For a while, he thought that he had hit upon a way of withdrawing his son from such an existence.  The relatives in Berlin had visited the Desnoyers in their castle of Villeblanche.  With good-natured superiority, Karl von Hartrott had appreciated the rich and rather absurd accumulations of his brother-in-law.  They were not bad; he admitted that they gave a certain cachet to the home in Paris and to the castle.  They smacked of the possessions of titled nobility.  But Germany! . . .  The comforts and luxuries in his country! . . .  He just wished his brother-in-law to admire the way he lived and the noble friendships that embellished his opulence.  And so he insisted in his letters that the Desnoyers family should return their visit.  This change of environment might tone Julio down a little.  Perhaps his ambition might waken on seeing the diligence of his cousins, each with a career.  The Frenchman had, besides, an underlying belief in the more corrupt influence of Paris as compared with the purity of the customs in Patriarchal Germany.

They were there four months.  In a little while Desnoyers felt ready to retreat.  Each to his own kind; he would never be able to understand such people.  Exceedingly amiable, with an abject amiability and evident desire to please, but constantly blundering through a tactless desire to make their grandeur felt.  The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection.  And they would accompany their affability with all manner of inopportune memories of the wars in which France had been conquered.  Everything in Germany—­a monument, a railroad station, a simple dining-room device, instantly gave rise to glorious comparisons.  “In France, you do not have this,” “Of course, you never saw anything like this in America.”

Don Marcelo came away fatigued by so much condescension, and his wife and daughter refused to be convinced that the elegance of Berlin could be superior to Paris.  Chichi, with audacious sacrilege, scandalized her cousins by declaring that she could not abide the corseted officers with immovable monocle, who bowed to the women with such automatic rigidity, blending their gallantries with an air of superiority.

Julio, guided by his cousins, was saturated in the virtuous atmosphere of Berlin.  With the oldest, “The Sage,” he had nothing to do.  He was a poor creature devoted to his books who patronized all the family with a protecting air.  It was the others, the sub-lieutenants or military students, who proudly showed him the rounds of German joy.