“You must love her very much, Captain,” continued the matron.  “Freya speaks only of you.  She has been so unfortunate!...  Life has been so cruel to her!...”

The sailor felt as though he were in the placid bosom of a family.  That lady was discreetly taking everything for granted, speaking to him as to a son-in-law.  Her kindly glance was somewhat melancholy.  It was the sweet sadness of mature people who find the present monotonous, the future circumscribed, and taking refuge in memories of the past, envy the young who enjoy the reality of what they can taste only in memory.

“Happy you!...  You love each other so much!...  Life is worth living only because of love.”

And Freya, as though irresistibly affected by these counsels, threw one arm around the doctor’s globular, corseted figure, while convulsively clasping Ulysses’ right hand.

The gold-rimmed spectacles, with their protecting gleam, appeared to incite them to even greater intimacy.  “You may kiss each other....”  And the imposing dame, trumping up an insignificant pretext, so as to facilitate their love-making was about to go out when the drapery of the door between the salon and office was raised.

There entered a man of Ferragut’s age, but shorter, with a weather-beaten face.  He was dressed in the English style with scrupulous correctness.  It was plain to be seen that he was accustomed to take the most excessive and childish interest in everything referring to the adornment of his person.  The suit of gray wool appeared to have achieved its finishing touch in the harmony of cravat, socks, and handkerchief sticking out of his pocket,—­all in the same tone.  The three pieces were blue, without the slightest variation in shade, chosen with the exactitude of a man who would undoubtedly suffer cruel discomfort if obliged to go out into the street with his cravat of one color and his socks of another.  His gloves had the same dark tan tone as his shoes.

Ferragut thought that this dandy, in order to be absolutely perfect, ought to be clean shaved.  And yet, he was wearing a beard, close clipped on the cheeks and forming over the chin a short, sharp point.  The captain suspected that he was a sailor.  In the German fleet, in the Russian, in all the navies of the North where they are not shaved in the English style, they use this traditional little beard.

The newcomer bowed, or, more properly speaking, doubled himself over at right angles, with a brusque stiffness, upon kissing the hands of the two ladies.  Then he raised his impertinent monocle and fixed it in one of his eyes while the doctor made the introduction.

“Count Kaledine ...  Captain Ferragut.”

The count gave the sailor his hand, a hard hand, well-cared for and vigorous, which for a long time enclosed that of Ulysses, wishing to dominate it with an ineffectual pressure.

The conversation continued in English which was the language employed by the doctor in her relations with Ulysses.