Page:The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - (Los cuatro jinetes de Apocalipsis) (IA cu31924014386738).djvu/251

 The good lady was scandalized at hearing the outburst of savage desires that the mere mention of the Kaiser always aroused in her daughter. In times of peace, Chichí had rather admired this personage. "He's not so bad-looking," she had commented, "but with a very ordinary smile." Now all her wrath was concentrated upon him. The thousands of women that were weeping through his fault! The mothers without sons, the wives without husbands, the poor children left in the burning towns!… Ah, the vile wretch!… And she would brandish her knife of the old Peoncito days—a dagger with silver handle and sheath richly chased, a gift that her grandfather had exhumed from some forgotten souvenirs of his childhood in an old valise. The very first German that she came across was doomed to death. Doña Luisa was terrified to find her flourishing this weapon before her dressing mirror. She was no longer yearning to be a cavalryman nor a diable bleu. She would be entirely content if they would leave her alone in some closed space with the detested monster. In just five minutes she would settle the universal conflict.

"Defend yourself, Boche," she would shriek, standing at guard as in her childhood she had seen the peons doing on the ranch.

And with a knife-thrust above and below, she would pierce his imperial vitals. Immediately there resounded in her imagination, shouts of joy, the gigantic sigh of millions of women freed at last from the bloody nightmare—thanks to her playing the role of Judith or Charlotte Corday, or a blend of all the heroic women who had killed for the common weal. Her savage fury made her continue her imaginary slaughter, dagger in hand. Second stroke!—the Crown Prince rolling to one side and his head to the other. A rain of dagger thrusts!—all