ion of
truth itself) were all the finer if they meant absolutely nothing. For,
as it happened, Bloch was not invited to the house again. At first, he
had been well received there. It is true that my grandfather made out
that, whenever I formed a strong attachment to any one of my friends and
brought him home with me, that friend was invariably a Jew; to which he
would not have objected on principle--indeed his own friend Swann was
of Jewish extraction--had he not found that the Jews whom I chose as
friends were not usually of the best type. And so I was hardly ever able
to bring a new friend home without my grandfather's humming the "O,
God of our fathers" from _La Juive_, or else "Israel, break thy chain,"
singing the tune alone, of course, to an "um-ti-tum-ti-tum, tra-la"; but
I used to be afraid of my friend's recognising the sound, and so being
able to reconstruct the words.

Before seeing them, merely on hearing their names, about which, as often
as not, there was nothing particularly Hebraic, he would divine not only
the Jewish origin of such of my friends as might indeed be of the chosen
people, but even some dark secret which was hidden in their family.

"And what do they call your friend who is coming this evening?"

"Dumont, grandpapa."

"Dumont! Oh, I'm frightened of Dumont."

And he would sing:

Archers, be on your guard!
Watch without rest, without sound,

and then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would
call out "On guard! on guard," or, if it were the victim himself who
had already arrived, and had been obliged, unconsciously, by my
grandfather's subtle examination, to admit his origin, then my
grandfather, to shew us that he had no longer any doubts, would merely
look at us, humming almost inaudibly the air of

What! do you hither guide the feet
Of this timid Israelite?

or of

Sweet vale of Hebron, dear paternal fields,

or, perhaps, of

Yes, I am of the chosen race.

These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will
whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for
other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come
in with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest:

"Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining? I
can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'"

Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am
absolutely incapable of tel