'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her house.
The Princess demurred.
'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial. You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'
'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.
She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.
In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every sword she has.'
Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:
'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her soil is bound to arm.'
More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.
But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,' written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally, in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That was all.