Julio recognized Bertha who was waving her hand without seeing him, without knowing in which tender he was, but feeling obliged to show her gratefulness for the sweet memories that now were being lost in the mystery of the sea and the night.

"Adieu, Frau Rath!" The distance between the departing transatlantic and the lighters was widening.

As though it had been awaiting this moment with impunity, a stentorian voice on the upper deck shouted with a noisy guffaw, "See you later! Soon we shall meet you in Paris!" And the marine band, the very same band that three days before had astonished Desnoyers with its unexpected Marseillaise, burst forth into a military march of the time of Frederick the Great--a march of grenadiers with an accompaniment of trumpets.
That had been the night before.

Although twenty-four hours had not yet passed by, Desnoyers was already considering it as a distant event of shadowy reality.

His thoughts, always disposed to take the opposite side, did not share in the general alarm.