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.

Julio was accordingly introduced to all the night
restaurants--imitations of those in Paris, but on a much larger scale.
The women who in Paris might be counted by the dozens appeared here
in hundreds. The scandalous drunkenness here never came by chance,
but always by design as an indispensable part of the gaiety. All was
grandiose, glittering, colossal. The libertines diverted themselves
in platoons, the public got drunk in companies, the harlots presented
themselves in regiments. He felt a sensation of disgust before these
timid and servile females, accustomed to blows, who were so eagerly
trying to reimburse themselves for the losses and exposures of thei