“How tired and worried you look,” said Mme. de Marsantes to her son who had come up to greet M. de Charlus.
And indeed the expression in Robert’s eyes seemed every minute to reach a depth from which it rose at once like a diver who has touched bottom. This bottom which hurt Robert so when he touched it that he left it at once, 372to return to it a moment later, was the thought that he had quarrelled with his mistress.
“Never mind,” his mother went on, stroking his cheek, “never mind; it’s good to see my little boy again.”
But this show of affection seeming to irritate Robert, Mme. de Marsantes led her son away to the other end of the room where in an alcove hung with yellow silk a group of Beauvais armchairs massed their violet-hued tapestries like purple irises in a field of buttercups. Mme. Swann, finding herself alone and having realised that I was a friend of Saint-Loup, beckoned to me to come and sit beside her. Not having seen her for so long I did not know what to talk to her about. I was keeping an eye on my hat, among the crowd of hats that littered the carpet, and I asked myself with a vague curiosity to whom one of them could belong which was not that of the Duc de Guermantes and yet in the lining of which a capital ‘G’ was surmounted by a ducal coronet. I knew who everyone in the room was, and could not think of anyone whose hat this could possibly be.
“What a pleasant man M. de Norpois is,” I said to Mme. Swann, looking at the Ambassador. “It is true, Robert de Saint-Loup says he’s a pest, but …”
“He is quite right,” she replied.
Seeing from her face that she was thinking of something which she was keeping from me, I plied her with questions. For the satisfaction of appearing to be greatly taken up by some one in this room where she knew hardly anyone, she took me into a corner.
“I am sure this is what M. de Saint-Loup meant,” she began, “but you must never tell him I said so, for he would think me indiscreet, and I value his esteem 373very highly; I am an ‘honest Injun,’ don’t you know. The other day, Charlus was dining at the Princesse de Guermantes’s; I don’t know how it was, but your name was mentioned. M. de Norpois seems to have told them—it’s all too silly for words, don’t go and worry yourself to death over it, nobody paid any attention, they all knew only too well the mischievous tongue that said it—that you were a hypocritical little flatterer.”
I have recorded a long way back my stupefaction at the discovery that a friend of my father, such as M. de Norpois was, could have expressed himself thus in speaking of me. I was even more astonished to learn that my emotion on that evening long ago when I had asked him about Mme. Swann and Gilberte was known to the Princesse de Guermantes, whom I imagined never to have heard of my existence. Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the “world”, from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is of infinite variation and remains unknown to ourself; having learned by experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated (such as those so enthusiastic speeches which I used at one time to make to all comers and on every occasion on the subject of Mme. Swann) has found itself, often simply on account of our anxiety, immediately hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word, which we ourself have forgotten, or else a word never uttered by us but formed on its course by the imperfect refraction of a different word, can be transported without ever halting for any obstacle to infinite distances—in the present instance to the Princesse de Guermantes—and succeed in diverting 374at our expense the banquet of the gods. What we actually recall of our conduct remains unknown to our nearest neighbour; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed what we never did say flies to provoke hilarity even in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions and behaviour is no more like that which we form of them ourself, than is like an original drawing a spoiled copy in which, at one point, for a black line, we find an empty gap, and for a blank space an unaccountable contour. It may be, all the same, that what has not been transcribed is some non-existent feature which we behold merely in our purblind self-esteem, and that what seems to us added is indeed a part of ourself, but so essential a part as to have escaped our notice. So that this strange print which seems to us to have so little resemblance to ourself bears sometimes the same stamp of truth, scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and useful, as a photograph taken by X-rays. Not that that is any reason why we should recognise ourself in it. A man who is in the habit of smiling in the glass at his handsome face and stalwart figure, if you shew him their radiograph, will have, face to face with that rosary of bones, labelled as being the image of himself, the same suspicion of error as the visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of a girl, reads in his catalogue: “Dromedary resting.” Later on, this discrepancy between our portraits, according as it was our own hand that drew them or another, I was to register in the case of others than myself, living placidly in the midst of a collection of photographs which they themselves had taken while round about them grinned frightful faces, invisible to them as a rule, but plunging them in stupor 375if an accident were to reveal them with the warning: “This is you.”
A few years earlier I should have been only too glad to tell Mme. Swann in what connexion I had fawned upon M. de Norpois, since the connexion had been my desire to know her. But I no longer felt this desire, I was no longer in love with Gilberte. On the other hand I had not succeeded in identifying Mme. Swann with the lady in pink of my childhood. Accordingly I spoke of the woman who was on my mind at the moment.
“Did you see the Duchesse de Guermantes just now?” I asked Mme. Swann.
But since the Duchess did not bow to Mme. Swann when they met, the latter chose to appear to regard her as a person of no importance, whose presence in a room one did not even remark.
“I don’t know; I didn’t realise her,” she replied sourly, using an expression borrowed from England.
I was anxious nevertheless for information with regard not only to Mme. de Guermantes but to all the people who came in contact with her, and (for all the world like Bloch), with the tactlessness of people who seek in their conversation not to give pleasure to others but to elucidate, from sheer egoism, facts that are interesting to themselves, in my effort to form an exact idea of the life of Mme. de Guermantes I questioned Mme. de Villeparisis about Mme. Leroi.
“Oh, yes, I know who’ you mean,” she replied with an affectation of contempt, “the daughter of those rich timber people. I’ve heard that she’s begun to go about quite a lot lately, but I must explain to you that I am rather old now to make new acquaintances. I have known such 376interesting, such delightful people in my time that really I do not believe Mme. Leroi would be any addition to what I already have.” Mme. de Marsantes, who was playing lady in waiting to the Marquise, presented me to the Prince, and, while she was still doing so, M. de Norpois also presented me in the most glowing terms. Perhaps he found it convenient to do me a courtesy which could in no way damage his credit since I had just been presented, perhaps it was because he thought that a foreigner, even so distinguished a foreigner, was unfamiliar with French society and might think that he was having introduced to him a young man of fashion, perhaps to exercise one of his prerogatives, that of adding the weight of his personal recommendation as an Ambassador, or in his taste for the archaic to revive in the Prince’s honour the old custom, flattering to his rank, that two sponsors were necessary if one wished to be presented.
Mme. de Villeparisis appealed to M. de Norpois, feeling it imperative that I should have his assurance that she had nothing to regret in not knowing Mme. Leroi.
“Am I not right, M. l’Ambassadeur, Mme. Leroi is quite uninteresting, isn’t she, quite out of keeping with the people who come here; I was quite right not to make friends with her, wasn’t I?”
Whether from independence or because he was tired, M. de Norpois replied merely in a bow full of respect but devoid of meaning.
“Sir,” went on Mme. de Villeparisis with a laugh, “there are some absurd people in the world. Would you believe that I had a visit this afternoon from a gentleman who tried to persuade
