That same evening Monsieur Bergeret received in his study a visit from his colleague Jumage.

Alphonse Jumage and Lucien Bergeret were born on the same day, at the same hour, and were the children of two girl friends to whom, from that time, they became an inexhaustible source of conversation. They had grown up together. Lucien never troubled his head in any way concerning their simultaneous entry into the world, but Alphonse was more mindful of the fact, and dwelt upon it with some emphasis. He formed a mental habit of comparing the course of their two lives, which had started simultaneously, and he gradually persuaded himself that it was only just, equitable and salutary that their progress in life should be equal.

He took a great interest in the development of their twin careers, both of which were devoted to teaching, and, judging his own fortune by another’s, he created for himself continual and futile anxieties which obscured the natural clearness of his vision. The fact that Monsieur Bergeret was a professor at the University, while he himself taught grammar in a suburban lycÉe was not, to his mind, in conformity with the idea of divine justice engraven upon his heart. He was too fair-minded a man to bear a grudge against his friend; but when the latter was appointed lecturer at the Sorbonne Jumage felt it keenly.

A curious effect of this comparative study of their two lives was that Jumage formed an inveterate habit of thinking and acting, on every possible occasion, in a manner diametrically opposed to Monsieur Bergeret’s way of thinking and acting; not that he had not a sincere and upright character, but he could not help suspecting that some malign influence was at work to ensure the success of careers which were of greater importance and merit than his own, and were therefore unrighteous. And thus, when he found that the professor was in favour of the Revision, he at once joined the ranks of the Nationalists, because he conceived all manner of perfectly genuine reasons for doing so, and also because he had to be the antithesis, in a sense, the inverted self, of Monsieur Bergeret. He entered his name as a member of the League of the Agitation franÇaise, and even made speeches at its meetings. In the same way he opposed his friend on every topic under the sun, from systems of economical heating to the rules of Latin Grammar, and as, after all, Monsieur Bergeret was not always wrong, Jumage was not always right.

This contrariety, which with years had assumed the exactitude of a rational system, did not in any way interfere with their life-long friendship. Jumage was really concerned at the misfortunes that dogged Bergeret in the course of his sometimes troubled career. He went to see him every time he heard of a fresh calamity. He was no fair-weather friend.

On this particular occasion, he came to his old friend with the worried and bewildered expression, the look of mingled pain and pleasure, that Lucien knew so well.

“You are quite well, Lucien? I’m not in your way, am I?”

“No. I was reading the story of the porter and the young girls in The Arabian Nights, newly translated by Dr. Mardrus. It is a literal translation and very different from The Arabian Nights of our old friend Galland.”

“I came to see you,” said Jumage, “because I wanted to speak to you about something. But it’s of no consequence. So you were reading The Arabian Nights?”

“Yes,” replied Monsieur Bergeret, “and for the first time too. For the worthy Galland gives one no idea of the real thing. He is an excellent story teller who has carefully corrected the morals of the Arabs. His Scheherazada, like Coypel’s Esther, has her value; but here we have Arabia with all its perfumes.”

“I’ve brought you an article to read,” continued Jumage. “But, as I said before, it’s of no consequence.”

And he drew from his pocket a newspaper which Monsieur Bergeret slowly extended his hand to take. Jumage replaced it in his pocket. Monsieur Bergeret’s hand dropped to his side; then, with fingers that trembled slightly, Jumage spread the paper on the table.

“Again, I repeat, it’s of no importance, but I thought it better—perhaps it’s better for you to know—you have enemies, many enemies.”

“Flatterer!” said Monsieur Bergeret.

And picking up the paper he read the following lines marked in blue pencil:

“A common usher and a Dreyfusard, the intellectual Bergeret, who has been stagnating in the provinces, has just been appointed lecturer at the Sorbonne. The students of the faculty of letters have lodged an energetic protest against the appointment of this anti-French Protestant, and it does not surprise us to hear that many of them have decided to greet as he deserves, with howls of execration, the dirty German Jew whom the Minister of Treason has had the impudence to foist upon them as a teacher.”

And when Monsieur Bergeret had finished reading, Jumage said eagerly:

“Don’t read it, it’s not worth it. It’s so trivial.”

“Trivial, I admit,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “Yet you must not deprive me of this token, obscure and insufficient, but at the same time truthful and creditable, of what I did during a difficult period. I didn’t do a great deal; but I ran some risks. Stapfer, the Dean, was suspended for having spoken of justice during a funeral oration, in the days when Monsieur Bourgeois was Grand Master of the University. And we have known worse times than those for which Monsieur Bourgeois was responsible. If it hadn’t been for the generous firmness of my chiefs I should have been turned out of the University by an unwise Minister. I didn’t think about it then, but I can think of it now, and claim the reward of my actions. Now tell me what more worthy, what nobler, what more finely austere reward could I attain than the insults of the enemies of justice? I could wish that the writer who, despite himself, has given me this testimonial, had expressed his thought in a more memorable fashion. But that would be asking too much.” Having thus spoken, Monsieur Bergeret placed the blade of his ivory paper-knife between the pages of The Arabian Nights. He enjoyed cutting the pages of his books, being a wise man who suited his pleasures to his condition. The austere Jumage envied him this innocent pastime. He pulled his sleeve.

“Listen, Lucien. I share none of your opinions with regard to the Affair. I have blamed and still blame your conduct. I fear it may have the most deplorable results upon your future. No true Frenchman will ever find it in his heart to forgive you. I should like to say, however, that I most forcibly disapprove of the style of controversy employed against you by certain newspapers. I condemn them. You believe that, do you not?”

“Yes.”

After a moment’s silence, Jumage went on:

“You see, Lucien, you are slandered because of your position. You can summon your slanderers before a jury. But I don’t advise you to do so. They would be acquitted.”

“That is most probable,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “Unless I walk into court in a plumed hat, a sword at my side, spurs on my boots, and an army of twenty thousand paid hooligans at my heels. Then my plea would be heard by judge and jury. When Zola was found guilty by the jury of the Seine in respect of the very moderate letter which he addressed to a President of the Republic who was ill-prepared to read it, their deliberations took place amid bestial cries, hideous threats, an unendurable clatter of ironmongery, amid all the phantoms of error and untruth. I have not so terrific an apparatus at my disposal, therefore it is more than probable that my defamer would be acquitted.”

“You cannot, however, remain indifferent to insults. What do you intend to do?”

“Nothing. I am satisfied. I would just as soon be subjected to the insults of the Press as to its praise. Truth has been served in the newspapers by her enemies as well as by her friends. When a mere handful of men, mindful of the honour of France, denounced the fraudulent condemnation of an innocent man, the Government and public opinion treated them as enemies. But they spoke out. And by their speech they proved themselves the stronger. You know how fervently the majority of the newspapers worked against them. But in spite of themselves they were serving the cause of truth, and by publishing the false documents——”

“There haven’t been so many false documents as you think, Lucien.”

“They made it possible to prove their falsity. Error had been scattered broadcast, and could no longer collect her scattered forces, and finally nothing was left save that which had sequence and continuity. Truth has a faculty of linking facts together which error does not possess. It formed, in the face of insult and impotent hatred, a chain that could not again be broken. We owe the triumph of our cause to the liberty, the licence of the Press.”

“But you are not victorious,” cried Jumage. “Neither are we defeated! Quite the contrary! The opinion of the whole country is against you. I regret to say it, but you and your friends are unanimously execrated, dishonoured, spat upon. We defeated? You are joking. The whole of France is with us.”

“And you are defeated from within. If I took appearances into consideration I might think you victorious, and despair of justice. There are criminals who go unpunished. Prevarication and perjury are publicly approved as praiseworthy actions. I have no hope that the enemies of truth will own themselves vanquished. Such an effort is possible only to the highest type of mind.

“There is very little change in the general state of mind. The ignorance of the public is still almost complete. There have been none of those sudden changes of opinion on the part of the crowd which are so amazing when they occur. Nothing striking or even noticeable has happened. Nevertheless the time is past when a President of the Republic could degrade, to the level of his own soul, justice, the honour of the country, and the alliances of the Republic, the power of whose ministers depended upon their understanding with the enemies of the very institutions of which they were the guardians. A season of brutal hypocrisy when contempt for intelligence and hatred of justice were at one and the same time a popular opinion and a State doctrine. A time when those in power upheld the rioters, when it was a crime to cry ‘Vive la RÉpublique!’ Those days are already remote, as though they had sunk into the limbo of the past and were plunged into the darkness of the age of barbarism.

“They may return. We are divided from them as yet by nothing tangible, nothing apparent or definite. They have faded away like the clouds of the error which created them, and the least breath may yet rekindle their ashes. But even if everything were to conspire to strengthen your cause, you are none the less irretrievably lost. You are conquered from within, and that is the irretrievable defeat. When you are conquered from without, you can continue to resist and hope for revenge. Your ruin is within you. The necessary consequences of your crimes and your errors are at hand in spite of your efforts to prevent them, and with amazement you see the beginning of your downfall. Unjust and violent, you will be destroyed by your own injustice and violence. And the monstrous party of unrighteousness, hitherto inviolable, respected and feared, is falling, breaking asunder of its own weight.

“What does it matter then if legal sanctions are dilatory or lacking? The only true and natural justice is contained in the very consequences of the act, not in external formulÆ, which are often narrow and sometimes arbitrary. Why complain that the greatest culprits evade the law and retain their despicable honours? That doesn’t matter either, under the present social system, any more than it mattered, in the days of the earth’s infancy, when the great saurians of the primeval oceans were disappearing to make way for creatures more beautiful and of happier instincts, that there still remained stranded, on the slime of the beaches, a few monstrous survivors of a doomed race.”

As Jumage reached the gate of the Luxembourg after his visit to his friend, he met young Goubin.

“I’ve just been to see Bergeret,” he said. “I’m sorry for him; he seems very cast-down and dejected. The Affair has crushed him.”