TIME BEGINS TO BE LOST 323Larue's was now a broken habit, buried for ever in the past by
the winter's absence of Antoine and Fenelon. Instead, with
Lauris, Guiche, Albu, Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld and Loche
Radziwill, they met every evening in Proust's bedroom for an
agape of conversation, refreshed by iced cider or the famous beer
from Pousset's tavern of which Proust was so fond. Elisabeth de
Clermont-Tonnerre was amused and interested on hearing, no
doubt from her half-brother Guiche, of these goings-on. She
wrote inviting Proust to dinner. But he replied with more
annoyance than gratification: 'I'm rather sad to find that someone
has unveiled to you the absurd arrangements, the trivial mystery
of my existence. I don't know whether it was done maliciously
or not; in any case, whether intentionally or otherwise, this
"someone" has succeeded in making me ridiculous in your eyes.
Your documentation is admirable: everything, the words
"nocturnal conversations", the very names of my principal
visitors, even the vulgar but undeniable cider, proves the reli-
ability of your information.' He accepted the young marquise's
invitation so conditionally that nothing came of it, and their
inevitable friendship was delayed for two years.
On 29 July the discussion in Proust's room was heated. For
the first time since the Affair he found himself feeling passio~tely
about politics. In June 1902 the Dreyfusist prime minister
Waldeck-Rousseau had resigned, after being returned to office
with a majority of violent anti-clericals who were too far to his
I~ft to accept his own more moderate policies. The new minister,
Emile Combes, a militant atheist, who had studied for the priest-
hood in his youth and was nicknamed the 'Little Father', set
himself to destroy the religious orders by a programme of
forcible expulsion and confiscation. On that evening the diehard
Albufera, devoted to the Church and still convinced of Dreyfus's
guilt, was set upon by the progressive sceptics Fenelon .and
Lauris. "I can't bear the sight of priests reading the Lihre Parole,"
declared Lauris; and Fenelon remarked with a snigger: "It's nice
to see all these nuns obliged to take a trip for once in their lives!"
Proust, when he tried to find common ground for both parties,
was trampled in the struggle; and Lauris even accused him of
insincerity for praising the conservative Denis Cochin's speeches
against the Combes Laws in the Chamber. His friends went home
still furious; but late that night Proust made his profession of