“I think you’re all equally tiresome about this wretched case,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes, who, in the social sphere, was always anxious to shew that she did not allow herself to be led by anyone. “It can’t make any difference to me, so far as the Jews are concerned, for the simple reason that I don’t know any of them, and I intend to remain in that state of blissful ignorance. But on the other hand I do think it perfectly intolerable that just because they’re supposed to hold ‘sound’ views and don’t deal with Jewish tradesmen, or have ‘Down with the Jews’ printed on their sunshades, we should have a swarm of Durands and Dubois and so forth, women we should never have known but for this business, forced down our throats by Marie-Aynard or Victurnienne. I went to see Marie-Aynard a couple of days ago. It used to be so nice there. Nowadays one finds all the people one has spent one’s life trying to avoid, on the pretext that they’re against Dreyfus, and others of whom you have no idea who they can be.” “No; it was the War Minister’s wife; at least, that’s the bedside rumour,” went on the Duke, who liked to flavour his conversation with certain expressions which he imagined to be of the old school. “Personally, of course, as everyone knows, I take just the opposite view to my cousin Gilbert. I am not feudal like him, I would go about with a negro if he was a friend of mine, and I shouldn’t care two straws what anybody thought; still after all you will agree with me that when one goes by the name of Saint-Loup one doesn’t amuse oneself by running clean against the rails of public opinion, which has more sense than Voltaire or even my nephew. Nor does one go in for what I may be allowed to call these acrobatics of conscience a week before one comes up for a club. It is a bit stiff, really! No, it is probably that little wench of his that has put him on his high horse. I expect she told him that he would be classed among the ‘intellectuals’. The intellectuals, they’re the very cream of those gentry. It’s given rise, by the way, to a rather amusing pun, though a very naughty one.” And the Duke murmured, lowering his voice, for his wife’s and M. d’Argencourt’s benefit, “Mater Semita,” which had already made its way into the Jockey Club, for, of all the flying seeds in the world, that to which are attached the most solid wings, enabling it to be disseminated at the greatest distance from its parent branch, is still a joke.