In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [60]
I took a particular pleasure in talking to my new friend, as for that matter to all Robert’s comrades and to Robert himself, about the barracks, the officers of the garrison, and the Army in general. Thanks to the immensely exaggerated scale on which we see the things, however petty they may be, in the midst of which we eat, and talk, and lead our real life; thanks to that formidable enlargement which they undergo, and the effect of which is that the rest of the world, not being present, cannot compete with them, and assumes in comparison the insubstantiality of a dream, I had begun to take an interest in the various personalities of the barracks, in the officers whom I saw in the square when I went to visit Saint-Loup, or, if I was awake then, when the regiment passed beneath my windows. I should have liked to know more about the major whom Saint-Loup so greatly admired, and about the course in military history which would have appealed to me “even aesthetically.” I knew that all too often Robert indulged in a rather hollow verbalism, but at other times gave evidence of the assimilation of profound ideas which he was fully capable of grasping. Unfortunately, in respect of Army matters Robert was chiefly preoccupied at this time with the Dreyfus case. He spoke little about it, since he alone of the party at table was a Dreyfusard; the others were violently opposed to the idea of a fresh trial, except my other neighbour, my new friend, whose opinions appeared to be somewhat wavering. A firm admirer of the colonel, who was regarded as an exceptionally able officer and had denounced the current agitation against the Army in several of his regimental orders which had earned him the reputation of being an anti-Dreyfusard, my neighbour had heard that his commanding officer had let fall certain remarks leading to suppose that he had his doubts as to the guilt of Dreyfus and retained his admiration for Picquart. On this last point at any rate, the rumour of the colonel’s relative Dreyfusism was ill-founded, as are all the rumours, springing from no one knows where, which float around any great scandal. For, shortly afterwards, this colonel having been detailed to interrogate the former Chief of the Intelligence Branch, had treated him with a brutality and contempt the like of which had never been known before. However this might be (and although he had not taken the liberty of making a direct inquiry of the colonel), my neighbour had been kind enough to tell Saint-Loup—in the tone in which a Catholic lady might tell a Jewish lady that her parish priest denounced the pogroms in Russia and admired the generosity of certain Jews—that their colonel was not, with regard to Dreyfusism—to a certain kind of Dreyfusism, at least—the fanatical, narrow opponent that he had been made out to be.
“I’m not surprised,” was Saint-Loup’s comment, “as he’s a sensible man. But in spite of everything he’s blinded by the prejudices of his caste, and above all, by his clericalism. By the way,” he turned to me, “Major Duroc, the lecturer on military history I was telling you about—there’s a man who is whole-heartedly in support of our views, or so I’m told. And I should have been surprised to hear that he wasn’t, for he’s not only a brilliantly clever man, but a Radical-Socialist and a freemason.”
Partly out of courtesy to his friends, to whom Saint-Loup’s professions