But other more important preoccupations tormented the Colonel. The greatly feared offensive had begun. The telegrams from the front were brief and bad. The Allies were retreating before the German advance. Their lines were not broken, but were wavering, and curving backwards under the overwhelming blows of the enemy. Every day dozens of villages and great stretches of territory were lost.
Don Marcos, with the bursts of anger of a Polytechnic freshman, protested against the lack of foresight of the Generals, mingling his complaints with those of the crowd.
"I knew it would come," he said, with a self-sufficient air to the groups of idlers in the ante-room of the Casino, where he was listened to because of his military title. "The Kaiser has massed in France all the troops that he had in Russia. Who wouldn't have expected it? And our forces are doubtless inferior in numbers."
The bombardment of Paris finally routed all his ideas of strategy. "Lies!" he roared, standing in front of the telegraphic despatches on the bulletin board, and reading of the first shells that had fallen in Paris. It was impossible: he was ready to stake his word, and was well informed as to the range of modern artillery. And on learning the existence of cannon that fired more than a hundred kilometers, he was disconcerted. "What times we're living in! What a war this is!"
When the ladies consulted him in the Casino or in the Hôtel de Paris, he displayed unshakable optimism in the face of the bad news.
"This is nothing: The reaction is going to set in. Our men are withdrawing in order to be better able to take the offensive."
But when he was alone his sense of security collapsed, and he could not hide from himself that his faith was shaken like that of the rest.
"They will reach Paris, if God does not take a hand," he said to himself. "A miracle is necessary, another miracle like that of the Marne."
For the good Colonel still firmly believed that the first battle of the Marne had been a miracle wrought by Saint Genevieve, by Joan of Arc, or some other beatific person able to intervene in human combats, much as the false gods sung by Homer had intervened. Did not St. James fight in the battles of Spain, whenever the Christians attacked the Moors?
"And the miracle has been rendered worthless," he said bitterly. "It will have to be repeated, they will have to begin again, after four years of war."