They knew how reserved he usually was.
It quite irritated Taine that the Danish Minister did nothing for me,
and introduced me nowhere, although he had had to procure me a free pass
to the theatre. Again and again he reverted to this, though I had never
mentioned either the Minister or the Legation to him. But the
revolutionary blood in him was excited at what he regarded as a slight
to intellectual aristocracy. "What do you call a man like that? A
Junker?" I said no. "Never mind! it is all the same. One feels that in
your country you have had no revolution like ours, and know nothing
about equality. A fellow like that, who has not made himself known in
any way whatever, looks down on you as unworthy to sit at his table and
does not move a finger on your behalf, although that is what he is there
for. When I am abroad, they come at once from the French Embassy to
visit me, and open to me every house to which they have admittance. I am
a person of very small importance in comparison with Benedetti, but
Benedetti comes to see me as often as I will receive him. We have no
lording of it here."
These outbursts startled me, first, because I had never in the least
expected or even wished either to be received by the Danish Minister or
to be helped by him; secondly, because it revealed to me a wide
difference between the point of view in the Romance countries, in France
especially, and that in the North.
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