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By Root 1927 0

’s geniality, his air of tacit admission that his interlocutor was in the right, of never doubting that they were both of the same opinion, of joining forces with him to denounce the Government, flattered Bloch’s vanity and aroused his curiosity. What were the important points which M. de Norpois never specified but on which he seemed implicitly to affirm that he was in agreement with Bloch? What opinion did he hold of the case that could bring them together? Bloch was all the more astonished at the mysterious unanimity which seemed to exist between him and M. de Norpois, in that it was not confined to politics, Mme de Villeparisis having spoken at some length to M. de Norpois of Bloch’s literary work.

“You are not of your age,” the former Ambassador told him, “and I congratulate you upon that. You are not of this age in which disinterested work no longer exists, in which writers offer the public nothing but obscenities or inanities. Efforts such as yours ought to be encouraged, and would be if we had a Government.”

Bloch was flattered by this picture of himself swimming alone amid a universal shipwreck. But here again he would have been glad of details, would have liked to know what were the inanities to which M. de Norpois referred. Bloch had the feeling that he was working along the same lines as plenty of others; he had never supposed himself to be so exceptional. He returned to the Dreyfus case, but did not succeed in disentangling M. de Norpois’s own views. He tried to induce him to speak of the officers whose names were appearing constantly in the newspapers at that time; they aroused more curiosity than the politicians who were involved in the affair, because they were not, like the politicians, well known already, but, wearing a special garb, emerging from the obscurity of a different kind of life and a religiously guarded silence, had only just appeared on the scene and spoken, like Lohengrin landing from a skiff drawn by a swan. Bloch had been able, thanks to a Nationalist lawyer of his acquaintance, to secure admission to several hearings of the Zola trial. He would arrive there in the morning and stay until the court rose, with a supply of sandwiches and a flask of coffee, as though for the final examination for a degree, and this change of routine stimulating a nervous excitement which the coffee and the emotional interest of the trial worked up to a climax, he would come away so enamoured of everything that had happened in court that when he returned home in the evening he longed to immerse himself again in the thrilling drama and would hurry out to a restaurant frequented by both parties in search of friends with whom he would go over the day’s proceedings interminably and make up, by a supper ordered in an imperious tone which gave him the illusion of power, for the hunger and exhaustion of a day begun so early and unbroken by any interval for lunch. The human mind, hovering perpetually between the two planes of experience and imagination, seeks to fathom the ideal life of the people it knows and to know the people whose life it has had to imagine. To Bloch’s questions M. de Norpois replied:

“There are two officers in the case now being tried of whom I remember hearing some time ago from a man whose judgment inspired me with the greatest confidence, and who had a high opinion of them both—I mean M. de Miribel. They are Lieutenant-Colonel Henry and Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart.”

“But,” exclaimed Bloch, “the divine Athena, daughter of Zeus, has put in the mind of each 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 feed on the fat of dead men.”

M. de Norpois made no reply.

“What are those two palavering about over there?” M. de Guermantes asked Mme de Villeparisis, pointing to M. de Norpois and Bloch.