The Library of French Fiction

EDITED BY
BARNET J. BEYER

Copyright 1919
By E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America

PREFATORY NOTE

Two Banks of the Seine, by Fernand Vandérem, belongs to the class of literature immortalized by Alphonse Daudet. In it we catch the slightly ironic but good-natured tone familiar to those who have read Sapho; and we perceive the author applying objective psychology to life—Parisian life. For M. Vandérem is not only Gallic, but vitally Parisian. His attitude towards men and women is sophisticated; but his art is always fresh and true. He is a realist who does not disdain to make use of romance when it suits his purpose.

Two Banks of the Seine is an interesting story wherein the life of the Latin Quarter and that of the upper classes are brought into sharp contrast. This supplies the author with ample material suitable to his peculiar bent. He handles his material with clear vision, often with delicate sympathy, and never without humor. The men and women in the book are sketched with a sure pen, and are put and kept in motion by a firm hand. They are made to move about briskly before us and to speak with the accents of life. Like all great novelists, M. Vandérem is more interested in character and human relationships than in plot. His book is not so much a novel in the ordinary sense as a comedy of manners.

Our author knows his Parisian well. He has studied him in the home and in the street; at work and at play. Few contemporary novelists afford us a clearer insight into the workings of the mind of the elusive Parisian, or a more intimate knowledge of his temperament.

M. Vandérem has written a number of novels besides Two Banks of the Seine; it is sufficient to mention here his Charlie and his La Victime, works of unusual merit.

Barnet J. Beyer.

26th February, 1919.

CONTENTS

TWO BANKS OF THE SEINE

CHAPTER I

THE carriage stopped at the gate of the Collège de France; Mme. Chambannes alighted briskly. She did not take the trouble to close the door and, swinging her muff, hurried through the somber courtyard, where three pigeons wandered in the security that silence and solitude ensured them.

Through the panes of the glass door M. Pageot, first usher of the Collège, watched her approach, his thick mustache slightly lifted in a smile of sympathy.

“Another one!” he thought, remembering all the fashionable ladies whom he had seen come in during the last hour. This one, moreover, was very dainty. Her small, fine, although bold, face, her astrakhan jacket and purple velvet toque with border of astrakhan to match, the curls of which mingled with her own brown hair, an aigrette of white feathers perched on the side, reminded him, reverence apart and minus the whiskers, of an old lithograph which hung above his bed, Murat, Future King of Naples, at the Battle of Eylau.

It was therefore with an eager hand that he opened the door for her.

“What is it you wish, madame?”

“If you please, where is the lecture on Egyptology?”

“M. Rainda lecture? There, you are facing the hall.”

She was rushing forward when M. Pageot held her back with a calm gesture. “It is useless, madame! The hall is full, overcrowded.... Moreover, you will not miss much, for it will be over in five minutes....”

“Thank you,” acknowledged Mme. Chambannes, regretfully, adding, after a pause, “Did you happen to see a tall, fair lady in a blue costume ... with a strapped jacket?”

Pageot tried to recollect.

“See her? See her?... Why, surely I saw her; but, madame, there are so many of them! Upon my word, I do not remember having seen so many people at an opening lecture during the whole fifteen years that I have been an usher of the Collège....” Carelessly he straightened his light nickel chain, and added in the competent tone of one who knew, “I suppose they came on account of his book on Cleopatra....”

Mme. Chambannes nodded assent. At that moment the doors of the lecture hall swung back under the pressure of the departing audience and the huge hall suddenly resounded with a church-like sonorousness.

“Here, perhaps, is your friend in blue,” said Pageot, indicating a lady who was one of the first to come out.

Mme. Chambannes hurried to stop Mme. de Marquesse, who exclaimed:

“You!... Well, I cannot say you are early! Yet I only came here to please you!”

“A letter I was expecting from Gerald,” apologized her friend. “l tell you about it later.... I was quite upset, I assure you.... Well, tell me, was it at least all right inside there? Was it worth the trouble?... Did he speak of Cleopatra?... Was he very shocking?”

Mme. de Marquesse assumed a roguish expression.

“I do know.... You are asking too much.... I am like the little girl in the play.... I saw nothing, I heard nothing.... Standing, with rows of men in front of me and the smell of perspiration!... I wo be caught again.... Or else I shall send my footman to book my seats in good time....”

“How dreadful!”

“Oh, well, it might have been worse,” replied Mme. de Marquesse protectively.... “Goodness gracious! What a child you are, little Zozé! Here or elsewhere you will meet M. Raindal again.... There is nothing lost.... And all this because M. de Meuze turned your head with his blarney!...”

“This has nothing to do with M. de Meuze!”

“With whom, then?... Is it Gerald?... If it is the father, then it must be the son.... Do you really think that notorieties carry any weight with him?... How naïve you are!”

“Why not!” demanded Mme. Chambannes sarcastically. “With such ideas, in three months I shall succeed in having a salon like the Pums or the Silberschmidts.... Thank you!... My system is not so absurd.... I know what I am doing!” Then she added more cordially, “Shall we watch them come out?”

“If you like,” replied Mme. de Marquesse. And they stood at one side in the narrow passage through which the audience filed out.

It was obviously a public meant for show, a delegation of that brilliant civic guard with which Paris keeps its successful glories surrounded. There were people from the literary salons, the “large circulation revues,” the conservative periodicals that have none but authentic illustrations after the title-page; there were academicians, famous as well as obscure, thinkers, men with dreamy minds and men with reflective ones, jugglers of ideas, men who dug up questions and men who solved problems. There were the established mistresses of the tables where discussion takes place, plus their lively retinue of little women, little men, little young men, little old men, the whole flight of those who prattle, cackle, and giggle on the heights of art as sparrows do on the branches of trees; there were pretty faces, dull with powder, peeping out of soft sable collars; inquisitive silhouettes with military mustaches; voices that were disciplined in the practice of the correct phrase; brows that were furrowed by years of study or the persistent search for the witty word; smiles, furs, and whiffs of perfume. They called to each other; they bowed to each other; they exchanged the opinions they had or even those they were going to have—all this before the amazed eyes of a few outsiders who spoke their names in low, respectful voices.

Mme. Chambannes seemed especially delighted with the spectacle. She had never been seriously tempted to belong to this élite. Fate had directed her aims elsewhere, towards a simpler, a more human and tender object; and thither, despite contrary appearances, all her actions tended. But to witness the gossip, the coquetries and friendly encounters of those well-known people who were so often mentioned in the society columns, afforded her a naïve delight, a joy of the eye and of the mind which gave her miniature face quite a serious look of attention.

Suddenly she made an involuntary movement of surprise and touched Mme. de Marquesse.

“Do look at this one!”

Her glance indicated a poorly clad girl who was coming towards them, in a jacket of green cloth with marten revers which seemed even more worn than the dusty tulle bonnet pinned awry on her head. The girl, who had the haughty gait and the somewhat bitter, aggressive expression which fatigue, pride, and masculine worries often give to women of science, gave the two women an almost hostile look as she passed them, and approached the usher.

“Pageot, has my father come out?” she asked in a tone of authority.

The usher quickly removed his skull cap.

“No, mademoiselle.... Shall I tell him that mademoiselle....”

“Thank you, Pageot.... You will please tell him that I am waiting for him outside, near the gate....”

“Very well, mademoiselle!” and the usher ran to open the door for her. “Do you know who she is?” he added mysteriously, as he turned back to Mme. Chambannes. “You do know?... It is Mlle. Thérèse Raindal, M. Rainda daughter!”

Outside, Mlle. Raindal began to pace back and forth in front of the ancient gate, walking briskly up and down the pavement, her neck shrunk in her shoulders and her shoulders hunched forward like those of a sentry struggling against the cold. At intervals she would stop and throw a searching glance towards the steps at the end of the courtyard. Through the window could be seen the meditative face of Pageot, which had at that distance and in the thick ochreous air of that dark November afternoon, almost the complexion of a yellow-fever patient. But as M. Raindal was not yet in sight, Thérèse took up her sentry walk again, her elbows close to her body, her hands crossed inside her plush muff.

Gradually, as she paced back and forth, the line of her lips, almost as thin as a thread of rose silk, paled and all but vanished in a pouting expression. She was thinking of the approaching evening ordeal, the forced introduction which had been arranged for her at the house of M. Lemeunier de Saulvard, of the Department of Moral Sciences,—an introduction to an unknown man who would be presented to her at a dance, a “possible husband,” the man who would have a right to her kisses, to her flesh, and would thereafter spend all his nights beside her. One more to reject! The ninth one in ten years! “A young savant of the greatest merit,” Saulvard had written; “one of our rising hopes in Assyriology, M. Pierre Boerzell....” M. Boerzell! M. Boerzell! She repeated the harsh, barbarous name. Well, that “hope” would be no less sadly handicapped in the matter of good looks than the others before him! Probably something like the podgy little man carrying a barriste case who was coming in her direction on the other side of the street! Instinctively she stopped to take a good look at the passer-by, her lips wickedly pursed and her eye aflame as at the sight of prey. Then, with lips relaxed in a disdainful smile, she turned about, and shrugging her shoulders, murmured:

“Yes, probably one of that type!”

She was suffering. As the wind bit her face, it seemed to her that something icy was gripping her heart. She remembered that other one—the man she had once lost—the runaway and defaulting fiancé, Albert Dastarac. Ten years had passed since then, but there were still nights when, in her maidenly dreams, she fancied that she felt his maddening embraces and the lingering fragrance of his lips.

Who could have foreseen that the young agrégé of history would prove so perfidious? That wheedling southerner, that seductive Albârt, as his deep bass voice sounded his name! He was so caressing, so passionate; the director of the Normal School had praised him so much! Even now while she waited outside the gate in that icy mist, Thérèse Raindal could not believe in the actuality of that past betrayal; she could not explain it to herself or even understand it. Images, daily called back to her memory, were so familiar and recent! She fancied she was beside Albârt in her fathe drawing-room in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Once more she saw his impudent profile, like that of a classical bandit, his splendid frame, his straight legs, his huge brown eyes with scarcely any white to be seen, and the fine black mustache which he curled with his tapering fingers, coppered by the use of tobacco. How he had made love to her during those eight days of their engagement!

She was flat-chested; her mouth was bloodless, small, and narrowed as if drawn together by a cord; her complexion was dulled by that greenish tan which one acquires when shut away from the sun, amidst dusty books, in over-heated libraries or in the feverish air of lecture halls. Albârt seemed to notice none of all those defects of which she was more conscious than anyone else and which often made her secretly unhappy. He saw nothing but her charms. He was always enraptured with her pale, straight nose chiselled like an antique, with her fierce gray eyes crowned with black velvet,—like those of Minerva, he would say,—with the massive coils of her brown hair, which he wanted to take down and bathe his face in. And the tenderness of his words matched his ability to flatter.

Ceaselessly, ardently, and without reason, he called her, as in an invocation or a prayer, “Oh, ma Theresoun! Oh, ma chato!” For her he sang slow Provençal songs, mournful as the tunes played by distant hunting-horns, which Mme. Raindal, who was also from the South, accompanied as best she could on the piano, quiveringly singing the chorus with him. Or, when he was alone with the young girl, he would sit at her feet on a stool of blue satin while she talked about the future,—how she would regulate the hours of his work, help him in his career, and push him on to the highest attainments. Then suddenly, wildly, he would throw himself upon her and press her in his arms murmuring, “Ma Theresoun!” The stone-like biceps of his arm would roll against her flesh, his scented mustache would be close to her face, his fragrant lips meet hers, and she would throw back her head, her eyelids closed, with a longing to yield, to let the sweet balm of his kisses permeate all her being.

Then one morning an embarrassed letter had come from Albârt. Family matters compelled him to put off the wedding and to leave at once for St. Gaudens, his native town. The young gentleman apologized, whined, protesting his sorrow. Three weeks later, M. Raindal had taken his daughter to the Luxembourg, as one would lead a convalescent to take a little rest in the spring air of the gardens; there Thérèse saw her fiancé, the spruce and lively Dastarac, with a young girl on his arm, a short, thin, sickly creature, the third daughter of M. Gaussine, professor of the Sumarian language at the Sorbonne, who was walking behind them.

“Come along, child,” murmured M. Raindal, trying to lead his daughter away. “Yes, they are to be married. I only heard of it yesterday!... Maître Gaussine has a reputation for getting good positions for his sons-in-law.... This is what must have attracted our rascal.... Come on, l explain to you....”

But she had stood still, unable to move, although she could hardly keep from screaming aloud in her pain. She had been on the verge of fainting. What an outrageous memory! Then came the ghastly days in her room, still impregnated with the rogu perfume,—the long hours of day dreams, when she had taken her vows of renunciation, swearing henceforth to devote herself to a life of study as others are driven by despair into religion!

In spite of her work, however, and of the long years that had passed since then, she had been unable to dismiss from her mind, no matter how much learning she had crowded it with, the tenacious image of the charming Albârt, who, notwithstanding the offices of his father-in-law, was said to be buried miles away from Paris, in an obscure Lycée of Provence.

Thérèse was still dazzled by the memory of his caresses, as were those mortals of antiquity whom a god had loved. He remained her mourned husband, the masterful lord of her secret life; and when they wanted to marry her, to give her to another man, it was always he who came between, who took her back, resurrecting in her austere frame his Theresoun of old, his captivated Theresoun. Invisible to all others, but present to her, he would seem to be there, hand on hip, his knee bent in that swaggering attitude of bravado, murmuring with sneering lips, “But look, ma chato, look, compare us!... Is it possible ... after me?” It was true; how could she stoop—betray him! And so in a few brusque words the new suitor was always dismissed.

“So you do want him, child?” M. Raindal would ask pitifully, only to be met with a refusal so sharp and angry, and like a blow that it left him dazed, reduced him to silence, and effectively prevented any further argument.

“Well, dear, are we ready?... I was delayed by a newspaper man, a reporter who interviewed me on Cleopatra, the English in Egypt ... and I do know what.... Tell me, you did not feel too impatient?”

Thérèse started on hearing the jovial voice of her father.

“No, no, I was thinking; I was working, walking up and down.”

“Good! I am glad of it....” And as one does to a friend or a colleague, he took her arm and rapidly led her towards the Boulevard St. Michel.

People turned to look as they passed, puzzled by the strange couple: this officer of the Légion onneur, an old gentleman with a white beard, and a girl who looked like a school teacher, walking arm in arm tenderly. Some attempted a guess; some instinctively smiled, moved by vague sympathetic ideas. Sometimes students who knew the master by sight purposely stared at him to win a glance for themselves, or even, moved by respect, saluted him.

M. Raindal perceived this homage only confusedly. He was now concentrating all his attention on questioning Thérèse to ascertain her exact opinion of his opening lecture. Was she satisfied? Had it gone well? It was not too long? And the peroration, what had she thought that? Had he done right in dismissing those loungers and snobs who had dared to invade his lecture hall, his own quiet little chapel?

“Oh, yes!” Thérèse replied. “Although I might say you were a little too severe and scornful.”

“Never enough so!... It may be good for the Sorbonne to have all those fine ladies and their tame cats.... But as for us, we want none but workers, true apprentices....”

Then he digressed into a diffuse commentary on the duties, the dignity, and the aim of the Collège de France. Science! Le Collège de France! There lay his faith, his church, and he had no other! Thérèse knew by heart the order and the verses of these fiery litanies, and let him proceed without interruption.

“Never mind, child,” he concluded, out of breath. “They have had their warning. I think we shall not see them again.... Moreover, this affluence has its reasons.... It is another miracle of our Cleopatra.”

“Oh, our Cleopatra!” Thérèse protested.

“Yes, yes, ours. I maintain the word....”

Following the natural bent which leads one to talk of oneself, he recalled the phases of his disconcerting triumph: fame that had come in a night, the whole press, the reviews, and the salons working together to make him famous; five thousand copies sold in three weeks; articles every night, every morning ... everywhere—those papers which fell into line later proving more ardent than the first ones, thus seeking in the fervor of their adhesion an excuse for the shame of their delay; letters, interviews, requests for articles, portraits and autographs. Success, in one word,—that imperial investiture, with its long, endless offerings, delirious praetorians, and even the intolerant enthusiasm that forces the jealous to wait, which Paris sometimes gives to its elect.

And to whom did M. Raindal owe it all? Who had suggested to him the subject of this book three years ago? Who had thought of a Life of Cleopatra, written from the national Egyptian point of view, and deriving its inspiration from indigenous documents and the popular sentiments of the period? And then who had helped him to the very end, faithfully seconded him in the heavy task? Who had classified the material, copied the papyri, transcribed the inscriptions, and read the proofs over and over, one by one, with the exception of the Latin notes? Who had....

“But, I say, where are you leading me now!” he exclaimed, abandoning the tone of friendly custody which he had assumed in reciting his eulogy of her.

Thérèse smiled tenderly.

“There you are, father; tha what you get for exaggerating.... One forgets everything, one does know where one is any more.... I am leading you to the Bon Marché, where I am going to buy gloves for to-night....”

“Ah, yes, the dance!” M. Raindal sighed, as if he had already received the customary blow of a refusal. Then he went on: “Well, no! I must leave you.... I am going to climb up to your Uncle Cyprie; I want to inquire how his rheumatism is to-day and whether he is coming to dine with us to-night....”

Before the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés, they stopped in the midst of the melancholy crowd standing about the street-car office and shook hands firmly, like two comrades.

“Au revoir, dear, l see you a little later.”

“Au revoir, father.”

Thérèse crossed the street, while M. Raindal gathered up his leather case, which was slipping from his elbow, and slowly and with deliberation, as if weighed down by his thoughts, ventured into the rue Bonaparte.

CHAPTER II

M. CYPRIEN RAINDAL lived on the sixth floor of an old house that stood at the corner of the rue Vavin and the rue ssas, in an apartment made up of two large rooms, the windows of which gave him a limitless vista over the yoke-elm trees of the Luxemburg. He was a thick-set, sanguine man, about forty-five years old, and wore his hair close-cropped, like soldiers in the African colonies. By temperament he was irritable and rebellious. As early as 1860 his elder brother had secured him a place in the Ministry of Industry, from which, however, had it not been for the same powerful intervention of Eusèbe Raindal, he would several times have been dismissed.

Born at the unfortunate period of their fathe life, when M. Raindal had been put out of the University for being an accomplice of Barbès and was reduced to coaching at two francs a lesson, it seemed as if the son had inherited a taste for political opposition. He had detested in turn each government which his functions compelled him to serve, the second empire, M. Thiers, the Seize-Mai, and the subsequent rule of “opportunism.” Finally, in 1889, when the trunks of General Boulanger were seized, a card bearing Cyprie name was found therein upon which he had written the cordial exhortation, “Bravo, general! Forward! The whole country stands with you!”

Cyprien Raindal was on the eve of being promoted; but called to the office of the Minister, his lips already shaping words of gratitude, he received instead the notification of his dismissal. The blow struck him as he was breathing the very spirit of peace; it was like an unexpected insult, like a blow upon the cheek that had been offered for a kiss. Murmuring threats and words of rage, he had returned to his desk, and then had rushed out to order new visiting-cards, on which appeared under his name, ancien sous-chef de bureau au Ministère de ndustrie, and one of these he had himself nailed up on the door of his apartment. But his vengeance had stopped there. The official mind within him forbade his persisting in what was almost the usurpation of a title, and he finally decided to burn the rest of the deceptive cards. Moreover, in spite of the affair, his brother was endeavoring to secure him the benefit of his pension,—three thousand francs, without which he would have been plunged into the most undignified misery. He waited, holding himself in check for a few weeks, and only began to express himself with freedom when his pension had been officially liquidated.

When that was done, however, the fury of his opinions and the violence of his language burst forth terribly, like explosives that have been too long compressed. Thirty years of exasperation, hitherto repressed by the necessity of existing and the fear of his superiors, rushed out through his lips in avalanches that seemed to be inexhaustible. He wished at first to reduce his hatred to a formula, to justify his discontent with some sort of principles, and he inclined towards socialism. Unfortunately, however, he was lost in questions of capital and wages; statistics bored him and political economy upset him with its systems, which were always either unstable or denied by rival experts. By taste, if not by conviction, he was bourgeois; by education he was, like his brother, non-religious; by force of habit he was a waster of red-tape. What he needed was a more human and less subversive doctrine, theories easy to master, morality rather than figures, and sentiment rather than deduction.

Thus, gradually and by himself, he had built up a social creed which allowed him elbow room, as would a suit of clothes made to order. Firmly persuaded that he was the victim of injustice, he longed to see justice enthroned. The punishment of evildoers, the death or exile of the thieves, a general return to honest life and the crushing of iniquity—these he wished to see in the first place. Later? Well, one would see about the rest. Let the people obtain that much purification, and they would settle the remainder in the best way possible. M. Raindal, junior, was not one of those swaggering dreamers who promise to destroy and rebuild society as if it were the hut of a road-mender. He knew how powerful was tradition, how necessary the family, and he appreciated the indispensable charm of freedom. Before doing away with that, let Frenchmen think about clearing the country from the vermin that infested it. If the chance offered itself, Uncle Cyprien would not refuse his help. He declared himself ready to go with them any day that the “comrades” would proceed en masse to seize in their own mansions the prevaricators, the Jews, and the pillars of the church whose coalition kept down France as with a three-pronged fork. It was his own comparison, and he repeated it readily with much bragging about getting his head broken and breaking the heads of many others.

His reading of the newspapers of the opposition had thoroughly fitted him for a place in the ranks of those sincere justice-lovers whom the death of the rebel general had left without a head but not without a hope. Instinctively he turned towards the pamphleteers who denounced the enemies of the weak or supported the victims against their oppressors. By a curious anomaly he had in turn discovered within himself all the hatreds, no matter how incongruous, with which these masters stirred up the flames. Rochefort had helped him to find in his heart the hatred of all politicians; with Paul Bert or his disciples he had discerned in himself a hatred for the priests and all devout Catholics; with Drumont, hatred for Jews and exotics. He was always reading the articles and the books of these pamphleteers and could quote whole passages from memory. His conversation showed this; it was discordant with the most diverse insults. The words chequard (grafter), repu (bloated), panamist (one compromised in the Panama scandals), calotin (priest-ridden), cafard (canting rascal), ratichon (bigot), joined to those of youtre (Jew), youpin (Jew), or rasta (short for rastaquouère and meaning an exotic mongrel or Levantine) vibrated all at once like the “sustained bass” of his indignations. His virulence when he discussed sociology in the presence of strangers was a cause of deep grievance to his family.

When he heard the bell of his apartment he jumped from the little green rep-covered couch where he was dozing and, slightly limping and holding his back with one hand, he opened the door. A smile lit his face the moment he recognized M. Raindal.

“I am very glad to see you!” exclaimed Cyprien, after the two brothers had kissed as usual. “Come this way.... I had so many things to read to you....”

“And how are you?” asked M. Raindal, as he followed him. “How do you feel now? Are you coming to dine to-night?”

“Why, yes, indeed; I shall certainly come.” And, entering the room in which he used to receive, Cyprien affectionately laid his hand on his brothe shoulder and said, “Now, sit down and listen to this.”

Hastily he began a search among the newspapers which littered his couch. They were unfolded, crumpled or piled up so that only odd letters from their large titles could be seen. All those scattered newspapers were a sick ma debauch, a fond indulgence—a luxury, a treat he offered himself when he was kept at home by rheumatism. Otherwise he only read the papers at the café or at the brasserie, and in small doses—perhaps two or three aggressive sheets, which gave a delightful sensation of warmth to his brain after lunch, as the small glass of cognac he usually took burned his throat. When at last he had sorted them and found the three which he sought he flourished them with a rattling noise.

“Here is something!” he said. “Rich and delightful!... Enough to amuse me and to make you swell with pride.... First of all, of course, what amuses me....”

He read the first article in victorious tones. In discreet but pitiless terms the writer announced as imminent the arrest of a senator, an ex-minister and deputy, well-known for his intrigues, his accommodating complacency towards the banking interests and his clerical tendencies; and the government was congratulated for that forthcoming show of energy.

“You see,” Uncle Cyprien said, when he had finished reading, “I do know who it is.... I thought about it for hours.... I could find the name ... and yet, I must admit the news caused me to pass a very pleasant day.... It is high time that all those scoundrels were swept out.... One more in jail! I score one!...” He smiled at his own merriment and added, with his two hands on his knees:

“Well, what do you think about it? It is getting serious! All these rotten gatherings are bursting open!”

M. Raindal hesitated. He wished to avoid controversy or, at least, to adjourn it and to thrash the matter out only after his brother had read the other articles. Trained by his profession and by personal inclination to consider things through the immensity of time, in the infinite span of past and future centuries, he was not so much indifferent to his own time as disdainful of it. Whenever his brother goaded him into discussing politics he felt more scared and ill at ease than if he had had to argue upon a matter of taboo with a savage chief of Polynesia in the latte own language.

“Of course! To be sure!...” he declared. “We are living in a troubled period.... There are many abuses.... How can it be helped?... Concussion is the plague of democracies.... Polybius said so....”

“Ah, leave me alone with your Polybius!” Uncle Cyprien interrupted, shaking his head as if to disentangle himself from his brothe aphorisms. “Why not simply tell me that we are governed by rogues?... It will be truer and quicker....”

Then he felt somewhat ashamed of having thus chided his illustrious elder brother whom he worshiped in the depths of his tormented soul.

“Oh, well, do get angry.... I your fault, after all.... You get on my nerves with your vague, high-sounding sentences.... See, to earn my forgiveness ... the portrait of M. Eusèbe Raindal, the man of the day, the famil standard, the glory of the French Egyptology, with the history of his life from the most remote times to our own days! Tara! Tara! Ta-ta-ta-ta!...” He gave his brother the second newspaper and marched round the room sounding through his rounded fingers a triumphal march, as in the days gone by, at the office, he had celebrated the success of some colleague.

M. Rainda eyes stared at the paper which his long-sightedness compelled him to hold at ar length.

Yes, that coarse-printed, ill-reproduced portrait, that was himself, his own strong nose, his white beard and benevolent face—a true senato face, as uncle Cyprien assured him.

Below his biography were spread out dates and yet more dates, all the titles of his books, one after the other, giving no more inkling of his life, his ideas, the joys and sorrows of his manhood than the milestones on the road or the posts at the crossings give one any idea of the places one goes through. To him, however, these dry figures and words were as alive as his own human flesh. His lips trembled in a nervous smile. Vanity overflowed from his heart to his face. He blushed with shame as if he felt directed towards him the stares of the crowd which, this very day, was looking at his features. However, his innate sense of propriety caused him to collect himself, and he said calmly:

“Entirely correct! I am much obliged to you. l carry it home....”

He rose to take his leave. A gesture from Cyprien caused him to resume his seat.

“Wait! Wait!... Tha not all. Now comes the unpleasant part!... You are insulted in the Fléau, a filthy rag written by calotins and read by all the rich Jews.... Here, listen to this!... It is awful!”

Cyprien began to read in a voice that trembled with sarcasm but even more with anger:

ACADEMIC INDISCRETIONS

The commission that is to bestow the Vital-Gerbert prize of fifteen thousand francs upon the best history book of the year will shortly meet at the French Academy. If one is to believe the rumors, the fight will be a hot one as there are several candidates. We are assured that one of them is M. Eusèbe Raindal, of the Institute, the author of that Life of Cleopatra which a certain section of the press has much boomed within the last month. M. Rainda candidacy, however, meets with serious opposition in academic circles. Several members consider the success of his book to be largely due to the obscene details which abound in it and which have attracted a special class of readers. Without desiring in any way to prejudice this delicate controversy, we are nevertheless compelled to admit that this book is one of the most immoral productions which have for a long time been published by a member of the Institute. The footnotes especially, although written in Latin, show signs of a revolting indecency. The author may claim in his defense that he has merely translated Egyptian pamphlets of the period and that, moreover, he has translated them only into Latin. It is nevertheless a fact that, wittingly or otherwise, he has given publicity to a mass of veritable filth. We know that history has its rights and the historian his duties. But M. Raindal will have some difficulty in establishing that it was his duty as a historian to show us Cleopatra coughing out disgusting words in the most abject surrenders of her love-making or going one better in the shameless expressions of debauchery than a female Nero. We think it is for other works, that treat of wider questions, and from a social and lofty point of view, that the academic prizes should be reserved. The “Immortals” of the Academy must decide whether we are right or wrong. To prove our contention they have this year only the difficulty of selection.

Cyprien kneaded the paper into a ball and threw it on the floor.

“Well,” he concluded, “a pretty savage attack!... It has no importance whatsoever since, as I told you, only Jews read this letter.... However, if you were to authorize me, I should be very glad to go and pull the ears of the sneak who let his pen....”

M. Rainda face had grown pale with suffering as his brother had proceeded with his reading. He lifted his hand with a philosophical gesture and murmured in a voice that he had not yet steadied:

“No use.... These are the little come-backs of fame.... And then, I know the source!”

“Who?”

“I am sure that it was inspired, if not written, by my colleague and competitor Saulvard.... Lemeunier de Saulvard, of the Sciences Morales.... I recognize his hand.... He wants the prize for his History of the Freed Men in the Roman Empire.... I am in his way.... He gets someone to vilify me.... It is a classical method.... One can only be sorry for the wretch and smile....”

M. Raindal gave a painful smile, but his throat was obstructed by that rage, like bitter gall, which one feels under patent injustice. He spat out the word:

“Obscene!”

He paused awhile, then, his voice relieved, he repeated:

“Obscene!... No, I had never heard that in the course of my career; yet I have seen much jealousy, smallness of mind and calumny among members of my profession.... If you knew what sewers run under what is called the pure regions of science!... And the filth that is poured down in them! Obscene!... After a career like mine!... The scoundrels!”

He laughed disdainfully.

“Ha! ha!... To call a man obscene who led an almost pure, blameless youth!... A man who has worked twelve hours a day for the last forty years.... It is all they have found.... See! I am laughing!... It is too amusing! It is too funny for words!”

His brother Cyprien remained silent so as to allow full swing to this revolt, the vehemence of which was a delight to his own instincts. He pressed his brothe hand.

“Tha right! Tha the way to speak.... I can see you are a true Raindal. You do not like to be goaded.... You kick.... Tha right! I hope when you meet that person....”

“I am seeing him to-night,” M. Raindal said, putting a sudden damper on his eagerness.

“To-night?” the ex-official muttered with surprise. “How?... Where?...”

“At his house.... He is giving a dance....”

“And you are going?”

“Well, yes!... A marriage for Thérèse.... A young man, a young savant, is to be introduced to us.”

Cyprien laid a hand on the polished dome of his head and said dreamily:

“Ah! ah! A match for my nephew.” (He always called Thérèse his nephew because of her masculine ways.) “Good! That is a reason.... Well, I have an idea that my nephew will not accept that young savant.... However, you are right; one has to see.... But be cautious! Your Saulvard seems to me utterly worthless ... and I would not be inclined to trust anything that came from that quarter....”

M. Raindal rose to his feet.

“Do worry. I shall look out.... Besides, you are wrong.... When his ambitions are not concerned Saulvard is not such a bad fellow....”

Cyprien whistled incredulously:

“Phew!... That may be.... Well, see you later ... seven lock.”

And he accompanied his brother to the top of the steps.

The lamp-posts were lit outside when M. Raindal reached his home in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

Rapidly he put on his brown smoking-jacket and his felt slippers, and passed quietly through the dark hall towards his study. Two large rectangular oak tables, face to face as in a bank, almost filled the room. Thérèse was sitting at one of them, writing by the light of an oil lamp. The green cardboard shade threw back on her the crude light which her bowed forehead reflected in spots.

“Already at work!” M. Raindal exclaimed.

He took her head between his two hands as one does with a little girl and kissed her with a recrudescent selfish tenderness, with that need for a closer contact which those who are dear to us inspire after we have suffered from the wickedness of others.

She released herself with a smile, and said gently:

“Let me alone, father!... I am reading the proofs of your article for La Revue. They are coming for them at 5.30. You can see that there is no time to lose.”

“Quite right! I obey,” M. Raindal said.

He sat facing her at the other table and took up some papers on which he began to make notes. Everything was dark about the room with the exception of a few golden threads shining in the texture of the gold curtains and the thin yellow circle which the lamp threw on the ceiling. The only sounds were the somewhat halting breathing of M. Raindal, the crackling of the coke in the fireplace, and now and then a neighboring bell giving out at long intervals a few isolated, mournful sounds. Suddenly the master exclaimed:

“What about your mother?... Has she come home yet?”

“No,” Thérèse replied, “but she will not be long.... She cannot be much longer.”

And without ceasing to write, she added with a slight touch of sarcasm:

“It seemed to me.... No, I ought not to tell you.... Well, since I have begun, let it go!... I thought before I came in that I saw Mother entering the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés!”

“Again!” M. Raindal murmured with a tone of commiseration.... “That is at least the second time since this morning.... It is deplorable!”

Thérèse smiled and looked at her father.

“What can you expect?... It makes her happy and soothes her!”

M. Raindal made a melancholy grimace.

He, a philosophical and contemptuous atheist, whose only faith was in science, whom religious faith, even on the part of his friends, irritated as a proof of lack of understanding—had he not done everything he could in the past to bring to his wife that calm happiness which he enjoyed? If Mme. Raindal had not forgotten, she better than anyone else could testify to the patience and abnegation with which he had done so!...

It had been an unpleasant surprise. Mlle. Desjannières was so gay and merry, so childish, despite her twenty years; her father, a Marseilles barrister, who had chanced to seek his fortune in Egypt, was such a brilliant talker, such a good fellow, a singer of such catchy tunes! No one could have suspected the secret fervor at work in the mind of the girl. Well, M. Raindal had not minded because he was in love with his fiancée. He would take care of her, cure her of it! On the very day that had followed their wedding in Alexandria, and later in Paris where they had settled, he had begun the cure and pursued it methodically. Every day he had discussed it with his wife for hours, preached to her and reasoned with her. She had lent herself willingly to the régime and tried in her tenderness to surmount her fears. After three months, one morning, she threw herself on her knees before her husband, weeping and crying for mercy. She begged him to put a stop to the martyrdom, to let her return to the confessional. In presence of her affliction, M. Raindal had been compelled to agree.

She was moved by a superhuman force, an unconquerable fear, the dread of the punishments which follow sin. An old Provençal maid, a kind of Domestic Dante, had inoculated her when she was quite young with the germs of the sickness. In the evenings she had described to her, as if she had been there herself, the lurid sights, the burning horrors, the eternal pangs which torment the sinners in the lands of Hell, the pains of damnation, the torments of the senses, the howls, the moans, the diabolical contortions. And as the child grew up, her soul became gradually narrower at the flame of those tales, more sensitive, more fearful of sins. The slightest of them weighed upon her as an irremissible fault, a thorny burden that choked her heart. She must needs at once rush to a priest, unload before his indulgence that weight of anguish which was heavier than a load of lead. Often as she emerged from a sanctuary she was halted by a scruple, by the semblance of a neglect which brought her hastily back to implore once more the help of the priest as he left the sacred enclosure. And since her marriage, for the last thirty-two years, she had been living thus, forever urged toward churches by new torments of her conscience, hiding her terrors when at home, unable to dominate them when outside, dreading the sarcasm of her family and weeping over their damnation.

“Her happiness! Her peace of mind!” M. Raindal was grunting as he wrote.... “If only she had had the energy to trust me with them.”

Just then the doorbell rang hurriedly twice.

“Hark!” the master said. “Here comes your mother.... I am anxious to hear what she has to say....”

Mme. Raindal stood on the threshold. A long quilted silk cape, lined with minever and slightly worn about the shoulders, encased her form. All out of breath, she panted:

“Wait!”

Her hand went under the cape and lay over her heart to suppress its beating. She explained:

“I climbed the stairs too fast.”

“Sit down! Rest yourself!” M. Raindal said calmly.

“No, no! It is passed! I feel better!”

She unhooked her cape and went to kiss her husband, then her daughter. Her cheeks carried the frost of the wind outside; they were cold as a window pane; she was still panting as she bent over each of them.

“Where have you been, to return so late?” M. Raindal inquired, without lifting his eyes from his work.

She protested.

“So late!... But it is not ‘so late’!... It is not more than 5.15.... I went to Guerbois, to order a pie for to-night.... Cyprie coming to dinner, is he?”

“Oh, yes ... Cyprie coming.”

She did not dwell on the matter. She was choking with a new fear; she had almost sinned by telling an untruth. She poked the red lumps of coke and lowered the wick of the smoking lamp. Then, feeling the weight of the silence which was pregnant with irony and with suspicion perhaps, she left the room, her cheeks now suddenly aflame, her breast heavy with sighs.

Thérèse and her father simultaneously raised their heads and exchanged a knowing smile.

“Did you hear that?... her pie?...”

He shrugged his shoulders quite discouraged. The young girl murmured with compassion:

“Poor mother!... She is so kind!...”

CHAPTER III

AT about a quarter to six, Uncle Cyprien went to his small dark kitchenette to polish his shoes before going out.

He intended to go to the Klapproth Brasserie in the rue Vavin to join his old friend, Johann Schleifmann, and talk for an hour with him while drinking an apéritif.

People who knew the younger M. Rainda antisemitism were surprised at his intimacy with that Galician Jew.

But when he was asked about it, Cyprien showed not the slightest embarrassment. Far from it! He eyed his inquirer from head to foot, shrugged his shoulders and then informed him—if he cared to know—that Schleifmann was the best man in the world. He had associated with him for ten years and never had had any cause to complain of him. These inquiries, moreover, seemed to him futile, because, he could vouch for it, Schleifmann, although a Jew, was as “much of an anti-semite as you or I.”

Cyprien voiced an exaggeration when he said this, or at least, he was misinterpreting his frien feelings.

Schleifmann could not be classified among those cautious Jews who deny their Jewry through fear of prejudice, or because they cringe before the majority, or through worldly or professional self-interest.

His anti-semitism, on the contrary, was made up of sheer love for his race and atavistic pride. If he appeared anti-semitic, it must have been in the fashion of a Jeremiah, an Isaiah or an Amos. In sooth, the bitter spirit of the ancient prophets animated his heart. He cursed the men of his religion merely because they were shirking the destinies of Israel and let themselves be corrupted by trifling vanities instead of ruling the world by the influence of thought. This Semitic pride had even been the cause of all the difficulties of his adventurous life.

He was a Doctor of Philosophy of Lemberg University who early in life had neglected the ancient Mosaic law in order to embrace the more recent creed which was spreading over the world—socialism. According to him, the Jews had been the initiators of that new faith as they had been of the other one. Karl Marx and Lassalle were to him the modern messengers of Jehovah upon earth, sent to bring forth the new gospel and the economic religion of the future. He considered their books as almost holy and rejoiced at seeing once more the divine Jewish supremacy asserted by their writings. He was affiliated with the principal socialist groups of the city and carried on an active propaganda in the poor districts. Three months in a fortress and ten years’ exile put a sudden stop to his zeal, if not to his convictions.

While in prison he had carefully thought out the place where he would seek asylum on leaving. Life would be very painful to him in Austria or in Germany, where he would be watched by the police and exposed to the attacks of the anti-semites. He decided upon a temporary stay in France where he went towards the end of 1882.

He thought he would make a living by teaching German, philosophy or the natural sciences. Warm letters of introduction had been given him by Viennese Jews to their relatives and fellow-Jews of Paris. Thus he rapidly obtained a certain amount of patronage which placed him beyond want and even earned him comfort.

Soon, however, and of his own free will, Schleifmann was to lose that comfort owing to an idealistic ambition and a mania to put his ideas into effect and to bring the Jews back to their hereditary duties.

He had noticed in Eastern Europe the contagious progress of anti-semitism and was deeply convinced that the anti-Jewish microbe would pursue its unrelenting march westward, successively invading France, England, the New World and finally the whole of Christendom.

This tendency must be resisted, fought and destroyed. As to the means of doing it, Schleifmann had a very clear theory, which he claimed to have derived from the very sources of the purest Judaism. It was simple. All that was needed was for the wealthy Jews to return to the traditions of their race whose almost divine mission was to supply the nations with moral examples, their brains with ideas and their hearts with a religion.

To accomplish this purpose they were to repudiate their past errors, leave the worldly and clerical society where they grew soft at the expense of their dignity, return to the fold of democracy whence they had sprung, employ their rare abilities in the defense of the weak, the triumph of the right, and enforce victory against injustice. Finally, keeping back nothing but a personal income, in no case to exceed ten thousand francs, they were to give up all their acquired riches, the whole of which would be used in national, popular or colonizing schemes. Such, in brief, were the main practical means by which Schleifmann intended to secure the salvation and glory of the Lor chosen people.

After a few months in Paris, he thought the moment was favorable for him to lay his daring plan of regeneration before the parents of his pupils, the clergy and the notables of Jewry. His illusions of success were short-lived.

The Jews of high finance had recently fought the first round with the Catholics. Some said they had been helped by the Cabinet. Others, that they had enjoyed the secret approval of a government which had long been in sympathy with the Jewish cause. Others again, more conservative in their estimate, claimed that the Jews enjoyed the “non-official sympathy” of the Administration to which the revolt of the wealthy Catholic families caused much anxiety. In fine, whether supported or alone, the Jews had won and now they were blinded by the enthusiasm of their victory. Never had their conceited arrogance been more insane nor their trust in the efficacy of the law more dense.

Schleifmann was everywhere repulsed. The rabbis were afraid that he might place them in a difficult position with high finance, whose members were all powerful in the Consistory; they begged him not to persist in his dangerous utopias. The rich and the half-rich dismissed him with a few dry words or with scornful jesting.

Very few cared to enter into discussion with him. They would give a fatherly pat to the obstinate Galician and ask him whether it was really himself, M. Schleifmann, a wise and learned man, who prattled such nonsense. Anti-semitism! That was all very well in Germanic lands, or in Slavic countries where—they had to say it, but with no desire to offend him personally—the Jews were ... well, he knew well enough what! But in France, in the land of all the liberties, on the beautiful soil of France, the mother of Revolutions and of the sublime Declaration of the Rights of Man, never, never, never at all, he ought to know, would anti-semitism flourish. Thereupon they would burst out laughing and offer him a cigar.

These unfortunate rebuffs were not the only punishment met by Schleifmann. Many parents became alarmed at his theories and withdrew their children from his care. He was left with barely a third of his patrons, making just enough to live on, or rather enough not to perish of want.

The wreck was thorough, but he faced it with courage.

In order to prepare for such possible contingencies as sickness, he sold all his furniture, all his books but a hundred odd volumes which he termed indispensable. He kept his Bible, the Imitation of á Kempis, Goethe, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Mendelssohn, Renan, Taine, Victor Hug poetical works and the writings of socialist leaders.

Then he took a large, well-lighted room on the sixth floor of a house in the rue de Fleurus and waited, while reading, for fortune and humanity to change.

Three whole years passed by and he was beginning to doubt his own prophetic acumen when, suddenly, the events occurred that restored to him his faith.

Despite what he had been told, anti-semitism was beginning to germinate and blossom in the beautiful land of France. It had come through the fertilizing agency of the envy and resentments of some, of the clumsiness and the extortions of others. The ardent crop was growing daily in spite of regulations and legal fences, in spite of the laws and the proclaimed Rights of Man.

Johann Schleifmann was joyfully complacent at first, then deeply sorrowful. He followed the affair, always divided between these opposite feelings.

He deplored the cruel, partial attacks levelled at his co-religionists; but he could not free himself from a certain feeling of pride that he had predicted them. The more unfairly they were abused, the more his anger rose against them. Fools! Poor wretches! Had they but been willing! When the social columns told of their magnificent garden-parties, of their deer-and fox-hunting and of their raouts, he sneered wickedly, yet with sadness. He repeated the words aloud in a sarcastic tone or uttered them as so many curses: “Garden-parties! Raouts! Fox-hunting!...” Yes, they could “receive” and “dance” and “ride out.” Those fellows were making the most of it! He was carried away, indignant, at the thought that so much money was stupidly thrown away, when, had they with a kind hand but given a portion of it to the people, it would have served a generous cause and settled and repaired everything.

It was about that time that he had become acquainted with M. Cyprien Raindal at the Brasserie Klapproth where they both took their meals.

They had liked each other from the first words they had exchanged. They were mutually attracted. Their nationalities were different, their religions antagonistic, their temperaments divergent but they found out that they shared the same grudges and detested the same castes. Curiosity also helped to foster their association. Schleifmann was to Uncle Cyprien a real mine of exceptional documents upon which he could feed his hatreds, and Schleifmann saw in him an unregarded specimen of the enemies of his race. Moreover, they cherished in secret their own plans concerning each other. The Galician wanted to convert his friend to the theories of Karl Marx; while the younger M. Raindal had sworn to himself that he would convert the exiled philosopher from his internationalistic views. Above all other motives, poverty united them, that poverty which kneads all the lowly into an identical paste, merges them into one family, transforms them into brothers and allies—age, origin or any other obstacle notwithstanding. Hence, they had hardly spent a day during the past ten years without meeting outside or visiting each other in their respective garrets.

Cyprien Raindal was ready and opened his door to go out. He fell back a step, surprised on seeing Johann Schleifmann himself, preparing to ring.

“You!”

“Surely, it is I!...” Schleifmann replied in a voice which the constant use of the Hebrew language had rendered somewhat nasal and slow. “I did not see you yesterday and so I came to ascertain whether you were not ill....”

“Oh, it is nothing at all; a mere touch of rheumatism, my wretched rheumatism.... Come in, come in, please,” the younger M. Raindal added, removing his own hat. “It seems as if we had not chatted for ages!”

He closed the door and pulled his old friend Johann by the sleeve.

Schleifmann replied with a smile.

“Yes, let us talk! As a matter of fact, I have brought you the surprise which I mentioned the other day.... Here, enjoy yourself!...”

He threw on the table a book bound in reddish linen, on the back of which was printed in black letters: Year Book of French Finance.

While Cyprien examined the volume, Schleifmann half-stretched himself on the couch, following a sarcastic trend of ideas. His was the type of the eastern Jew, a Kalmuk face with a wax-like complexion, a flat nose, turned up at the tip and with broad nostrils and small, yellowish eyes that shone with malice. His gray hair and beard were crisp and curly like wool; to correct his shortsightedness, he wore large gold-rimmed spectacles, the supreme elegance of Teutonic university men.

Suddenly he exclaimed in his usual slow, dragging voice:

“There are enough names in there!... Jews, Moslems, Christians, yes, and goyim, too.... Names from all countries and all religions.... It is to these names that the whole wealth of the land belongs.... They are all the names of those who fleece and grind us; you understand, my dear Raindal?... One of these names at the bottom of a paper is better than a cartridge of dynamite under a house.... It makes the millions dance as oranges fly from the hands of a juggler.... But, God be praised! my friend, this will not last forever!...”

“Ah! you are clever, Schleifmann!” the younger M. Raindal murmured, throwing an inquisitive glance at the Galician over the book he held open in his hand. “We know your game!... You want to egg me on again to your socialism.... Well, no.... I not to be done! I stand for freedom ... and for property ... and for the whole system of our filthy society, provided, however, people are honest. Yes, to be sure! Otherwise, pan, pan! To the wall with the grafters!...”

Schleifmann protested mildly, asserting that his remarks were disinterested. Then he came closer to Cyprien, who had laid the book on the table, the better to consult it. He guided his frien search among the terrible complications of interdependent banks, boards of administration, committees, sub-committees and other mysterious groups bent upon conquest.

Gradually, the younger M. Raindal waxed excited as he read. When he saw the same name figure on two, three, four boards, he exclaimed in distress like a man who is being assaulted. His jocular anger was especially excited by the names that bore the signs of Hebraic descent.

“Another one!” he would throw at Schleifmann.

“So it seems! But is it my fault?” the Galician replied sadly.

Again they took up their reading. To see their backs, their elbows closely touching, one might have fancied that they were two good little boys greedily perusing some picture-book or a fascinating volume of adventures.

Suddenly Cyprien straightened up and struck his rounded forehead. “By the way, Schleifmann,” he asked, “do you happen to know a certain Lemeunier de Saulvard?”

“Member of the Institute of France?”

“Yes, himself.”

Did Schleifmann know him? Of course, he did. None better. As a matter of fact, Saulvard banked at the Stummerwitz Bank and the Galician had heard the Stummerwitzes mention him more than once. He was teaching German to their children, or rather he was perfecting them in the use of that tongue; for they had learned the rudiments of it from their maternal grandfather, born in Stuttgart, and their paternal grandfather, born in Cologne. Rapidly in a hundred lashing words, Saulvard was sized up.

A man, it might be said without injustice, who was not much of a Catholic, that Saulvard!... A third-rate savant, a most mediocre intellect, an anemic writer, moreover a sycophant and a greedy intriguer. He had made use of his relations with high finance to enter the Institute, and then of his title of Academician to join the boards of companies. One had but to consult the Year-book. (And Cyprien feverishly turned the pages again.) He was there in three different places, as member of three well-remunerated, although discredited, boards. As to his wife....

“Probably a bigot?” Raindal the younger asked.

No, she was not a bigot;—she was a shameless hussy. Schleifmann, usually better informed, did not know the names of her several lovers, but he could give him two at all events, asserting in a symbolic and summary sense, that she had sinned with gods and devils. She was vain, moreover, an inveterate snob, painted and powdered way down to her waist, a back-biter, whose stomach troubles had ruined her disposition....

Raindal could stand it no longer. He was choking.

“Excuse me, Schleifmann,” he said, laying a friendly hand on the Galicia shoulder. “I forgot the time.... I am dining with my brother who is going to a dance to-night at the house of precisely this scoundrel.... I am very glad to be so thoroughly informed.... I assure you, yes, quite satisfied.... You do mind, do you? I have barely enough time! I must run away.... Are you coming?”

At the bottom of the stairs he parted hurriedly from his friend. A deep longing urged him to reach the flat in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, there to unload on his indolent brother the mass of filth with which Schleifmann had liberally filled him.

Not without apprehension did M. Raindal watch the arrival of his brother, having earlier in the day found that it was one of his talkative days. He anticipated a fresh outbreak of hostilities and controversies and that ill-disposed him beforehand. He received his brother with marked coldness, and carelessly held out his hand in order to forestall any new attempt.

“Just a minute! I am finishing an urgent piece of work.... If yo like to wait for me in the drawing-room, the ladies are there....”

When Uncle Cyprien had gone he congratulated himself upon his firmness. As a matter of fact, he had always intensely disliked discussing any subject with his brother. It was as in the tourneys of old, which were open to none but Knights. Before he would oppose a man in a discussion, that man had to be his peer, a gallant champion of his own caste, of his own intellectual rank, and one who practiced without flinching the noble art of tilting with ideas. With other men, Eusèbe Raindal avoided the contest; he turned tail in courteous agreement or even, if necessary, shammed sudden deafness.

His self-satisfaction increased at the dinner-table. Never had Uncle Cyprien proved so gay, so affable or so little inclined to quarrel. He teased Thérèse about her “forthcoming marriage,” repeatedly addressed her as “Mamzelle my nephew” or informed Brigitte, the young, ruddy-faced maid from Brittany, that, sapristi! it would soon be her turn.

Thérèse readily put up with his somewhat vulgar facetiousness. She tolerated much from her uncle, because she guessed at all the real tenderness hidden beneath his intolerance and his rabid abuse.

Mme. Raindal herself secretly admired her brother-in-law. She was grateful for the fact that he hated the Jews, whom she saw as the abhorred tormentors of the Saviour. She condoned his blasphemies concerning the priests because of his aversion towards the deicide race.

Her small, round face with its soft, pale cheeks reddened with a sudden flush of pride when he praised her pie. She laughed at all his remarks to the end of the meal, although she often missed his real point.

For politeness’ sake, M. Raindal smiled with her. When they had drunk their coffee, he returned to his study with Cyprien while the two women retired to dress. Left alone, they remained for a while in silent meditation. The master of the house, his feet drawn towards the red glow of the fire, dozed with his eyes half-closed, in that perfect coil of peacefulness that one feels in the company of a trusted friend. Uncle Cyprien lighted his heavy cherry-wood pipe from the Vosges mountains and paced the room, blowing his smoke out in strong puffs. He was preparing to let out his exterminating ammunition, all those deadly revelations which he had been holding back for the last two hours in sheer refinement of pleasure.

Brutally, he sent forth the first volley.

“By the way! Your chap of this evening, he is a nice bird!”

The effect was that of the alarm gun calling forth the soldier asleep in his tent. M. Raindal shivered with emotion and asked angrily.

“What? Whom do you mean?”

“Your Saulvard, of course!... Yes, I have some fine lines on him.... That gentlemen may well boast of them!”

One after the other, all the munitions piled up by Schleifmann followed in rapid succession.

“You surprise me very much!” M. Raindal muttered. “I admit that I do not know Saulvard very much.... I never had any but professional relations with him.... Yet, I never heard it said.... Your friend Schleifmann must be exaggerating....”

His brother Cyprien smiled shyly at this evasion but did not reply at once. He emptied his pipe in an ash tray. After a while, he broke the silence.

“Tell me ... where does this Saulvard live?”

The query made M. Raindal restless in his chair. He foresaw how grave was the reply he would have to give and tried to equivocate:

“Why, really, I do know.... It is the first time we are going there.... Thérèse has the invitation; she will be able to tell you....”

“You do know!” Cyprien replied, aggressively sarcastic. “Go on! I am willing to grant you may not know the number of the house; but surely you know the name of the street; you must at least know in what district it is!”

M. Raindal hid his uneasiness and pretended deeply to search into his memory.

“It seems to me,” he replied at length, “that he lives in the avenue Kléber.... Yes, tha it, avenue Kléber.”

“Of course! I would have laid a bet on it!” Uncle Cyprien said victoriously.

Thereupon the dreaded storm burst upon the master in a tumult of abuse and imprecations.

Cyprien had effectively found the opportunity once more to air his theory of the “two banks” and he hurled it out with a crash.

As a matter of fact, it was not altogether his own. The Galician had supplied the idea and Cyprien had but added the eloquent developments and the vigor of his lungs. But they had so often recited it to each other, chiseled it together and together enlarged upon it that they no longer discerned their particular share in the collaboration, and each of them claimed the authorship, whenever the other happened to be absent.

According to them, Paris was composed of two cities, absolutely distinct in population, ways of life and customs. The river Seine divided these two enemy cities. On its two banks, Sion the venerable faced Gomorrah.

Sion, the left bank, that was, stood for the home of virtue, science and faith. Her people were chaste, modest and diligent; they had preserved, in poverty and toil, the honest and decent national traditions. There the men were pure and the women beyond reproach. The whole inheritance of the ancestors—loyalty, devotion and high-mindedness were transmitted from fathers to sons, sheltered from the corruption of money and the shameful example of the foreigners. In sooth, it was the holy city.

Gomorrah, the right bank, was the region of vice, license and dishonesty. It was the hunting-ground of all the cosmopolitan riff-raff, all the shifty hordes of exotics who had gradually foregathered and silently slipped into France after the war of 1870. They formed a nomadic, rascally and thievish multitude, without principles, country or morals and were united solely by their greed for gold or a thirst for coarse pleasures. Gambling in stocks had filled their coffers and criminal transactions paid for their fatuous homes. The women were no better than the men; the adultery of the former flourished by the side of the swindling of the latter. Whole districts, and some of the finest, had become their domicile. Chaillot, Monceau, Malesherbes and the Roule bowed at their orders and their money. There were long rows of hotels all filled with rastaquouères, and houses which the Jews had conquered from top to bottom, occupying every floor. Semites from Frankfort fraternized there with adventurers from the New World, shady Americans with dubious Orientals. And the whole country was sucked dry in the service of that impudent mob which gave its orders in doubtful French. The right bank—it was the cursed city!

Cyprien always drew great effects and lengthy orations from these descriptions and parallels; he used them also as a sort of touchstone by which to appreciate people. If one lived on the left bank of the river, he was at once entitled to Cyprie sympathies. But if one dwelt on the right bank, in a rich neighborhood, Cyprien was at once wary of him, and would only make amends later after his title to respect had been established.

M. Raindal had labored hard to point out how such a theory was psychologically doubtful and topographically inexact; but his brother persisted in it because it was simple, violent, and corroborated his passions.

Especially this evening when he had been rested by two days’ silence and stimulated by Schleifman call, he was riding his hobby all around M. Raindal with an increasing air of challenge and daring.

“Yes,” he shouted at his brother, stamping the carpet, “you are blind.... You know nothing, you see nothing.... You live in your corner, buried among your mummies and your old books.... You have never been further than the bridge of the Saints-Pères.... You are duped and exploited; you are a child—a kid, as Schleifmann says. Why do you go for a walk some day through those places I am telling you about?... Talk, ask, find out.... You will see.... In that world, in those houses, abominable deeds are performed and all manner of foulness!”

The voiceless patience of M. Raindal was worn out. He risked one of those defenses which he had used before in the course of that polemic when the returns had at length become regular and mechanical as in a stage duel:

“Yet you are not alleging that the whole virtue of Paris has found asylum in our district!... I shall never be tired of repeating it to you: on the other side of the water are to be found many people that belong to decent society, and even to the aristocracy, people who have left the Faubourg to go and live in the new sections, the Champs Elysées, for instance.... Well! those people—you are not going to tell me that they....”

Cyprien sneered with commiseration and took up the gauntlet.

“Ha! ha! I am not going to tell you?... Of course, I am going to tell you!...”

And tell he did. He jumped from digression to digression, slashing right and left, forward and back, twirling his ideas about and knocking heads down everywhere in the craze of a wholesale assault. One after the other, the degenerated aristocracy, the Jews, the grafters and the priests fell under his blows. He reinforced himself with quotations from his favorite masters and these excited him as a war cry.

M. Raindal kept his peace for a moment, but feeling that his silence was perhaps even more exasperating to his adversary than mild retorts, he turned on the tap of conciliatory generalities. They oozed from his lips in amorphous, unfinished sentences, in small, intermittent streams, similar to the colorless and limpid dribble that runs along the chin of a baby; or else they suddenly dried up under the wind of invective.

“The plague of democracies.... A necessary evil.... This M. Rochefort is truly clever.... Experience teaches us.... M. Drumont is not lacking in spirit.... One of the vices of the plutocratic régime.... It is not a new thing to see financiers and revenue farmers.... I do not deny that M. Schleifmann is a very distinguished thinker.... We have come to a turning point of history....”

Thérèse came in and interrupted him, for her Uncle Cyprien instinctively lowered his voice when he saw her. The shy evasions of M. Raindal increased his assurance; but he dreaded sarcastic remarks or the sharp retorts of “Mademoiselle his nephew.”

“Well, what is happening?” Thérèse asked sweetly.... “Uncle, I bet you are teasing my poor father again?

“Hum! Not at all!” Uncle Cyprien replied shame-facedly.... “Not at all, we were merely talking.... You understand, one warms up, one gets excited....”

Thérèse pouted derisively.

“Yes, yes, I know, you warm up, you get excited.... I heard you from my room....”

She turned to M. Raindal.

“Come on, father, it is eleven.... Mother is ready.... Go and dress....”

Alone with her uncle, she walked to the fireplace to straighten in front of the mirror her hair which she had disarranged here and there when inserting her flowers. She wore white carnations—in memory of Albârt. Their spreading whiteness enlivened her face. Her neck seemed by reflection less sallow and more delicate in the pink muslin frame of her corsage.

Artlessly she smiled at herself, surprised to find herself thus dainty, attractive, almost pretty. As a matter of fact, she did have that ethereal iridescence of beauty which the unusual splendor of a party dress projects at once upon women. It is an ephemeral charm, light as a pastel, which fades away, evaporates in the heat and the jealousy of a ball; but at home it encourages the most homely. For one instant in the solitude of her own room, in front of her own mirror, a woman finds herself beautiful enough, too beautiful—and she is willing to go, and does, in fact, go.

Her Uncle Cyprien, in a friendly mood, observed her little coquettish ways:

“Well, my nephew? And so we are going to make merry in the merry world?”

“Oh, prodigiously,” Thérèse replied with a sigh. “We must enjoy ourselves in this world.... There will always be people to enjoy themselves.... Always there will be a frivolous and depraved society.... If they did not make merry on the other side of the river, they would do it here.... It is the rule and you cannot alter it....”

Uncle Cyprien brushed back with his hand his hair which was so close-trimmed that is crackled with a ruffling noise under his fingers. He murmured disdainfully:

“Philosophy! Philosophy!... You know, my dear nephew, that we do not argue, you and I, ... you are too strong and too sure of yourself. There, I do mind admitting it, you make me feel ill at ease!”

M. Raindal returned, followed by his wife, her form hidden in her long cape. She wore in her hair an old mauve aigrette, the barbs of which were limp and spread out like a worn-out paint-brush.

“Well, are we ready?” the master of the house asked, looking at his brother.

“Yes, wl all go down together. Come along!”

A cab was waiting outside. Brigitte gave the drive number to M. Raindal.

The family sat closely huddled in the back seat. Uncle Cyprien closed the door on them and shouted as the carriage began to move:

“Good luck! A pleasant evening, nephew!”

He gave a friendly pinch to the chin of Brigitte, who stood stupidly smiling.

“Good night, my girl.... Go and dream of a fiancé!”