For all this, life continued almost unchanged for plenty of the characters who have figured in this narrative, not least for M. de Charlus and the Verdurins, just as if the Germans were not in fact so close to them, the permanent presence of a threat of danger, even if temporarily checked, leaving us completely indifferent as long as we do not think about it. People generally go about their pleasures without ever thinking that, if the moderating and etiolating influences should ever stop, the proliferation of infusoria would reach its maximum, that is, in the space of a few days would make a
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