“May God punish them ... but may He wait a little bit!” he murmured in his thoughts.

The imposing professor became greatly exasperated when speaking of the land in which she was living.

“Mandolin players!  Bandits!” she always cried when referring to the Italians.

How much they owed to Germany!  The Emperor Wilhelm had been a father to them.  All the world knew that!...  And yet when the war was breaking out, they were going to refuse to follow their old friends.  Now German diplomacy must busy itself, not to keep them at her side, but to prevent their going with the adversary.  Every day she was receiving news from Rome.  She had hoped that Italy might keep herself neutral, but who could trust the word of such people?...  And she repeated her wrathful insults.

The sailor immediately adapted himself to this home, as though it were his own.  On the few occasions that Freya separated herself from him, he used to go in search of her in the salon of the imposing dame who was now assuming toward Ulysses the air of a good-natured mother-in-law.

In various visits he met the count.  This taciturn personage would offer his hand instinctively though keeping a certain distance between them.  Ulysses now knew his real nationality, and he knew that he knew it.  But the two kept up the fiction of Count Kaledine, Russian diplomat, and this man exacted respect from every one in the doctor’s dwelling.  Ferragut, devoted to his amorous selfishness, was not permitting himself any investigation, adjusting himself to the hints dropped by the two women.

He had never known such happiness.  He was experiencing the great sensuousness of one who finds himself seated at table in a well-warmed dining-room and sees through the window the tempestuous sea tossing a bark that is struggling against the waves.

The newsboys were crying through the streets terrible battles in the center of Europe; cities were burning under bombardment; every twenty-four hours thousands upon thousands of human beings were dying....  And he was not reading anything, not wishing to know anything.  He was continuing his existence as though he were living in a paradisiacal felicity.  Sometimes, while waiting for Freya, his memory would gloat over her wonderful physical charm, the refinements and fresh sensations which his passion was enjoying; at other times, the actual embrace with its ecstasy blotted out and suppressed all unpleasant possibilities.

Something, nevertheless, suddenly jerked him from his amorous egoism, something that was overshadowing his visage, furrowing his forehead with wrinkles of preoccupation, and making him go aboard his vessel.

When seated in the large cabin of his ship opposite his mate, he leaned his elbows on the table and commenced to chew on a great cigar that had just gone out.

“We’re going to start very soon,” he repeated with visible abstraction.  “You will be glad, Toni; I believe that you will be delighted.”