On terra firma, he would never again have approached these men; but life on a transatlantic liner, with its inevitable promiscuousness, obliges forgetfulness.  The following day the Counsellor and his friends came in search of him, flattering his sensibilities by erasing every irritating memory.  He was a distinguished youth belonging to a wealthy family, and all of them had shops and business in his country.  The only thing was that he should be careful not to mention his French origin.  He was an Argentinian; and thereupon, the entire chorus interested itself in the grandeur of his country and all the nations of South America where they had agencies or investments—­exaggerating its importance as though its petty republics were great powers, commenting with gravity upon the deeds and words of its political leaders and giving him to understand that in Germany there was no one who was not concerned about the future of South America, predicting for all its divisions most glorious prosperity—­a reflex of the Empire, always, provided, of course, that they kept under Germanic influence.

In spite of these flatteries, Desnoyers was no longer presenting himself with his former assiduity at the hour of poker.  The Counsellor’s wife was retiring to her stateroom earlier than usual—­their approach to the Equator inducing such an irresistible desire for sleep, that she had to abandon her husband to his card playing.  Julio also had mysterious occupations which prevented his appearance on deck until after midnight.  With the precipitation of a man who desires to be seen in order to avoid suspicion, he was accustomed to enter the smoking room talking loudly as he seated himself near the husband and his boon companions.

The game had ended, and an orgy of beer and fat cigars from Hamburg was celebrating the success of the winners.  It was the hour of Teutonic expansion, of intimacy among men, of heavy, sluggish jokes, of off-color stories.  The Counsellor was presiding with much majesty over the diableries of his chums, prudent business men from the Hanseatic ports who had big accounts in the Deutsche Bank or were shopkeepers installed in the republic of the La Plata, with an innumerable family.  He was a warrior, a captain, and on applauding every heavy jest with a laugh that distended his fat neck, he fancied that he was among his comrades at arms.

In honor of the South Americans who, tired of pacing the deck, had dropped in to hear what the gringoes were saying, they were turning into Spanish the witticisms and licentious anecdotes awakened in the memory by a superabundance of beer.  Julio was marvelling at the ready laugh of all these men.  While the foreigners were remaining unmoved, they would break forth into loud horse-laughs throwing themselves back in their seats.  And when the German audience was growing cold, the story-teller would resort to an infallible expedient to remedy his lack of success:—­

“They told this yarn to the Kaiser, and when the Kaiser heard it he laughed heartily.”