making the voyage, while she, the daughter of a Frenchman, had never
seen Paris! . . . Oh, Paris. The doctors in attendance on melancholy
ladies were announcing the existence of a new and terrible disease, "the
mania for Paris." Dona Luisa supported her daughter. Why had she not
gone to live in Europe like her sister, since she was the richer of the
two? Even Julio gravely declared that in the old world he could study to
better advantage. America is not the land of the learned.

Infected by the general unrest, the father finally began to wonder
why the idea of going to Europe had not occurred to him long before.
Thirty-four years without going to that country which was not his!
. . . It was high time to start! He was living too near to his business. In
vain the retired ranchman had tried to keep himself indifferent to the
money market. Everybody was coining money around him. In the club, in
the theatre, wherever he went, the people were talking about purchases
of lands, of sales of stock, of quick negotiations with a triple profit,
of portentous balances. The amount of money that he was keeping idle in
the banks was beginning to weigh upon him. He finally ended by involving
himself in some speculation; like a gambler who cannot see the roulette
wheel without putting his hand in his pocket.

His family was right. "To Paris!" For in the Desnoyers' mind, to go to
Europe meant, of course, to go to Paris. Let the "aunt from Berlin" keep
on chanting the glories of her husband's country! "It's sheer nonsense!"
exclaimed Julio who had made grave geographical and ethnic comparisons
in his nightly forays. "There is no place but Paris!" Chichi saluted
with an ironical smile the slightest doubt of it--"Perhaps they make as
elegant fashions in Germany as in Paris? . . . Bah!" Dona Luisa took up
her children's cry. "Paris!" . . . Never had it even occurred to her to
go to a Lutheran land to be protected by her sister.