In the dining-room, Count Martin-Belleme was doing the honors of his table with the good grace, the sad politeness, recently prescribed at the Elysee to represent isolated France at a great northern court.  From time to time he addressed vapid phrases to Madame Garain at his right; to the Princess Seniavine at his left, who, loaded with diamonds, felt bored.  Opposite him, on the other side of the table, Countess Martin, having by her side General Lariviere and M. Schmoll, member of the Academie des Inscriptions, caressed with her fan her smooth white shoulders.  At the two semicircles, whereby the dinner-table was prolonged, were M. Montessuy, robust, with blue eyes and ruddy complexion; a young cousin, Madame Belleme de Saint-Nom, embarrassed by her long, thin arms; the painter Duviquet; M. Daniel Salomon; then Paul Vence and Garain the deputy; Belleme de Saint-Nom; an unknown senator; and Dechartre, who was dining at the house for the first time.  The conversation, at first trivial and insignificant, was prolonged into a confused murmur, above which rose Garain’s voice: 

“Every false idea is dangerous.  People think that dreamers do no harm.  They are mistaken:  dreamers do a great heal of harm.  Even apparently inoffensive utopian ideas really exercise a noxious influence.  They tend to inspire disgust at reality.”

“It is, perhaps, because reality is not beautiful,” said Paul Vence.

M. Garain said that he had always been in favor of all possible improvements.  He had asked for the suppression of permanent armies in the time of the Empire, for the separation of church and state, and had remained always faithful to democracy.  His device, he said, was “Order and Progress.”  He thought he had discovered that device.

Montessuy said: 

“Well, Monsieur Garain, be sincere.  Confess that there are no reforms to be made, and that it is as much as one can do to change the color of postage-stamps.  Good or bad, things are as they should be.  Yes, things are as they should be; but they change incessantly.  Since 1870 the industrial and financial situation of the country has gone through four or five revolutions which political economists had not foreseen and which they do not yet understand.  In society, as in nature, transformations are accomplished from within.”

As to matters of government his ideas were terse and decided.  He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little.  Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them.  According to him, one should let himself be carried.  None but fools resisted the current or tried to go in front of it.

But Count Martin, naturally sad, had, dark presentiments.  In veiled words he announced catastrophes.  His timorous phrases came through the flowers, and irritated M. Schmoll, who began to grumble and to prophesy.  He explained that Christian nations were incapable, alone and by themselves, of throwing off barbarism, and that without the Jews and the Arabs Europe would be to-day, as in the time of the Crusades, sunk in ignorance, misery, and cruelty.