Julio saw a train bearing wounded from the battles of Flanders and Lorraine.  Their worn and dirty uniforms were enlivened by the whiteness of the bandages sustaining the wounded limbs or protecting the broken heads.  All were trying to smile, although with livid mouths and feverish eyes, at their first glimpse of the land of the South as it emerged from the mist bathed in the sunlight, and covered with the regal vestures of its vineyards.  The men from the North stretched out their hands for the fruit that the women were offering them, tasting with delight the sweet grapes of the country.

For four days the distracted lover lived in Bordeaux, stunned and bewildered by the agitation of a provincial city suddenly converted into a capital.  The hotels were overcrowded, many notables contenting themselves with servants’ quarters.  There was not a vacant seat in the cafes; the sidewalks could not accommodate the extraordinary assemblage.  The President was installed in the Prefecture; the State Departments were established in the schools and museums; two theatres were fitted up for the future reunions of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.  Julio was lodged in a filthy, disreputable hotel at the end of a foul-smelling alley.  A little Cupid adorned the crystals of the door, and the looking-glass in his room was scratched with names and unspeakable phrases—­souvenirs of the occupants of an hour . . . and yet many grand ladies, hunting in vain for temporary residence, would have envied him his good fortune.

All his investigations proved fruitless.  The friends whom he encountered in the fugitive crowd were thinking only of their own affairs.  They could talk of nothing but incidents of the installation, repeating the news gathered from the ministers with whom they were living on familiar terms, or mentioning with a mysterious air, the great battle which was going on stretching from the vicinity of Paris to Verdun.  A pupil of his days of glory, whose former elegance was now attired in the uniform of a nurse, gave him some vague information.  “The little Madame Laurier? . . .  I remember hearing that she was living somewhere near here. . . .  Perhaps in Biarritz.”  Julio needed no more than this to continue his journey.  To Biarritz!

The first person that he encountered on his arrival was Chichi.  She declared that the town was impossible because of the families of rich Spaniards who were summering there.  “The Boches are in the majority, and I pass a miserable existence quarrelling with them. . . .  I shall finally have to live alone.”  Then he met his mother—­embraces and tears.  Afterwards he saw his Aunt Elena in the hotel parlors, most enthusiastic over the country and the summer colony.