“The Middle Ages,” he said, “are closed only in the historical manuals that are given to pupils to spoil their minds.  In reality, barbarians are always barbarians.  Israel’s mission is to instruct nations.  It was Israel which, in the Middle Ages, brought to Europe the wisdom of ages.  Socialism frightens you.  It is a Christian evil, like priesthood.  And anarchy?  Do you not recognize in it the plague of the Albigeois and of the Vaudois?  The Jews, who instructed and polished Europe, are the only ones who can save it to-day from the evangelical evil by which it is devoured.  But they have not fulfilled their duty.  They have made Christians of themselves among the Christians.  And God punishes them.  He permits them to be exiled and to be despoiled.  Anti-Semitism is making fearful progress everywhere.  From Russia my co-religionists are expelled like savage beasts.  In France, civil and military employments are closing against Jews.  They have no longer access to aristocratic circles.  My nephew, young Isaac Coblentz, has had to renounce a diplomatic career, after passing brilliantly his admission examination.  The wives of several of my colleagues, when Madame Schmoll calls on them, display with intention, under her eyes, anti-Semitic newspapers.  And would you believe that the Minister of Public Instruction has refused to give me the cross of the Legion of Honor for which I have applied?  There’s ingratitude!  Anti-Semitism is death—­it is death, do you hear? to European civilization.”

The little man had a natural manner which surpassed all the art in the world.  Grotesque and terrible, he threw the table into consternation by his sincerity.  Madame Martin, whom he amused, complimented him on this: 

“At least,” she said, “you defend your co-religionists.  You are not, Monsieur Schmoll, like a beautiful Jewish lady of my acquaintance who, having read in a journal that she received the elite of Jewish society, went everywhere shouting that she had been insulted.”

“I am sure, Madame, that you do not know how beautiful and superior to all other moralities is Jewish morality.  Do you know the parable of the three rings?”

This question was lost in the murmur of the dialogues wherein were mingled foreign politics, exhibitions of paintings, fashionable scandals, and Academy speeches.  They talked of the new novel and of the coming play.  This was a comedy.  Napoleon was an incidental character in it.

The conversation settled upon Napoleon I, often placed on the stage and newly studied in books—­an object of curiosity, a personage in the fashion, no longer a popular hero, a demi-god, wearing boots for his country, as in the days when Norvins and Beranger, Charlet and Raffet were composing his legend; but a curious personage, an amusing type in his living infinity, a figure whose style is pleasant to artists, whose movements attract thoughtless idlers.