She could talk at great length with many of them about the decadence of France.  They were all expecting to receive the news from one moment to another, that the Kaiser had entered the Capital.  Ponderous men who had never done anything in all their lives, were criticizing the defects and indolence of the Republic.  Young men whose aristocracy aroused Dona Elena’s enthusiasm, broke forth into apostrophes against the corruption of Paris, corruption that they had studied thoroughly, from sunset to sunrise, in the virtuous schools of Montmartre.  They all adored Germany where they had never been, or which they knew only through the reels of the moving picture films.  They criticized events as though they were witnessing a bull fight.  “The Germans have the snap!  You can’t fool with them!  They are fine brutes!” And they appeared to admire this inhumanity as the most admirable characteristic.  “Why will they not say that in their own home on the other side of the frontier?” Chichi would protest.  “Why do they come into their neighbor’s country to ridicule his troubles? . . .  Possibly they consider it a sign of their wonderful good-breeding!”

But Julio had not gone to Biarritz to live with his family. . . .  The very day of his arrival, he saw Marguerite’s mother in the distance.  She was alone.  His inquiries developed the information that her daughter was living in Pau.  She was a trained nurse taking care of a wounded member of the family.  “Her brother . . . undoubtedly it is her brother,” thought Julio.  And he again continued his trip, this time going to Pau.

His visits to the hospitals there were also unavailing.  Nobody seemed to know Marguerite.  Every day a train was arriving with a new load of bleeding flesh, but her brother was not among the wounded.  A Sister of Charity, believing that he was in search of someone of his family, took pity on him and gave him some helpful directions.  He ought to go to Lourdes; there were many of the wounded there and many of the military nurses.  So Desnoyers immediately took the short cut between Pau and Lourdes.

He had never visited the sacred city whose name was so frequently on his mother’s lips.  For Dona Luisa, the French nation was Lourdes.  In her discussions with her sister and other foreign ladies who were praying that France might be exterminated for its impiety, the good senora always summed up her opinions in the same words:—­“When the Virgin wished to make her appearance in our day, she chose France.  This country, therefore, cannot be as bad as you say. . . .  When I see that she appears in Berlin, we will then re-discuss the matter.”