THE DREYFUS CASEJews?" by a hostess who was gradually eliminating hers, she
grandly replied: "I'm keeping them on!" The Affair, however,
was destined to be the poor, foolish lady's last pleasure in this
world. Mme Aubernon was reduced to silence at last by a cancer
of the tongue ("She's punished in the part that sinned," declared
one of her enemies), and died on ~ September 1899, aged seventy-
four. The faithful Dr Pozzi tended her to the last, and burst into
tears as he closed her eyes. There were few people at her funeral,
for at that time of year everyone was away on holiday; but when
the 'faithful' returned to Paris they said to one another, scarcely
knowing whether they spoke in relief or regret: "There'll never
be another woman like herl"
For Mme Verdurin as a Dreyfusist, Proust had other hostesses
in mind. Mme Menard-Dorian in the Rue de la Faisanderie
conducted a radical socialist salon which became known as the
'Fortress of Dreyfusism'. She had been a friend of Victor Hugo,
whose grandson Georges married her daughter Pauline in 1895;
and in her drawing-room no opinions were barred, so long as
they were progressive and violent. Mme Claire de Saint-Victor,
too, had known Hugo, for she was the daughter of his friend, the
romantic critic Paul de Saint-Victor, for whose sake she had
returned to her maiden name after the disappearance of her un-
satisfactory husband. She was a tiny blonde, who made up for
her short stature with a foaming, fantastically high coiffure. Mme
Aubernon generously said of her salon: "It's just like mine!" Mme
de Saint-Victor would burst into the drawing-rooms of her rivals
like a lady missionary visiting cannibals, triumphantly brandish-
ing an armful of Dreyfusist newspapers; and people called her
'Our Lady of the Revision'. But when Proust says of Mme
Verdurin'ssalon, 'the Dreyfus Affair was over, but she still had
Anatole France',! he is thinking ofMme Arman de Caillavet. The
Affair cost Mme Arman the friendship of Jules Lemaitre and
Charles Maurras, but brought her the rising political stars of
Clemenceau, Briand and J aures. Sometimes,)ndeed, she may have
felt that M. France went too far. In July 1898, when Zola was
struck off the rolls of the Legion d'Honneur, France quixotically
handed in his own rosette; and all through the following winter,
led on by Jaures, he spoke at riotous public meetings of socialists
and anarchists-"our voice will be the voice of justice and reason,
1 III, lJ6