“They are talking of the war,” he said again but with the commiseration of a superior intelligence which foresees the future and feels above the impressions of the vulgar crowd.

He knew exactly what course he was going to follow.  He had disembarked at ten o’clock the night before, and as it was not yet twenty-four hours since he had touched land, his mentality was still that of a man who comes from afar, across oceanic immensities, from boundless horizons, and is surprised at finding himself in touch with the preoccupations which govern human communities.  After disembarking he had spent two hours in a cafe in Boulogne, listlessly watching the middle-class families who passed their time in the monotonous placidity of a life without dangers.  Then the special train for the passengers from South America had brought him to Paris, leaving him at four in the morning on a platform of the Gare du Nord in the embrace of Pepe Argensola, the young Spaniard whom he sometimes called “my secretary” or “my valet” because it was difficult to define exactly the relationship between them.  In reality, he was a mixture of friend and parasite, the poor comrade, complacent and capable in his companionship with a rich youth on bad terms with his family, sharing with him the ups and downs of fortune, picking up the crumbs of prosperous days, or inventing expedients to keep up appearances in the hours of poverty.

“What about the war?” Argensola had asked him before inquiring about the result of his trip.  “You have come a long ways and should know much.”

Soon he was sound asleep in his dear old bed while his “secretary” was pacing up and down the studio talking of Servia, Russia and the Kaiser.  This youth, too, skeptical as he generally was about everything not connected with his own interests, appeared infected by the general excitement.

When Desnoyers awoke he found her note awaiting him, setting their meeting at five that afternoon and also containing a few words about the threatened danger which was claiming the attention of all Paris.  Upon going out in search of lunch the concierge, on the pretext of welcoming him back, had asked him the war news.  And in the restaurant, the cafe and the street, always war . . . the possibility of war with Germany. . . .

Julio was an optimist.  What did all this restlessness signify to a man who had just been living more than twenty days among Germans, crossing the Atlantic under the flag of the Empire?

He had sailed from Buenos Aires in a steamer of the Hamburg line, the Koenig Frederic August.  The world was in blessed tranquillity when the boat left port.  Only the whites and half-breeds of Mexico were exterminating each other in conflicts in order that nobody might believe that man is an animal degenerated by peace.  On the rest of the planet, the people were displaying unusual prudence.  Even aboard the transatlantic liner, the little world of passengers of most diverse nationalities appeared a fragment of future society implanted by way of experiment in modern times—­a sketch of the hereafter, without frontiers or race antagonisms.