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By Root 1502 0

“Meschores,” in the Bible, means “the servant of God.” In the family circle the Blochs used the word to refer to the servants, and were always delighted by it, because their certainty of not being understood either by Christians or by the servants themselves enhanced in M. Nissim Bernard and M. Bloch their twofold distinction of being “masters” and at the same time “Jews.” But this latter source of satisfaction became a source of displeasure when there was “company.” At such times M. Bloch, hearing his uncle say “meschores,” felt that he was over-exposing his oriental side, just as a harlot who has invited some of her sisters to meet her respectable friends is annoyed if they allude to their profession or use objectionable words. Hence, far from being mollified by his uncle’s plea, M. Bloch, beside himself with rage, could contain himself no longer. He let no opportunity pass of scarifying the wretched old man.

“What! Are you the son of the Marquis de Marsantes? Why, I knew him very well,” said M. Nissim Bernard to Saint-Loup. I supposed that he meant the word “knew” in the sense in which Bloch’s father had said that he knew Bergotte, namely by sight. But he went on: “Your father was a great friend of mine.” Meanwhile, Bloch had turned very red, his father was looking intensely cross, and the misses Bloch were choking with suppressed laughter. The fact was that in M. Nissim Bernard the love of ostentation, which in M. Bloch and his children was held in check, had engendered the habit of perpetual lying. For instance, if he was staying in an hotel, M. Nissim Bernard, as M. Bloch equally might have done, would have his newspapers brought to him by his valet in the dining-room in the middle of lunch, when everybody was there, so that they should see that he travelled with a valet. But to the people with whom he made friends in the hotel the uncle used to say, what the nephew would never have said, that he was a senator. For all that he was certain that they would sooner or later discover that the title was usurped, he could not, at the critical moment, resist the temptation to assume it. M. Bloch suffered acutely from his uncle’s lies and from all the embarrassments that they caused him. “Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s a terrible old yarn-spinner,” he whispered to Saint-Loup, whose interest was whetted all the more, for he was curious to explore the psychology of liars. “A greater liar even than the Ithacan Odysseus, albeit Athene called him the greatest liar among mortals,” his son completed the indictment. “Well, upon my word!” cried M. Nissim Bernard, “If I’d known that I was going to sit down to dinner with my old friend’s son! Why, I have a photograph still of your father at home in Paris, and any number of letters from him. He used always to call me ‘uncle,’ nobody ever knew why. He was a charming man, sparkling. I remember so well a dinner I gave at Nice: there was Sardou, Labiche, Augier” . . . “Moliére, Racine, Corneille,” M. Bloch added sarcastically, while his son completed the list of guests with “Plautus, Menander, Kalidasa.” M. Nissim Bernard, cut to the quick, stopped short in his reminiscence, and, ascetically depriving himself of a great pleasure, remained silent until the end of dinner.

“Saint-Loup with helm of bronze,” said Bloch, “have a piece more of this duck with thighs heavy with fat, over which the illustrious sacrificer of birds has poured numerous libations of red wine.”

As a rule, after bringing out from his store for one of his son’s distinguished fellow-students his anecdotes of Sir Rufus Israels and others, M. Bloch, feeling that he had succeeded in touching and melting his son’s heart, would withdraw, in order not to “demean” himself in the eyes of a “schoolkid.” If, however, there was an absolutely compelling reason, as for instance on the night when his son passed the agrégation, M. Bloch would add to the usual string of anecdotes the following ironical reflexion which he ordinarily reserved for his own personal friends and which the young Bloch was extremely proud to see produced for