In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [19]
And so on the afternoon in question—the afternoon on which I reminded Mme de Guermantes of the red dress she had worn at her cousin’s party—M. de Bréauté was none too well received when, for want of anything better to say, by an association of ideas which remained obscure and which he did not illuminate, he began, twisting his tongue about between his pursed lips: “Talking of the Dreyfus case …” (why the Dreyfus case?—we were talking simply of a red dress, and certainly poor Bréauté, whose only desire was to make himself agreeable, can have had no malicious intention, but the mere name of Dreyfus made the Duc de Guermantes knit his Jupiterian brows) “… I was told of a rather nice remark, damned clever, ‘pon my word, that was made by our friend Cartier” (the reader may care to know that this Cartier, Mme de Villefranche’s brother, had not the slightest connexion with the jeweller of that name), “not that I’m in the least surprised, for he’s got wit enough and to spare.”
“Oh!” broke in Oriane, “he can spare me his wit. I can’t tell you how much your friend Cartier has always bored me, and I’ve never been able to understand the boundless charm that Charles de La Trémoïlle and his wife seem to find in the creature, for I meet him there every time I go to their house.”
“My dear Dutt-yess,” replied Bréauté, who had difficulty in pronouncing ch, “I think you’re a bit hard on Cartier. It’s true that he has perhaps made himself rather excessively at home at the La Trémoïlles’, but after all he does provide Tyarles with a sort of—what shall I say? I say?—a sort of fidus Achates, and that has become a very rare bird indeed in these days. Anyhow, what he’s supposed to have said is that if M. Zola had gone out of his way to stand his trial and to be convicted, it was in order to enjoy the only sensation he had never yet tried, that of being in prison.”
“And so he ran away before they could arrest him,” Oriane broke in. “Your story doesn’t hold water. Besides, even if it was plausible, I find the remark absolutely idiotic. If that’s what you call witty!”
“Good grate-ious, my dear Oriane,” replied Bréauté who, finding himself contradicted, was beginning to lose confidence, “it’s not my remark, I’m telling you it as it was told to me, take it for what it’s worth. Anyhow, it earned M. Cartier a proper dressing-down from that excellent fellow La Trémoïlle who, quite rightly, doesn’t like people to discuss what one might call, so to speak, current events in his drawing-room, and was all the more annoyed because Mme Alphonse Rothschild was present. Cartier was given a positive roasting by La Trémoïlle.”
“Of course,” said the Duke, in the worst of tempers, “the Alphonse Rothschilds, even if they have the tact never to speak of that abominable affair, are Dreyfusards at heart, like all the Jews. Indeed that is an argument ad hominem” (the Duke was a trifle vague in his use of the expression ad hominem) “which is not sufficiently exploited to prove the dishonesty of the Jews. If a Frenchman robs or murders somebody, I don’t consider myself bound, because he’s a Frenchman like myself, to find him innocent. But the Jews will never admit that one of their co-citizens is a traitor, although they know it perfectly well, and never think of the terrible repercussions” (the Duke was thinking, naturally, of that accursed election of Chaussepierre) “which the crime of one of their people can bring even to … Come, Oriane, you’re not going to pretend that it isn’t damning to the Jews that they all support a traitor. You’re not going to tell me that it isn’t because they’re Jews.”
“I’m afraid I am,” retorted Oriane (feeling, together with a trace of irritation,