“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! . . . She enjoyed picturing herself on horseback in command of a regiment of dragoons, charging the enemy with other Amazons as dashing and buxom as she. Then her fondness for skating would predominate over her tastes for the cavalry, and she would long to be an Alpine hunter, a diable bleu among those who slid o
