that he had published a few volumes, fat and heavy as bricks, and that
he was a member of an academic society collaborating in documentary
research directed by a famous historian. In his lapel he was wearing the
badge of a foreign order.

Julio's respect for the learned member of the family was not unmixed
with contempt. He and his sister Chichi had from childhood felt an
instinctive hostility toward the cousins from Berlin. It annoyed him,
too, to have his family everlastingly holding up as a model this
pedant who only knew life as it is in books, and passed his existence
investigating what men had done in other epochs, in order to draw
conclusions in harmony with Germany's views. While young Desnoyers
had great facility for admiration, and reverenced all those whose
"arguments" Argensola had doled out to him, he drew the line at
accepting the intellectual grandeur of this illustrious relative.

During his stay in Berlin, a German word of vulgar invention had enabled
him to classify this prig. Heavy books of minute investigation were
every month being published by the dozens in the Fatherland. There was
not a professor who could resist the temptation of constructing from the
simplest detail an enormous volume written in a dull, involved style.
The people, therefore, appreciating that these near-sighted authors were
incapable of any genial vision of comradeship, called them Sitzfleisch
haben, because of the very long sittings which their works represented.
That was what this cousin was for him, a mere Sitzfleisch haben.

Doctor von Hartrott, on explaining his visit, spoke in Spanish.
He availed himself of this language used by the family during his
childhood, as a precaution, looking around repeatedly as if he feared
to be heard. He had come to bid his cousin farewell. His mother had told