Another orator arose at the same table.  He was the most influential of the German passengers, a rich manufacturer from Dusseldorf who had just been visiting his agents in America.  He was never mentioned by name.  He bore the title of Commercial Counsellor, and among his countrymen was always Herr Comerzienrath and his wife was entitled Frau Rath.  The Counsellor’s Lady, much younger than her important husband, had from the first attracted the attention of Desnoyers.  She, too, had made an exception in favor of this young Argentinian, abdicating her title from their first conversation.  “Call me Bertha,” she said as condescendingly as a duchess of Versailles might have spoken to a handsome abbot seated at her feet.  Her husband, also protested upon hearing Desnoyers call him “Counsellor,” like his compatriots.

“My friends,” he said, “call me ‘Captain.’  I command a company of the Landsturm.”  And the air with which the manufacturer accompanied these words, revealed the melancholy of an unappreciated man scorning the honors he has in order to think only of those he does not possess.

While he was delivering his discourse, Julio was examining his small head and thick neck which gave him a certain resemblance to a bull dog.  In imagination he saw the high and oppressive collar of a uniform making a double roll of fat above its stiff edge.  The waxed, upright moustaches were bristling aggressively.  His voice was sharp and dry as though he were shaking out his words. . . .  Thus the Emperor would utter his harangues, so the martial burgher, with instinctive imitation, was contracting his left arm, supporting his hand upon the hilt of an invisible sword.

In spite of his fierce and oratorical gesture of command, all the listening Germans laughed uproariously at his first words, like men who knew how to appreciate the sacrifice of a Herr Comerzienrath when he deigns to divert a festivity.

“He is saying very witty things about the French,” volunteered the interpreter in a low voice, “but they are not offensive.”

Julio had guessed as much upon hearing repeatedly the word Franzosen.  He almost understood what the orator was saying—­“Franzosen—­great children, light-hearted, amusing, improvident.  The things that they might do together if they would only forget past grudges!” The attentive Germans were no longer laughing.  The Counsellor was laying aside his irony, that grandiloquent, crushing irony, weighing many tons, as enormous as a ship.  Then he began unrolling the serious part of his harangue, so that he himself, was also greatly affected.

“He says, sir,” reported Julio’s neighbor, “that he wishes France to become a very great nation so that some day we may march together against other enemies . . . against others!”

And he winked one eye, smiling maliciously with that smile of common intelligence which this allusion to the mysterious enemy always awakened.