“Here is something!” he said. “Rich and delightful!... Enough to amuse me and to make you swell with pride.... First of all, of course, what amuses me....”
He read the first article in victorious tones. In discreet but pitiless terms the writer announced as imminent the arrest of a senator, an ex-minister and deputy, well-known for his intrigues, his accommodating complacency towards the banking interests and his clerical tendencies; and the government was congratulated for that forthcoming show of energy.
“You see,” Uncle Cyprien said, when he had finished reading, “I do know who it is.... I thought about it for hours.... I could find the name ... and yet, I must admit the news caused me to pass a very pleasant day.... It is high time that all those scoundrels were swept out.... One more in jail! I score one!...” He smiled at his own merriment and added, with his two hands on his knees:
“Well, what do you think about it? It is getting serious! All these rotten gatherings are bursting open!”
M. Raindal hesitated. He wished to avoid controversy or, at least, to adjourn it and to thrash the matter out only after his brother had read the other articles. Trained by his profession and by personal inclination to consider things through the immensity of time, in the infinite span of past and future centuries, he was not so much indifferent to his own time as disdainful of it. Whenever his brother goaded him into discussing politics he felt more scared and ill at ease than if he had had to argue upon a matter of taboo with a savage chief of Polynesia in the latte own language.
“Of course! To be sure!...” he declared. “We are living in a troubled period.... There are many abuses.... How can it be helped?... Concussion is the plague of democracies.... Polybius said so....”
“Ah, leave me alone with your Polybius!” Uncle Cyprien interrupted, shaking his head as if to disentangle himself from his brothe aphorisms. “Why not simply tell me that we are governed by rogues?... It will be truer and quicker....”
Then he felt somewhat ashamed of having thus chided his illustrious elder brother whom he worshiped in the depths of his tormented soul.
“Oh, well, do get angry.... I your fault, after all.... You get on my nerves with your vague, high-sounding sentences.... See, to earn my forgiveness ... the portrait of M. Eusèbe Raindal, the man of the day, the famil standard, the glory of the French Egyptology, with the history of his life from the most remote times to our own days! Tara! Tara! Ta-ta-ta-ta!...” He gave his brother the second newspaper and marched round the room sounding through his rounded fingers a triumphal march, as in the days gone by, at the office, he had celebrated the success of some colleague.
M. Rainda eyes stared at the paper which his long-sightedness compelled him to hold at ar length.