CHAPTER II.
NEW LIFE When Marguerite was able to return to the studio in the rue de la Pompe, Julio, who had been living in a perpetual bad humor, seeing everything in the blackest colors, suddenly felt a return of his old optimism.
The war was not going to be so cruel as they all had at first imagined.
The days had passed by, and the movements of the troops were beginning to be less noticeable.

As the number of men diminished in the streets, the feminine population seemed to have increased.

Although there was great scarcity of money, the banks still remaining closed, the necessity for it was increasingly great, in order to secure provisions.

Memories of the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination.

Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings.