Desnoyers went in search of Senator Lacour.  He would know all the ministers; no one could be better informed.  “Yes, my friend,” said the important man sadly.  “Two great losses at Morhange and Charleroi, at the East and the North.  The enemy is going to invade French soil! . . .  But our army is intact, and will retreat in good order.  Good fortune may still be ours.  A great calamity, but all is not lost.”

Preparations for the defense of Paris were being pushed forward . . . rather late.  The forts were supplying themselves with new cannon.  Houses, built in the danger zone in the piping times of peace, were now disappearing under the blows of the official demolition.  The trees on the outer avenues were being felled in order to enlarge the horizon.  Barricades of sacks of earth and tree trunks were heaped at the doors of the old walls.  The curious were skirting the suburbs in order to gaze at the recently dug trenches and the barbed wire fences.  The Bois de Boulogne was filled with herds of cattle.  Near heaps of dry alfalfa steers and sheep were grouped in the green meadows.  Protection against famine was uppermost in the minds of a people still remembering the suffering of 1870.  Every night, the street lighting was less and less.  The sky, on the other hand, was streaked incessantly by the shafts from the searchlights.  Fear of aerial invasion was increasing the public uneasiness.  Timid people were speaking of Zeppelins, attributing to them irresistible powers, with all the exaggeration that accompanies mysterious dangers.

In her panic, Dona Luisa greatly distressed her husband, who was passing the days in continual alarm, yet trying to put heart into his trembling and anxious wife.  “They are going to come, Marcelo; my heart tells me so.  The girl! . . . the girl!” She was accepting blindly all the statements made by her sister, the only thing that comforted her being the chivalry and discipline of those troops to which her nephews belonged.  The news of the atrocities committed against the women of Belgium were received with the same credulity as the enemy’s advances announced by Elena.  “Our girl, Marcelo. . . .  Our girl!” And the girl, object of so much solicitude, would laugh with the assurance of vigorous youth on hearing of her mother’s anxiety.  “Just let the shameless fellows come!  I shall take great pleasure in seeing them face to face!” And she clenched her right hand as though it already clutched the avenging knife.

The father became tired of this situation.  He still had one of his monumental automobiles that an outside chauffeur could manage.  Senator Lacour obtained the necessary passports and Desnoyers gave his wife her orders in a tone that admitted of no remonstrance.  They must go to Biarritz or to some of the summer resorts in the north of Spain.  Almost all the South American families had already gone in the same direction.  Dona Luisa tried to object.  It was impossible for her to separate