Mme. Cottard. “Nothing, it doesn’t concern you, it’s not meant for ladies to hear,” the Doctor replied with a wink, and with a majestic self-satisfaction which held the balance between the dryly malicious air he adopted before his pupils and patients and the uneasiness that used in the past to accompany his shafts of wit at the Verdurins’, and went on talking in a lowered tone. Mme. Cottard could make out only the words “one of the brotherhood” and “ tapette ,” and as in the Doctor’s vocabulary the former expression denoted the Jewish race and the latter a wagging tongue, Mme. Cottard concluded that M. de Charlus must be a garrulous Israelite. She could not understand why people should keep aloof from the Baron for that reason, felt it her duty as the senior lady of the clan to insist that he should not be left alone, and so we proceeded in a body to M.