In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins’, which he had so often described as “genuine,” seemed to him now the worst possible form of life, and their “little nucleus” the most degraded class of society. “It really is,” he repeated, “beneath the lowest rung of the social ladder, the nethermost circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words of the Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it, surely people ‘in society’ (and, though one may find fault with them now and then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that gang of blackmailers) show a profound sagacity in refusing to know them, or even to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound intuition there is in that ‘ Noli me tangere ’ motto of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.”