the town) whether they could have dinner and beds, while a scullion hurried past holding a struggling fowl by the neck. And similarly, in the big dining-room which I crossed the first day before coming to the smaller room in which my friend was waiting for me, it was of some feast in the Gospels portrayed with a mediaeval simplicity and an exaggeration typically Flemish that one was reminded by the quantity of fish, pullets, grouse, woodcock, pigeons, brought in dressed and garnished and piping hot by breathless waiters who slid over the polished floor to gain speed and set them down on the huge carving table where they were at once cut up but where—for most of the people had nearly finished dinner when I arrived—they accumulated untouched, as though their profusion and the haste of those who brought them in were due not so much to the requirements of the diners as to respect 128for the sacred text, scrupulously followed in the letter but quaintly illustrated by real details borrowed from local custom, and to an aesthetic and religious scruple for making evident to the eye the solemnity of the feast by the profusion of the victuals and the assiduity of the servers. One of these stood lost in thought at the far end of the room by a sideboard; and to find out from him, who alone appeared calm enough to be capable of answering me, in which room our table had been laid, making my way forward among the chafing-dishes that had been lighted here and there to keep the late comers’ plates from growing cold (which did not, however, prevent the dessert, in the centre of the room, from being piled on the outstretched hands of a huge mannikin, sometimes supported on the wings of a duck, apparently of crystal, but really of ice, carved afresh every day with a hot iron by a sculptor-cook, quite in the Flemish manner), I went straight—at the risk of being knocked down by his colleagues—towards this servitor, in whom I felt that I recognised a character who is traditionally present in all these sacred subjects, for he reproduced with scrupulous accuracy the blunt features, fatuous and ill-drawn, the musing expression, already half aware of the miracle of a divine presence which the others have not yet begun to suspect. I should add that, in view probably of the coming fair, this presentation was strengthened by a celestial contingent, recruited in mass, of cherubim and seraphim. A young angel musician, whose fair hair enclosed a fourteen-year-old face, was not, it was true, playing on any instrument, but stood musing before a gong or a pile of plates, while other less infantile angels flew swiftly across the boundless expanse of the room, beating the air with the ceaseless 129fluttering of the napkins which fell along the lines of their bodies like the wings in “primitive” paintings, with pointed ends. Fleeing those ill-defined regions, screened by a hedge of palms through which the angelic servitors looked, from a distance, as though they had floated down out of the empyrean, I explored my way to the smaller room in which Saint-Loup’s table was laid. I found there several of his friends who dined with him regularly, nobles except for one or two commoners in whom the young nobles had, in their school days, detected likely friends, and with whom they readily associated, proving thereby that they were not on principle hostile to the middle class, even though it were Republican, provided it had clean hands and went to mass. On the first of these evenings, before we sat down to dinner, I drew Saint-Loup into a corner and, in front of all the rest but so that they should not hear me, said to him:

“Robert, this is hardly the time or the place for what I am going to say, but I shan’t be a second. I keep on forgetting to ask you when I’m in the barracks; isn’t that Mme. de Guermantes’s photograph that you have on your table?”

“Why, yes; my good aunt.”

“Of course she is; what a fool I am; you told me before that she was; I’d forgotten all about her being your aunt. I say, your friends will be getting impatient, we must be quick, they’re looking at us; another time will do; it isn’t at all important.”

“That’s all right; go on as long as you like. They can wait.”

“No, no; I do want to be polite to them; they’re so nice; besides, it doesn’t really matter in the least, I assure 130you.”

“Do you know that worthy Oriane, then?”

This “worthy Oriane,” as he might have said, “that good Oriane,” did not imply that Saint-Loup regarded Mme. de Guermantes as especially good. In this instance the words “good”, “excellent”, “worthy” are mere reinforcements of the demonstrative “that”, indicating a person who is known to both parties and of whom the speaker does not quite know what to say to someone outside the intimate circle. The word “good” does duty as a stop-gap and keeps the conversation going for a moment until the speaker has hit upon “Do you see much of her?” or “I haven’t set eyes on her for months,” or “I shall be seeing her on Tuesday,” or “She must be getting on, now, you know.”

“I can’t tell you how funny it is that it should be her photograph, because we’re living in her house now, in Paris, and I’ve been hearing the most astounding things” (I should have been hard put to it to say what) “about her, which have made me immensely interested in her, only from a literary point of view, don’t you know, from a—how shall I put it—from a Balzacian point of view; but you’re so clever you can see what I mean; I don’t need to explain things to you; but we must hurry up; what on earth will your friends think of my manners?”

“They will think absolutely nothing; I have told them that you are sublime, and they are a great deal more alarmed than you are.”

“You are too kind. But listen, what I want to say is this: I suppose Mme. de Guermantes hasn’t any idea that I know you, has she?”

“I can’t say; I haven’t seen her since the summer, because 131I haven’t had any leave since she’s been in town.”

“What I was going to say is this: I’ve been told that she looks on me as an absolute idiot.”

“That I do not believe; Oriane is not exactly an eagle, but all the same she’s by no means stupid.”

“You know that, as a rule, I don’t care about your advertising the good opinion you’re kind enough to hold of me; I’m not conceited. That’s why I’m sorry you should have said flattering things about me to your friends here (we will go back to them in two seconds). But Mme. de Guermantes is different; if you could let her know—if you would even exaggerate a trifle—what you think of me, you would give me great pleasure.”

“Why, of course I will, if that’s all you want me to do; it’s not very difficult; but what difference can it possibly make to you what she thinks of you? I suppose you think her no end of a joke, really; anyhow, if that’s all you want we can discuss it in front of the others or when we are by ourselves; I’m afraid of your tiring yourself if you stand talking, and it’s so inconvenient too, when we have heaps of opportunities of being alone together.”

It was precisely this inconvenience that had given me courage to approach Robert; the presence of the others was for me a pretext that justified my giving my remarks a curt and incoherent form, under cover of which I could more easily dissemble the falsehood of my saying to my friend that I had forgotten his connexion with the Duchess, and also did not give him time to frame—with regard to my reasons for wishing that Mme. de Guermantes should know that I was his friend, was clever, and so forth—questions which would have been all the 132more disturbing in that I should not have been able to answer them.

“Robert, I’m surprised that a man of your intelligence should fail to understand that one doesn’t discuss the things that will give one’s friends pleasure; one does them. Now I, if you were to ask me no matter what, and indeed I only wish you would ask me to do something for you, I can assure you I shouldn’t want any explanations. I may ask you for more than I really want; I have no desire to know Mme. de Guermantes, but just to test you I ought to have said that I was anxious to dine with Mme. de Guermantes; I am sure you would never have done it.”

“Not only should I have done it, I will do it.”

“When?”

“Next time I’m in Paris, three weeks from now, I expect.”

“We shall see; I dare say she won’t want to see me, though. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“Not at all; it’s nothing.”

“Don’t say that; it’s everything in the world, because now I can see what sort of friend you are; whether what I ask you to do is important or not, disagreeable or not, whether I am really keen about it or ask you only as a test, it makes no difference; you say you will do it, and there you shew the fineness of your mind and heart. A stupid friend would have started