The kind Dona Luisa always sought her out afterwards in the retirement
of her room, believing it necessary to give sisterly counsel to one
living so far from home. The Romantica did not maintain her austere
silence before the sister who had always venerated her superior
instruction; so now the poor lady was overwhelmed with accounts of the
stupendous forces of Germany, enunciated with all the authority of a
wife of a great Teutonic patriot, and a mother of an almost celebrated
professor. According to her graphic picture, millions of men were now
surging forth in enormous streams, thousands of cannons were filing by,
and tremendous mortars like monstrous turrets. And towering above all
this vast machinery of destruction was a man who alone was worth an
army, a being who knew everything and could do everything, handsome,
intelligent, and infallible as a god--the Emperor.
"The French just don't know what's ahead of them," declared Dona Elena.
"We are going to annihilate them. It is merely a matter of two weeks.
Before August is ended, the Emperor will have entered Paris."
Senora Desnoyers was so greatly impressed by these dire prophecies that
she could not hide them from her family. Chichi waxed indignant at her
mother's credulity and her aunt's Germanism. Martial fervor was flaming
up in the former Peoncito. Ay, if the women could only go to war! .
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