him the incarnation of the revolution, a third insisted that he was
merely the gamin of the Paris streets grown up. Suddenly one turned to
Oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his opinion: he took the ball
at once, gravely.
"_Ce malheureux! Il n'avait pas de veine--pour une fois qu'il a pris un
bain_...." (Poor devil, he was unlucky! To come to such grief for once
taking a bath.)
For a little while Oscar was interested in the Dreyfus case, and
especially in the Commandant Esterhazy, who played such a prominent
part in it with the infamous _bordereau_ which brought about the
conviction of Dreyfus. Most Frenchmen now know that the _bordereau_ was
a forgery and without any real value.
I was curious to see Esterhazy, and Oscar brought him to lunch one day
at Durand's. He was a little below middle height, extremely thin and as
dark as any Italian, with an enormous hook nose and heavy jaw. He looked
to me like some foul bird of prey: greed and cunning in the restless
brown eyes set close together, quick resolution in the out-thrust, bony
jaws and hard chin; but manifestly he had no capacity, no mind: he was
meagre in all ways. For a long time he bored us by insisting that
Dreyfus was a traitor, a Jew, and a German; to him a trinity of faults,
whereas he, Esterhazy, was perfectly innocent and had been very badly
treated. At length Oscar leant across the table and said to him in
French with, strange to say, a slight Irish accent, not noticeable when
he spoke English:
"The innocent," he said, "always suffer, M. le Commandant; it is their
_metier_. Besides, we are all innocent till we are found out; it is a
poor, common part to play and within the compass of the meanest. The
interesting thing surely is to be guilty and so wear as a halo the
seduction of sin."
Esterhazy appeared put out for a moment, and then he caught the genial
gaiety of the reproof and the hint contained in it. His vanity would not
allow him to remain long in a secondary _role_, and so, to our
amazement, he suddenly broke out:
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