The image of the École des Chartes, in political and social terms, was firmly anchored, even though it has sometimes been classified as a right-wing institution. The image of the "right-wing chartiste" originated in the figure of the "amateur", the son of a well-off family, passing through the school to kill time elegantly, or to "wait", in the words of Robert Martin du Gard, who graduated from the school in 1905. In fact, throughout the 19th century there was a discontinuity between the high-prestige training offered by the École des Chartes and the lower-prestige, modestly remunerated jobs open to graduates. However, this reputation was at least partly unfounded, as demonstrated by several cases. At the time of the Dreyfus Affair, for example, the milieu of the École des Chartes mirrored the divisions in French society: "Nowhere were civic quarrels more completely invested in the job of historian." The few chartistes who were called upon as experts during the Zola trial – Arthur Giry, Auguste Molinier, Paul Meyer, Paul Viollet and Gaston Paris – and who were involved in the founding of the League of Human Rights were attacked by other archivist-paleographers, including Robert de Lasteyrie, Gabriel Hanotaux and Émile Couard, as well as by their students at the École des Chartes. The variety of engagements at the time of the Dreyfus Affair did not necessarily reflect the political sensitivities of those involved, and their motives were political as well as professional, jeopardizing the very training and methods of the school. Although it was conservative to some extent, the school admitted a female student, Geneviève Acloque, in 1906, long before the other grandes écoles had started admitting women. The École des Chartes may have been perceived as a bastion of the French Action during the interwar period, although several relatively prominent alumni, such as Georges Bataille or Roger Martin du Gard, seem to have been more left-leaning. During the Second World War, there were therefore more École des Chartes students and teachers on the side of the Resistance than on the side of Vichy. Bertrand Joly concludes that the school was largely neutral, in that each "wing" seems to have been equally represented, a neutrality that was also justified by the fact that the school was not big enough for its members to have a significant effect on national politics.