Proust: fashionable parties

There is no fashionable party, if one takes a cross-section of it at sufficient depth, that is not like those parties to which doctors invite their patients; the patients talk very sensibly, display excellent manners, and would give no sign of being mad if they did not whisper in your ear as an old gentleman passes, "Do you see him? That's Joan of Arc."

Marcel Proust, The Prisoner, translated by Carol Clark (London: Penguin, 2003), 223

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