However this might be (and naturally he had not taken the liberty of going direct to the colonel for his information), my neighbour had paid Saint-Loup the compliment of telling him⁠—in the tone in which a Catholic lady might tell a Jewish lady that her parish priest denounced the pogroms in Russia and might openly admire the generosity of certain Israelites⁠—that their colonel was not, with regard to Dreyfusism⁠—to a certain kind of Dreyfusism, at least⁠—the fanatical, narrow opponent that he had been made out to be.

“I am not surprised,” was Saint-Loup’s comment; “for he’s a sensible man. But in spite of that he is blinded by the prejudices of his caste, and above all by his clericalism. Now,” he turned to me, “Major Duroc, the lecturer on military history I was telling you about; there’s a man who is wholeheartedly in support of our views, or so I’m told. And I should have been surprised to hear that he wasn’t, for he’s not only a brilliantly clever man, but a Radical-Socialist and a freemason.”