The war was awakening religious sentiment in the men and increasing the devotion of the women.  The churches were filled.  Dona Luisa was no longer confining herself to those of her neighborhood.  With the courage induced by extraordinary events, she was traversing Paris afoot and going from the Madeleine to Notre Dame, or to the Sacre Coeur on the heights of Montmartre.  Religious festivals were now thronged like popular assemblies.  The preachers were tribunes.  Patriotic enthusiasm interrupted many sermon with applause.

Each morning on opening the papers, before reading the war news, Senora Desnoyers would hunt other notices.  “Where was Father Amette going to be to-day?” Then, under the arched vaultings of that temple, would she unite her voice with the devout chorus imploring supernatural intervention.  “Lord, save France!” Patriotic religiosity was putting Sainte Genevieve at the head of the favored ones, so from all these fiestas, Dona Luisa, tremulous with faith, would return in expectation of a miracle similar to that which the patron saint of Paris had worked before the invading hordes of Attila.

Dona Elena was also visiting the churches, but those nearest the house.  Her brother-in-law saw her one afternoon entering Saint-Honoree d’Eylau.  The building was filled with the faithful, and on the altar was a sheaf of flags—­France and the allied nations.  The imploring crowd was not composed entirely of women.  Desnoyers saw men of his age, pompous and grave, moving their lips and fixing steadfast eyes on the altar on which were reflected like lost stars, the flames of the candles.  And again he felt envy.  They were fathers who were recalling their childhood prayers, thinking of their sons in battle.  Don Marcelo, who had always considered religion with indifference, suddenly recognized the necessity of faith.  He wanted to pray like the others, with a vague, indefinite supplication, including all beings who were struggling and dying for a land that he had not tried to defend.

He was scandalized to see von Hartrott’s wife kneeling among these people raising her eyes to the cross in a look of anguished entreaty.  She was begging heaven to protect her husband, the German who perhaps at this moment was concentrating all his devilish faculties on the best organization for crushing the weak; she was praying for her sons, officers of the King of Prussia, who revolver in hand were entering villages and farmlands, driving before them a horror-stricken crowd, leaving behind them fire and death.  And these orisons were going to mingle with those of the mothers who were praying for the youth trying to check the onslaught of the barbarians—­with the petitions of these earnest men, rigid in their tragic grief! . . .

He had to make a great effort not to protest aloud, and he left the church.  His sister-in-law had no right to kneel there among those people.

“They ought to put her out!” he growled indignantly.  “She is compromising God with her absurd entreaties.”