cquainted with.

While pacing around the Chapelle Expiatoire, Julio recalled with a
certain remorse the wife of Counsellor Erckmann. He who had made the
trip to America for a woman's sake, in order to collect money and marry
her! Then he immediately began making excuses for his conduct. Nobody
was going to know. Furthermore he did not pretend to be an ascetic, and
Bertha Erckmann was certainly a tempting adventure in mid ocean. Upon
recalling her, his imagination always saw a race horse--large, spare,
roan colored, and with a long stride. She was an up-to-date German who
admitted no defect in her country except the excessive weight of its
women, combating in her person this national menace with every known
system of dieting. For her every meal was a species of torment, and
the procession of bocks in the smoking room a tantalizing agony.
The slenderness achieved and maintained by will power only made more
prominent the size of her frame, the powerful skeleton with heavy jaws
and large teeth, strong and dazzling, which perhaps suggested Desnoyers'
disrespectful comparison. "She is thin, but enormous, nevertheless!" was
always his conclusion.

But then, he considered her, notwithstanding, the most distinguished
woman on board--distinguished for the sea--elegant in the style of
Munich, with clothes of indescribable colors that suggested Persian art
and the vignettes of mediaeval manuscripts. The husband admired Bertha's
elegance, lamenting her childlessness in secret, almost as though it
were a crime of high treason. Germany was magnificent because of the
fertility of its women. The Kaiser, with his artistic hyperbole, had
proclaimed that the true German beauty should have a waist measure of at
least a yard and a half.

When Desnoyers entered into the smoking room in order to take the
seat which Bertha had reserved for him, her husband and his wealthy
hangers-on had their pack of cards lying idle upon the green felt. Herr
Rath was continuing his discourse and his listeners, taking their cigars
from their mouths, were emitting grunts of approbation. The arrival of
Julio provoked a general smile of amiability. Here was France coming
to fraternize with them. They knew that his father was French, and
that fact made him as welcome as though he came in direct line from the
palace of the Quai d'Orsay, representing the highest diplomacy of the
Republic. The craze for proselyting made them all promptly concede to
him unlimited im