The Counsellor was laying aside his irony, that grandiloquent, crushing irony, weighing many tons, as enormous as a ship.

Then he began unrolling the serious part of his harangue, so that he himself, was also greatly affected.
"He says, sir," reported Julio's neighbor, "that he wishes France to become a very great nation so that some day we may march together against other enemies.

.

.

against OTHERS!" And he winked one eye, smiling maliciously with that smile of common intelligence which this allusion to the mysterious enemy always awakened.
Finally the Captain-Counsellor raised his glass in a toast to France.
"Hoch!" he yelled as though he were commanding an evolution of his soldierly Reserves.