public opinion from top to bottom, took Picquart from his prison to install him, ungrateful, in the Ministry of War. Perhaps this rationalist crowd-manipulator was himself manipulated by his ancestry. When we find that the systems of philosophy which contain the most truths were dictated to their authors, in the last analysis, by reasons of sentiment, how are we to suppose that in a simple affair of politics like the Dreyfus case reasons of that sort may not, unbeknown to the reasoner, have ruled his reason? Bloch believed himself to have been led by a logical chain of reasoning to choose Dreyfusism, yet he knew that his nose, his skin and his hair had been imposed on him by his race. Doubtless the reason enjoys more freedom; yet it obeys certain laws which it has not prescribed for itself. The case of the Guermantes’ butler and our own was peculiar. The waves of the two currents of Dreyfusism and anti-Dreyfusism which now divided France from top to bottom were, on the whole, silent, but the occasional echoes which they emitted were sincere. When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political news, generally false but always devoutly to be wished, you could induce from the nature of his predictions where his heart lay. Thus there came into conflict on certain points, on one side a timid apostolate, on the other a righteous indignation. The two butlers whom I heard arguing as I came in furnished an exception to the rule. Ours insinuated that Dreyfus was guilty, the Guermantes’ that he was innocent. This was done not to conceal their personal convictions, but from cunning and competitive ruthlessness. Our butler, being uncertain whether the retrial would be ordered, wanted in case of failure to deprive the Duke’s butler in advance of the joy of seeing a just cause vanquished. The Duke’s butler thought that, in the event of a refusal to grant a retrial, ours would be more indignant at the detention of an innocent man on Devil’s Island. The concierge looked on. I had the impression that it was not he who was the cause of dissension in the Guermantes household.
I went upstairs, and found my grandmother not at all well. For some time past, without knowing exactly what was wrong, she had been complaining of her health. It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might perhaps succeed in making him sensible of his own personal interest if not of our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live. My grandmother’s ailments often passed unnoticed by her attention, which was always directed towards us. When they gave her too much pain, in the hope of curing them she tried in vain to understand them. If the morbid phenomena of which her body was the theatre remained obscure and beyond the reach of her mind, they were clear and intelligible to certain beings belonging to the same natural kingdom as themselves, beings to whom the human mind has learned gradually to have recourse in order to understand what its body is saying to it, as when a foreigner addresses us we try to find someone of his country who will act as interpreter. These can talk to our body, can tell us if its anger is serious or will soon be appeased. Cottard, who had been called in to examine my grandmother—and who had infuriated us by asking with a subtle smile, the moment we told him she was ill: “Ill? You’re sure it’s not what they call a diplomatic illness?”—tried to soothe his patient’s restlessness by a milk diet. But incessant bowls of milk soup gave her no relief, because my grandmother sprinkled them liberally with salt, the injurious effects of