“My mother and I have no right to laugh at it,” he said. “We are responsible for all the people whom we introduce to you. If one of them treats you with disrespect, we must not expose you to meeting him here.”
“But how have they treated me with disrespect?... I assure you, I don’t see it....”
He looked at her, turned away his head and said, in a voice so abrupt that she could not make out whether his answer was full of contemptuous pity or affectionate admiration:
“It is the others, it is all of us who must see for you.... How can you be expected to see those things?”
He paused and continued:
“Are you very anxious to have those two boors back here?”
“For your mother’s sake, yes. I feel that the situation grieves her.”
“Why, of course,” he exclaimed, with cutting irony, “they are the two finest ornaments of her salon! How will the others do without them? How will they manage to rattle out the regulation tomfoolery? Will they ever be able to reach the required level of absurdity, affectation, stupidity and narrowness? Heavens, if we were a shade less dull and less inane, what a catastrophe!”
“It’s not right of you to talk like that, monsieur,” said Gilberte.
“What!” he said, taken aback.