“But,” exclaimed Bloch, “the divine Athena, daughter of Zeus, has put in the mind of one the opposite of what is in the mind of the other. And they are fighting against one another like two lions. Colonel Picquart had a splendid position in the Army, but his Moira has led him to the side that was not rightly his. The sword of the Nationalists will carve his tender flesh, and he will be cast out as food for the beasts of prey and the birds that wax fat upon the bodies of men.”
M. de Norpois made no reply.
“What are those two palavering about over there?” M. de Guermantes asked Mme. de Villeparisis, indicating M. de Norpois and Bloch.
“The Dreyfus case.”
“The devil they are. By the way, do you know who is a red-hot supporter of Dreyfus? I give you a thousand guesses. My nephew Robert! I can tell you that, at the Jockey, when they heard of his goings on, there was a fine gathering of the clans, a regular hue and cry. And as he’s coming up for election next week…”
“Of course,” broke in the Duchess, “if they’re all like Gilbert, who keeps on saying that all the Jews ought to be sent back to Jerusalem.”
“Indeed; then the Prince de Guermantes is quite of my way of thinking,” put in M. d’Argencourt.
The Duke made a show of his wife, but did not love her. Extremely self-centred, he hated to be interrupted, besides he was in the habit, at home of treating her brutally. Convulsed with the twofold rage of a bad husband when his wife speaks to him, and a good talker where he is not listened to, he stopped short and transfixed the Duchess with a glare which made everyone feel uncomfortable.
“What makes you think we want to hear about Gilbert and Jerusalem? It’s nothing to do with that. But,” he went on in a gentler tone, “you will agree that if one of our family were to be pilled at the Jockey, especially Robert, whose father was chairman for ten years, it would be a pretty serious matter. What can you expect, my dear, it’s got ‘em on the raw, those fellows; they’re all over it. I don’t blame them, either; personally, you know that I have no racial prejudice, all that sort of thing seems to me out of date, and I do claim to move with the times; but damn it all, when one goes by the name of ‘Marquis de Saint-Loup’ one isn’t a Dreyfusard; what more can I say?”
M. de Guermantes uttered the words: “When one goes by the name of Marquis de Saint-Loup,” with some emphasis. He knew very well that it was a far greater thing to go by that of Duc de Guermantes. But if his self-esteem had a tendency to exaggerate if anything the superiority of the title Duc de Guermantes over all others, it was perhaps not so much the rules of good taste as the laws of imagination that urged him thus to attenuate it. Each of us sees in the brightest colours what he sees at a distance, what he sees in other people. For the general laws which govern perspective in imagination apply just as much to dukes as to ordinary mortals. And not only the laws of imagination, but those of speech. Now, either of two laws of speech may apply here, one being that which makes us express ourselves like others of our mental category and not of our caste. Under this law M. de Guermantes might be, in his choice of expressions, even when he wished to talk about the nobility, indebted to the humblest little tradesman, who would have said: “When one goes by the name of Duc de Guermantes,” whereas an educated man, a Swann, a Legrandin would not have said it. A duke may write novels worthy of a grocer, even about life in high society, titles and pedigrees being of no help to him there, and the epithet ‘aristocratic’ be earned by the writings of a plebeian. Who had been, in this instance, the inferior from whom M. de Guermantes had picked up ‘when one goes by the name,’ he had probably not the least idea. But another law of speech is that, from time to time, as there appear and then vanish diseases of which nothing more is ever heard, there come into being, no one knows how, spontaneously perhaps or by an accident like that which introduced into France a certain weed from America, the seeds of which, caught in the wool of a travelling rug, fell on a railway embankment, forms of speech which one hears in the same decade on the lips of people who have not in any way combined together to use them. So, just as in a certain year I heard Bloch say, referring to himself, that “the most charming people, the most brilliant, the best known, the most exclusive had discovered that there was only one man in Paris whom they felt to be intelligent, pleasant, whom they could not do without — namely Bloch,” and heard the same phrase used by countless other young men who did not know him and varied it only by substituting their own names for his, so I was often to hear this ‘when one goes by the name.’
“What can one expect,” the Duke went on, “with the influence he’s come under; it’s easy to understand.”
“Still it is rather comic,” suggested the Duchess, “when you think of his mother’s attitude, how she bores us to tears with her Patrie Française, morning, noon and night.”
“Yes, but there’s not only his mother to be thought of, you can’t humbug us like that. There’s a damsel, too, a fly-by-night of the worst type; she has far more influence over him than his mother, and she happens to be a compatriot of Master Dreyfus. She has passed on her state of mind to Robert.”
“You may not have heard, Duke, that there is a new word to describe that sort of mind,” said the librarian, who was Secretary to the Anti-revisionist Committee. “They say ‘mentality.’ It means exactly the same thing, but it has this advantage that nobody knows what you’re talking about. It is the very latest expression just now, the ‘last word’ as people say.” Meanwhile, having heard Bloch’s name, he was watching him question M. de Norpois with misgivings which aroused others as strong though of a different order in the Marquise. Trembling before the librarian, and always acting the anti-Dreyfusard in his presence, she dreaded what he would say were he to find out that she had asked to her house a Jew more or less affiliated to the ‘Syndicate.’
“Indeed,” said the Duke, “‘mentality,’ you say; I must make a note of that; I shall use it some day.” This was no figure of speech, the Duke having a little pocketbook filled with such ‘references’ which he used to consult before dinner-parties. “I like ‘mentality.’ There are a lot of new words like that which people suddenly start using, but they never last. I read somewhere the other day that some writer was ‘talentuous.’ You may perhaps know what it means; I don’t. And since then I’ve never come across the word again.”
“But ‘mentality’ is more widely used than ‘talentuous,’” the historian of the Fronde made his way into the conversation. “I am on a Committee at the Ministry of Education at which I have heard it used several times, as well as at my Club, the Volney, and indeed at dinner at M. Emile Ollivier’s.”
“I, who have not the honour to belong to the Ministry of Education,” replied the Duke with a feigned humility but with a vanity so intense that his lips could not refrain from curving in a smile, nor his eyes from casting round his audience a glance sparkling with joy, the ironical scorn in which made the poor historian blush, “I who have not the honour to belong to the Ministry of Education,” he repeated, relishing the sound of his words, “nor to the Volney Club (my only clubs are the Union and the Jockey — you aren’t in the Jockey, I think, sir?” he asked the historian, who, blushing a still deeper red, scenting an insult and failing to understand it, began to tremble in every limb), “I, who am not even invited to dine with M. Emile Ollivier, I must confess that I had never heard ‘mentality.’ I’m sure you’re in the same boat, Argencourt.
“You know,” he went on, “why they can’t produce the proofs of Dreyfus’s guilt. Apparently it’s because the War Minister’s wife was his mistress, that’s what people are saying.”
“Ah! I thought it was the Prime Minister’s wife,” said M. d’Argencourt.
“I think you’re all equally tiresome about this wretched case,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes, who, in the social sphere, was always anxious to shew that she did not allow herself to be led by anyone. “It can’t make any difference to me, so far as the Jews are concerned, for the simple reason that I don’t know any of them, and I intend to remain in that state of blissful ignorance. But on the other hand I do think it perfectly intolerable that just because they’re supposed to hold ‘sound’ views and don’t deal with Jewish tradesmen, or have ‘Down with the Jews’ printed on their sunshades, we should have a swarm of Durands and Dubois and so forth, women we should never have known but for this business, forced down our throats by Marie-Aynard or Victurnienne. I went to see Marie-Aynard a couple of days ago. It used to be so nice there. Nowadays one finds all the people one has spent one’s life trying to avoid, on the pretext that they’re against Dreyfus, and others of whom you have no idea who they can be.”
“No; it was the War Minister’s wife; at least, that’s the bedside rumour,” went on the Duke, who liked to flavour his conversation with certain expressions which he imagined to be of the old school. “Personally, of course, as everyone knows, I take just the opposite view to my cousin Gilbert. I am not feudal like him. I would go about with a Negro if he was a friend of mine, and I shouldn’t care two straws what anybody thought; still after all you will agree with me that when one goes by the name of Saint-Loup one doesn’t amuse oneself by running clean against the rails of public opinion, which has more sense than Voltaire or even my nephew. Nor does one go in for what I may be allowed to call these acrobatics of conscience a week before one comes up for a club. It is a bit stiff, really! No, it is probably that little wench of his that has put him on his high horse. I expect she told him that he would be classed among the ‘intellectuals.’ The intellectuals, they’re the very cream of those gentry. It’s given rise, by the way, to a rather amusing pun, though a very naughty one.”
And the Duke murmured, lowering his voice, for his wife’s and M. d’Argencourt’s benefit, “Mater Semita,” which had already made its way into the Jockey Club, for, of all the flying seeds in the world, that to which are attached the most solid wings, enabling it to be disseminated at the greatest distance from its parent branch, is still a joke.
“We might ask this gentleman, who has a nerudite air, to explain it to us,” he went on, indicating the historian. “But it is better not to repeat it, especially as there’s not a vestige of truth in the suggestion. I am not so ambitious as my cousin Mirepoix, who claims that she can trace the descent of her family before Christ to the Tribe of Levi, and I will undertake to prove that there has never been a drop of Jewish blood in our family. Still there is no good in our shutting our eyes to the fact, you may be sure that my dear nephew’s highly original views are liable to make a considerable stir at Landerneau. Especially as Fezensac is ill just now, and Duras will be running the election; you know how he likes to make nuisances,” concluded the Duke, who had never succeeded in learning the exact meaning of certain phrases, and supposed ‘making nuisances’ to mean ‘making difficulties.’
Bloch tried to pin M. de Norpois down on Colonel Picquart.
“There can be no two opinions;” replied M. de Norpois, “his evidence had to be taken. I am well aware that, by maintaining this attitude, I have drawn screams of protest from more than one of my colleagues, but to my mind the Government were bound to let the Colonel speak. One can’t dance lightly out of a blind alley like that, or if one does there’s always the risk of falling into a ditch. As for the officer himself, his statement gave one, at the first hearing, a most excellent impression. When one saw him, looking so well in that smart Chasseur uniform, come into court and relate in a perfectly simple and frank tone what he had seen and what he had deduced, and say: ‘On my honour as a soldier’” (here M. de Norpois’s voice shook with a faint patriotic throb) “‘such is my conviction,’ it is impossible to deny that the impression he made was profound.”
“There; he is a Dreyfusard, there’s not the least doubt of it,” thought Bloch.
“But where he entirely forfeited all the sympathy that he had managed to attract was when he was confronted with the registrar, Gribelin. When one heard that old public servant, a man who had only one answer to make,” (here M. de Norpois began to accentuate his words with the energy of his sincere convictions) “when one listened to him, when one saw him look his superior officer in the face, not afraid to hold his head up to him, and say to him in a tone that admitted of no response: ‘Colonel, sir, you know very well that I have never told a lie, you know that at this moment, as always, I am speaking the truth,’ the wind changed; M. Picquart might move heaven and earth at the subsequent hearings; he made a complete fiasco.”
“No; evidently he’s an anti-Dreyfusard; it’s quite obvious,” said Bloch to himself. “But if he considers Picquart a traitor and a liar, how can he take his revelations seriously, and quote them as if he found them charming and believed them to be sincere. And if, on the other hand, he sees in him an honest man easing his conscience, how can he suppose him to have been lying when he was confronted with Gribelin?”
“In any case, if this man Dreyfus is innocent,” the Duchess broke in, “he hasn’t done much to prove it. What idiotic, raving letters he writes from that island. I don’t know whether M. Esterhazy is any better, but he does shew some skill in his choice of words, a different tone altogether. That can’t be very pleasant for the supporters of M. Dreyfus. What a pity for them there’s no way of exchanging innocents.” Everybody laughed. “You heard what Oriane said?” the Duc de Guermantes inquired eagerly of e. de Villeparisis. “Yes; I think it most amusing.” This was not enough for the Duke. “Well, I don’t know, I can’t say that I thought it amusing; or rather it doesn’t make the slightest difference to me whether a thing is amusing or not. I don’t care about wit.” M. d’Argencourt protested. “It is probably because I’ve been a Member of Parliament, where I have listened to brilliant speeches that meant absolutely nothing. I learned there to value, more than anything, logic. That’s probably why they didn’t elect me again. Amusing things leave me cold.” “Basin, don’t play the heavy father like that, my child, you know quite well that no one admires wit more than you do.” “Please let me finish. It is just because I am unmoved by a certain type of humour, that I am often struck by my wife’s wit. For you will find it based, as a rule, upon sound observation. She reasons like a man; she states her case like a writer.”
Possibly the explanation of M. de Norpois’s speaking in this way to Bloch, as though they had been in agreement, may have lain in the fact that he himself was so keen an anti-Dreyfusard that, finding the Government not anti-Dreyfusard enough, he was its enemy just as much as the Dreyfusards. Perhaps because the object to which he devoted himself in politics was something more profound, situated on another plane, from which Dreyfusism appeared as an unimportant modality which did not deserve the attention of a patriot interested in large questions of foreign policy. Perhaps, rather, because the maxims of his political wisdom being applicable only to questions of form, of procedure, of expediency, they were as powerless to solve questions of fact as in philosophy pure logic is powerless to tackle the problems of existence; or else because that very wisdom made him see danger in handling such subjects and so, in his caution, he preferred to speak only of minor incidents. But where Bloch made a mistake was in thinking that M. de Norpois, even had he been less cautious by nature and of a less exclusively formal cast of mind, could (supposing he would) have told him the truth as to the part played by Henry, Picquart or du Paty de Clam, or as to any of the different aspects of the case. The truth, indeed, as to all these matters Bloch could not doubt that M. de Norpois knew. How could he fail to know it seeing that he was a friend of all the Ministers? Naturally, Bloch thought that the truth in politics could be approximately reconstructed by the most luminous minds, but he imagined, like the man in the street, that it resided permanently, beyond the reach of argument and in a material form, in the secret files of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, who imparted it to their Cabinet. Now, even when a political truth does take the form of written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a radiographic plate on which the layman imagines that the patient’s disease is inscribed in so many words, when, as a matter of fact, the plate furnishes simply one piece of material for study, to be combined with a number of others, which the doctor’s reasoning powers will take into consideration as a whole and upon them found his diagnosis. So, too, the truth in politics, when one goes to well-informed men and imagines that one is about to grasp it, eludes one. Indeed, later on (to confine ourselves to the Dreyfus case), when so startling an event occurred as Henry’s confession, followed by his suicide, this fact was at once interpreted in opposite ways by the Dreyfusard Ministers, and by Cavaignac and Cuignet who had themselves made the discovery of the forgery and conducted the examination; still more so among the Dreyfusard Ministers themselves, men of the same shade of Dreyfusism, judging not only from the same documents but in the same spirit, the part played by Henry was explained in two entirely different ways, one set seeing in him an accomplice of Esterhazy, the others assigning that part to du Paty de Clam, thus rallying in support of a theory of their opponent Cuignet and in complete opposition to their supporter Reinach. All that Bloch could elicit from M. de Norpois was that if it were true that the Chief of Staff, M. de Boisdeffre, had had a secret communication sent to M. Rochefort, it was evident that a singularly regrettable irregularity had occurred.
“You may be quite sure that the War Minister must (in petto at any rate) be consigning his Chief of Staff to the infernal powers. An official disclaimer would not have been (to my mind) a work of supererogation. But the War Minister expresses himself very bluntly on the matter inter pocula. There are certain subjects, moreover, about which it is highly imprudent to create an agitation over which one cannot retain control afterwards.”
“But those documents are obviously forged,” put in Bloch.
M. de Norpois made no reply to this, but announced that he did not approve of the manifestations that were being made by Prince Henri d’Orléans.
“Besides, they can only ruffle the calm of the pretorium, and encourage agitations which, looked at from either point of view, would be deplorable. Certainly we must put a stop to the anti-militarist conspiracy, but we cannot possibly tolerate, either, a brawl encouraged by those elements on the Right who instead of serving the patriotic ideal themselves are hoping to make it serve them. Heaven be praised, France is not a South American Republic, and the need has not yet been felt here for a military pronunciamento.”
Bloch could not get him to speak on the question of Dreyfus’s guilt, nor would he utter any forecast as to the judgment in the civil trial then proceeding. On the other hand, M. de Norpois seemed only too ready to indicate the consequences of this judgment.
“If it is a conviction,” he said, “it will probably be quashed, for it is seldom that, in a case where there has been such a number of witnesses, there is not some flaw in the procedure which counsel can raise on appeal. To return to Prince Henri’s outburst, I greatly doubt whether it has met with his father’s approval.”
“You think Chartres is for Dreyfus?” asked the Duchess with a smile, her eyes rounded, her cheeks bright, her nose buried in her plate, her whole manner deliciously scandalised.
“Not at all; I meant only that there runs through the whole family, on that side, a political sense which we have seen, in the admirable Princesse Clémentine, carried to its highest power, and which her son, Prince Ferdinand, has kept as a priceless inheritance. You would never have found the Prince of Bulgaria clasping Major Esterhazy to his bosom.”
“He would have preferred a private soldier,” murmured Mme. de Guermantes, who often met the Bulgarian monarch at dinner at the Prince de Joinville’s, and had said to him once, when he asked if she was not envious: “Yes, Sir, of your bracelets.”
“You aren’t going to Mme. de Sagan’s ball this evening?” M. de Norpois asked Mme. de Villeparisis, to cut short his conversation with Bloch. My friend had not failed to interest the Ambassador, who told us afterwards, not without a quaint simplicity, thinking no doubt of the traces that survived in Bloch’s speech of the neo-Homeric manner which he had on the whole outgrown: “He is rather amusing, with that way of speaking, a trifle old fashioned, a trifle solemn. You expect him to come out with ‘The Learned Sisters,’ like Lamartine or Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. It has become quite uncommon in the youth of the present day, as it was indeed in the generation before them. We ourselves were inclined to be romantic.” But however exceptional his companion may have seemed to him, M. de Norpois decided that the conversation had lasted long enough.
“No, sir, I don’t go to balls any more,” she replied with a charming grandmotherly smile. “You’re going, all of you, I suppose? You’re the right age for that sort of thing,” she added, embracing in a comprehensive glance M. de Châtellerault, his friend and Bloch. “Still, I was asked,” she went on, pretending, just for fun, to be flattered by the distinction. “In fact, they came specially to ask me.” (‘They’ being the Princesse de Sagan.)
“I haven’t had a card,” said Bloch, thinking that Mme. de Villeparisis would at once offer to procure him one, and that Mme. de Sagan would be glad to see at her ball the friend of a woman whom she had called in person to invite.
The Marquise made no reply, and Bloch did not press the point, for he had another, more serious matter to discuss with her, and, with that in view, had already asked her whether he might call again in a couple of days. Having heard the two young men say that they had both just resigned from the Rue Royale Club, which was letting in every Tom, Dick and Harry, he wished to ask Mme. de Villeparisis to arrange for his election there.
“Aren’t they rather bad form, rather stuck-up snobs, these Sagans?” he inquired in a tone of sarcasm.
“Not at all, they’re the best we can do for you in that line,” M. d’Argencourt, who adopted all the catch-words of Parisian society, assured him.
“Then,” said Bloch, still half in irony, “I suppose it’s one of the solemnities, the great social fixtures of the season.”
Mme. de Villeparisis turned merrily to Mme. de Guermantes.
“Tell us, is it a great social solemnity, Mme. de Sagan’s ball?”
“It’s no good asking me,” answered the Duchess, “I have never yet succeeded in finding out what a social solemnity is. Besides, society isn’t my strong point.”
“Indeed; I thought it was just the other way,” said Bloch, who supposed Mme. de Guermantes to be speaking seriously.