CHAPTER XI[ToC]
Jean Marot found Mlle. Fouchette interesting but incomprehensible.
Jean believed himself to be a sincere and true republican,—and he was, in fact, quite as logical in this as were many of the so-called republicans of the French Parliament, who, like their familiar political prototypes in the United States, talked one way and voted another. He had participated in the street disturbances as a protest against the Ministry and for the pure love of excitement, not against the republic.
As to the Dreyfus case, he had been satisfied, with most of his countrymen, upon the statement of five successive ministers of war.
After all, in a country where so many have always stood ready to sell their national liberty for the gold of the stranger, it came easy to believe in one Judas more.
The United States has had but one Benedict Arnold; France counts her traitors by the thousands. They spring from every rank and are incidental to every age. The word Treachery is the most important word in French domestic history.
And when honest men doubted the justice of a council of war, they were silenced by the specious reasoning of men like M. de Beauchamp. Had Jean been invited to assist in overturning the republic and to put Philippe d'Orléans on the throne, he would have revolted. His political ideals would have been outraged. Yet every act committed by him and by his blind partisans tended directly, and were secretly engineered by others, to that end.