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By Root 1647 0

his adversary” that Saint-Loup asked whether the club in question were that of the Rue Royale, which was considered “degrading” by his own family, and to which he knew that certain Jews were admitted. “No,” replied M. Bloch in a tone at once careless, proud and ashamed, “it is a small club, but far more agreeable: the Ganaches. We’re very strict there, don’t you know.” “Isn’t Sir Rufus Israels the president?” Bloch junior asked his father, so as to give him the opportunity for a glorious lie, unaware that the financier had not the same eminence in Saint-Loup’s eyes as in his. The fact of the matter was that the Ganaches club boasted not Sir Rufus Israels but one of his staff. But as this man was on the best of terms with his employer, he had at his disposal a stock of the financier’s cards, and would give one to M. Bloch whenever he wished to travel on a line of which Sir Rufus was a director, so that old Bloch was able to say: “I’m just going round to the Club to ask for a letter of introduction from Sir Rufus.” And the card enabled him to dazzle the guards on the trains.

The misses Bloch were more interested in Bergotte and, reverting to him rather than pursue the subject of the Ganaches, the youngest asked her brother, in the most serious tone imaginable, for she believed that there existed, for the designation of men of talent, no other terms than those which he was in the habit of using:

“Is he a really amazing cove, this Bergotte? Is he in the category of the great johnnies, chaps like Villiers and Catulle?”

“I’ve met him several times at dress rehearsals,” said M. Nissim Bernard. “He is an uncouth creature, a sort of Schlemihl.”

There was nothing very serious in this allusion to Chamisso’s story, but the epithet “Schlemihl” formed part of that dialect, half-German, half-Jewish, which delighted M. Bloch in the family circle, but struck him as vulgar and out of place in front of strangers. And so he cast a reproving glance at his uncle.

“He has talent,” said Bloch.

“Ah!” said his sister gravely, as though to imply that in that case there was some excuse for me.

“All writers have talent,” said M. Bloch scornfully.

“In fact it appears,” went on his son, raising his fork and screwing up his eyes with an air of diabolical irony, “that he is going to put up for the Academy.”

“Go on. He hasn’t enough to show them,” replied his father, who seemed not to have for the Academy the same contempt as his son and daughters. “He hasn’t the necessary calibre.”

“Besides, the Academy is a salon, and Bergotte has no polish,” declared the uncle (from whom Mme Bloch had expectations), a mild and inoffensive person whose surname, Bernard, might perhaps by itself have quickened my grandfather’s powers of diagnosis, but would have appeared too little in harmony with a face which looked as if it had been brought back from Darius’s palace and restored by Mme Dieulafoy, had not his first name, Nissim, chosen by some collector desirous of giving a crowning touch of orientalism to this figure from Susa, set hovering above it the pinions of an androcephalous bull from Khorsabad. But M. Bloch never stopped insulting his uncle, either because he was inflamed by the unresisting good-humour of his butt, or because, the rent of the villa being paid by M. Nissim Bernard, the beneficiary wished to show that he retained his independence and above all scorned to seek by flattery to make sure of the rich inheritance to come.

“Of course, whenever there’s a chance of saying something pompous and stupid, one can be quite certain that you won’t miss it. You’d be the first to lick his boots if he were in the room!” shouted M. Bloch, while M. Nissim Bernard in sorrow lowered over his plate the ringleted beard of King Sargon. (My schoolfriend, since he had begun to grow a beard, which also was blue-black and crimped, looked very like his great-uncle.)

What most hurt the old man was being treated so rudely in front of his manservant. He murmured an unintelligible sentence of which all that could be made out was: “When the meschores are in the room.”