table 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.

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
th