Finding Time Again: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Marcel Proust

So the Verdurins continued to give dinners (then after a little while, Mme Verdurin gave them on her own, for M. Verdurin died shortly afterward) and M. de Charlus went about his pleasures, never dreaming that the Germans—albeit immobilized by a bloody yet constantly replenished barrier—were an hour by car from Paris. The Verdurins must have thought about it, one would have imagined, as they held a political salon at which people every evening discussed the situation not only of the army but of the fleet as well. And they did, it is true, think about the hecatombs of regiments annihilated and passengers swallowed by the sea; but a reciprocal process both so far multiplies whatever concerns our own well-being, and divides by such a formidable number whatever does not concern us, that the death of millions of unknown people hardly troubles us, and we find it scarcely as disagreeable as a cold draft. Mme Verdurin, suffering from migraines again now that there were no more croissants to dip in her coffee, had finally obtained an order from Cottard allowing her to have them made for her at a certain restaurant we have spoken about. This had been almost as hard to obtain from the authorities as the appointment of a general. She received the first of these croissants on the morning when the newspapers reported the wreck of the Lusitania. As she dipped it in her coffee, and flicked her newspaper with one hand so that it would stay open without her having to remove her other hand f...