had the pleasure of meeting M. de Norpois (whose failure to appear puzzled her), although as an inducement to Bloch this introduction was quite superfluous, he having already decided to persuade the two actresses whose names he had mentioned to her to come and sing for nothing in the Marquise’s drawing-room, to enhance their own reputations, at one of those parties to which all that was best and noblest in Europe thronged. He had even offered her, in addition, a tragic actress ‘with pure eyes, fair as Hera,’ who would recite lyrical prose with a sense of plastic beauty. But On hearing this lady’s name Mme. de Villeparisis had declined, for it was that of Saint-Loup’s mistress.
“I have better news,” she murmured in my ear. “I really believe he’s quite cooled off now, and that before very long they’ll be parted — in spite of an officer who has played an abominable part in the whole business,” she added. For Robert’s family were beginning to look with a deadly hatred on M. de Borodino, who had given him leave, at the hairdresser’s instance, to go to Bruges, and accused him of giving countenance to an infamous intrigue. “It’s really too bad of him,” said Mme. de Villeparisis with that virtuous accent common to all the Guermantes, even the most depraved. “Too, too bad,” she repeated, giving the word a trio of t’s. One felt that she had no doubt of the Prince’s being present at all their orgies. But, as kindness of heart was the old lady’s dominant quality, her expression of frowning severity towards the horrible captain, whose name she articulated with an ironical emphasis: “The Prince de Borodino!” — speaking as a woman for whom the Empire simply did not count, melted into a gentle smile at myself with a mechanical twitch of the eyelid indicating a vague understanding between us.
“I have a great admiration for de Saint-Loup-en-Bray,” said Bloch, “dirty dog as he is, because he’s so extremely well-bred. I have a great admiration, not for him but for well-bred people, they’re so rare,” he went on, without thinking, since he was himself so extremely ill-bred, what offence his words were giving. “I will give you an example which I consider most striking of his perfect breeding. I met him once with a young gentleman just as he was about to spring into his wheeled chariot, after he himself had buckled their splendid harness on a pair of steeds, whose mangers were heaped with oats and barley, who had no need of the flashing whip to urge them on. He introduced us, but I did not catch the gentleman’s name; one never does catch people’s names when one’s introduced to them,” he explained with a laugh, this being one of his father’s witticisms. “De Saint-Loup-en-Bray was perfectly calm, made no fuss about the young gentleman, seemed absolutely at his ease. Well, I found out, by pure chance, a day or two later, that the young gentleman was the son of Sir Rufus Israels!”
The end of this story sounded less shocking than its preface, for it remained quite incomprehensible to everyone in the room. The fact was that Sir Rufus Israels, who seemed to Bloch and his father an almost royal personage before whom Saint-Loup ought to tremble, was in the eyes of the Guermantes world a foreign upstart, tolerated in society, on whose friendship nobody would ever have dreamed of priding himself, far from it.
“I learned this,” Bloch informed us, “from the person who holds Sir Rufus’s power of attorney; he is a friend of my father, and quite an extraordinary man. Oh, an absolutely wonderful individual,” he assured us with that affirmative energy, that note of enthusiasm which one puts only into those convictions that did not originate with oneself.
“Tell me,” Bloch went on, lowering his voice, to myself, “how much do you suppose Saint-Loup has? Not that it matters to me in the least, you quite understand, don’t you. I’m interested from the Balzacian point of view. You don’t happen to know what it’s in, French stocks, foreign stocks, or land or what?”
I could give him no information whatsoever. Suddenly raising his voice, Bloch asked if he might open the windows, and without waiting for an answer, went across the room to do so. Mme. de Villeparisis protested that he must not, that she had a cold. “Of course, if it’s bad for you!” Bloch was downcast. “But you can’t say it’s not hot in here.” And breaking into a laugh he put into the gaze with which he swept the room an appeal for support against Mme. de Villeparisis. He received none, from these well-bred people. His blazing eyes, having failed to seduce any of the guests from their allegiance, faded with resignation to their normal gravity of expression; he acknowledged his defeat with: “What’s the temperature? Seventy-two, at least, I should say. I’m not surprised. I’m simply dripping. And I have not, like the sage Antenor, son of the river Aipheus, the power to plunge myself in the paternal wave to stanch my sweat before laying my body in a bath of polished marble and anointing my limbs with fragrant oils.” And with that need which people feel to outline for the use of others medical theories the application of which would be beneficial to their own health: “Well, if you believe it’s good for you! I must say, I think you’re quite wrong. It’s exactly what gives you your cold.”
Bloch was overjoyed at the idea of meeting M. de Norpois. He would like, he told us, to get him to talk about the Dreyfus case. “There’s a mentality at work there which I don’t altogether understand, and it would be quite sensational to get an interview out of this eminent diplomat,” he said in a tone of sarcasm, so as not to appear to be rating himself below the Ambassador.
Mme. de Villeparisis was sorry that he had said this so loud, but minded less when she saw that the librarian, whose strong Nationalist views kept her, so to speak, on leash, was too far off to have overheard. She was more shocked to hear Bloch, led on by that demon of ill-breeding which made him permanently blind to the consequences of what he said, inquiring, with a laugh at the paternal pleasantry: “Haven’t I read a learned treatise by him in which he sets forth a string of irrefutable arguments to prove that the Japanese war was bound to end in a Russian victory and a Japanese defeat? He’s fairly paralytic now, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s the old boy I’ve seen taking aim at his chair before sliding across the room to it, as if he was on wheels.”
“Oh, dear, no! Not in the least like that! Just wait a minute,” the Marquise went on, “I don’t know what he can be doing.”
She rang the bell and, when the servant had appeared, as she made no secret, and indeed liked to advertise the fact that her old friend spent the greater part of his time in her house: “Go and tell M. de Norpois to come in” she ordered him, “he is sorting some papers in my library; he said he would be twenty minutes, and I’ve been waiting now for an hour and three-quarters. He will tell you about the Dreyfus case, anything you want to know,” she said gruffly to Bloch. “He doesn’t approve much of the way things are going.”
For M. de Norpois was not on good terms with the Government of the day, and Mme. de Villeparisis, although he had never taken the liberty of bringing any actual Ministers to her house (she still preserved all the unapproachable dignity of a great lady, and remained outside and above the political relations which he was obliged to cultivate), was kept well informed by him of everything that went on. Then, too, the politicians of the day would never have dared to ask M. de Norpois to introduce them to Mme. de Villeparisis. But several of them had gone down to see him at her house in the country when they needed his advice or help at critical conjectures. One knew the address. One went to the house. One did not see its mistress. But at dinner that evening she would say:
“I hear they’ve been down here bothering you. I trust things are going better.”
“You are not in a hurry?” she now asked Bloch.
“No, not at all. I wanted to go because I am not very well; in fact there is some talk of my taking a cure at Vichy for my biliary ducts,” he explained, articulating the last words with a fiendish irony.
“Why, that’s where my nephew Châtellerault’s got to go, you must fix it up together. Is he still in the room? He’s a nice boy, you know,” said Mme. de Villeparisis, and may quite well have meant what she said, feeling that two people whom she knew had no reason not to be friends with each other.
“Oh, I dare say he wouldn’t care about that — I don’t really know him — at least I barely know him. He is sitting over there,” stammered Bloch in ecstasy of confusion.
The butler could not have delivered his mistress’s message properly, for M. de Norpois, to make believe that he had just come in from the street, and had not yet seen his hostess, had picked up the first hat that he had found in the hall, and came forward to kiss Mme. de Villeparisis’s hand with great ceremony,