediately there resounded in her imagination, shouts of joy, the gigantic sigh of millions of women freed at last from the bloody nightmare—­thanks to her playing the role of Judith or Charlotte Corday, or a blend of all the heroic women who had killed for the common weal.  Her savage fury made her continue her imaginary slaughter, dagger in hand.  Second stroke!—­the Crown Prince rolling to one side and his head to the other.  A rain of dagger thrusts!—­all the invincible generals of whom her aunt had been boasting fleeing with their insides in their hands—­and bringing up the rear, that fawning lackey who wished to receive the same things as those of highest rank—­the uncle from Berlin. . . .  Ay, if she could only get the chance to make these longings a reality!