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By Root 1486 0

have said who among his exclusively Christian ancestry nevertheless numbered Samuel Bernard, or further back still, the Blessed Virgin from whom, it is said, the Lévy family claim descent. “I rather like,” he continued, “to take into account the element in my feelings (slight though it is) which may be ascribed to my Jewish origin.” He made this statement because it seemed to him at once clever and courageous to speak the truth about his race, a truth which at the same time he managed to water down to a remarkable extent, like misers who decide to discharge their debts but cannot bring themselves to pay more than half of them. This kind of deceit which consists in having the boldness to proclaim the truth, but only after mixing with it an ample measure of lies which falsify it, is commoner than people think, and even among those who do not habitually practise it certain crises in life, especially those in which a love affair is involved, give them occasion to indulge in it.

All these confidential diatribes by Bloch to Saint-Loup against me and to me against Saint-Loup ended in an invitation to dinner. I am by no means sure that he did not first make an attempt to secure Saint-Loup by himself. It would have been so like Bloch to do so that probably he did; but if so, success did not crown his effort, for it was to myself and Saint-Loup both that he said one day: “Dear master, and you, O horseman beloved of Ares, de Saint-Loup-en-Bray, tamer of horses, since I have encountered you by the shore of Amphitrite, resounding with foam, hard by the tents of the swift-shipped Meniers, will both of you come to dinner one day this week with my illustrious sire, of blameless heart?” He proffered this invitation because he desired to attach himself more closely to Saint-Loup who would, he hoped, secure him the right of entry into aristocratic circles. Formed by me, for myself, this ambition would have seemed to Bloch the mark of the most hideous snobbery, quite in keeping with the opinion that he already held of a whole side of my nature which he did not regard—or at least had not hitherto regarded—as the most important side; but the same ambition in himself seemed to him the proof of a finely developed curiosity in a mind anxious to carry out certain social explorations from which he might perhaps glean some literary benefit. M. Bloch senior, when his son had told him that he was going to bring one of his friends in to dinner, and had in a sarcastic but self-satisfied tone enunciated the name and title of that friend: “The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray,” had been thrown into great commotion. “The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray! I’ll be jiggered!” he had exclaimed, using the oath which was with him the strongest indication of social deference. And he gazed at a son capable of having formed such an acquaintance with an admiring look which seemed to say: “He really is astounding. Can this prodigy be indeed a child of mine!” which gave my friend as much pleasure as if his monthly allowance had been increased by fifty francs. For Bloch was not in his element at home and felt that his father treated him like a black sheep because of his inveterate admiration for Leconte de Lisle, Heredia and other “Bohemians.” But to have got to know Saint-Loup-en-Bray, whose father had been chairman of the Suez Canal board (“I’ll be jiggered!”) was an indisputable “score.” What a pity that they had left the stereoscope in Paris for fear of its being broken on the journey. M. Bloch senior alone had the skill, or at least the right, to manipulate it. He did so, moreover, on rare occasions only, and then to good purpose, on evenings when there was a full-dress affair, with hired waiters. So that from these stereoscope sessions there emanated, for those who were present, as it were a special distinction, a privileged position, and for the master of the house who gave them, a prestige such as talent confers on a man—which could not have been greater had the pictures been taken by M. Bloch himself and the machine his own invention. “You weren’t invited to Solomon