But the voice of the party, or,
rather, its mouthpiece, the "son Decoud" from Paris, turned journalist
for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well that it was not so, that
he was only a strenuous priest with one idea, feared by the women and
execrated by the men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante in
life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure from watching
the picturesque extreme of wrongheadedness into which an honest,
almost sacred, conviction may drive a man. "It is like madness. It must
be--because it's self-destructive," Decoud had said to himself often.
It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective,
turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to
destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest
of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men got on well
together, as if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction,
as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man very far on the by-paths of
political action.
Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand.
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