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