.

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.