Le « petite noyau » des Verduin

To be part of the "little nucleus", the "little group", the "little clan" of the Verdurins, one condition was sufficient but it was necessary: one must tacitly adhere to a Credo one of whose articles was that the young pianist, protege of Madame Verdurin that year, and of whom she said "It shouldn't be allowed to know how to play Wagner like that!", "blew away" both Planté and Rubinstein, and that Doctor Cottard was better at diagnosis than Potain. Each "new recruit" whom the Verdurins could not persuade that the soirées of people who didn't go to their house were as dull as ditchwater, would see themself immediately banished. Women being in this regard more rebellious than men at putting aside all societal curiosity and the desire to discover for themselves the charm of other salons, the Verdurins, sensing on their part that this spirit of inquiry and this demon of frivolity would by contagion become fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church, were led to successively expel all the "faithful" of the female sex.