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“What do you expect,” the Duke went on, “with the attitude he’s adopted, it’s fairly understandable.”

“It’s more comic than anything else,” said 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 wench, a bed-hopper 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 infected Robert with her way of thinking.”

“You may not have heard, Duke, that there is a new word to describe that sort of attitude,” said the archivist, who was Secretary to the Committee against Reconsideration. “One says ‘mentality.’ It means exactly the same thing, but it has the advantage that nobody knows what you’re talking about. It’s the ne plus ultra just now, the ‘latest thing,’ as they say.”

Meanwhile, having heard Bloch’s name, he watched him question M. de Norpois with misgivings which aroused others as strong though of a different order in the Marquise. Trembling before the archivist, 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.”15

“Indeed,” said the Duke, “‘mentality,’ you say. I must make a note of that and trot it out one of these days.” (This was no figure of speech, the Duke having a little pocket-book filled with “quotations” 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. Some time ago I read that a writer was ‘talentuous.’ Damned if I know what it means. And since then I’ve never come across the word again.”

“But ‘mentality’ is more widely used than ‘talentuous,’ ” the historian of the Fronde put in his oar. “I’m on a committee at the Ministry of Education where I’ve heard it used several times, as well as at my club, the Volney, and even 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 own voice, “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, reddening still further, 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 he’s the lover of the War Minister’s wife, that’s what people are saying on the sly.”

“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 show 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 be right-thinking and don’t deal with Jewish tradesmen, or have ‘Down with the Jews’ written 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.