“What! Are you the son of the Marquis de Marsantes? Why, I knew him very well,” said M. Nissim Bernard to Saint-Loup. I supposed that he meant the word “knew” in the sense in which Bloch’s father had said that he knew Bergotte, namely by sight. But he went on: “Your father was one of my best friends.” Meanwhile Bloch had turned very red, his father was looking intensely cross, the misses Bloch were choking with suppressed laughter. The fact was that in M. Nissim Bernard the love of ostentation which in M. Bloch and his children was held in check, had engendered the habit of perpetual lying. For instance, if he was staying in an hotel, M. Nissim Bernard, as M. Bloch equally might have done, would have his newspapers brought to him always by his valet in the dining-room, in the middle of luncheon, when everybody was there, so that they should see that he travelled with a valet. But to the people with whom he made friends in the hotel the uncle used to say what the nephew would never have said, that he was a Senator. He might know quite well that they would sooner or later discover that the title was usurped; he could not, at the critical moment, resist the temptation to assume it. M. Bloch suffered acutely from his uncle’s lies and from all the embarrassments that they led to. “Don’t pay any attention to him, he talks a great deal of nonsense,” he whispered to Saint-Loup, whose interest was all the more whetted, for he was curious to explore the psychology of liars. “A greater liar even than the Ithacan Odysseus, albeit Athene called him the greatest liar among mortals,” his son completed the indictment. “Well, upon my word!” cried M. Nissim Bernard, “If I’d only known that I was going to sit down to dinner with my old friend’s son! Why, I have a photograph still of your father at home, in Paris, and any number of letters from him. He used always to call me ‘uncle’, nobody ever knew why. He was a charming man, sparkling. I remember so well a dinner I gave at Nice; there were Sardou, Labiche, Augier,” “Molière, Racine, Corneille,” M. Bloch added with sarcasm, while his son completed the tale of guests with “Plautus, Menander, Kalidasa.” M. Nissim Bernard, cut to the quick, stopped short in his reminiscence, and, ascetically depriving himself of a great pleasure, remained silent until the end of dinner.
“Saint-Loup with helm of bronze,” said Bloch, “have a piece more of this duck with thighs heavy with fat, over which the illustrious sacrificer of birds has spilled numerous libations of red wine.”
As a rule, after bringing out from his store for the entertainment of a distinguished guest his anecdotes of Sir Rufus Israels and others, M. Bloch, feeling that he had succeeded in touching and melting his son’s heart, would withdraw, so as not to spoil his effect in the eyes of the “big pot”. If, however, there was an absolutely compelling reason, as for instance on the night when his son won his fellowship, M. Bloch would add to the usual string of anecdotes the following ironical reflexion which he ordinarily reserved for his own personal friends, so that young Bloch was extremely proud to see it produced for his: “The Government have acted unpardonably. They have forgotten to consult M. Coquelin! M. Coquelin has let it be known that he is displeased.” (M. Bloch prided himself on being a reactionary, with a contempt for theatrical people.)
But the misses Bloch and their brother reddened to the tips of their ears, so much impressed were they when Bloch senior, to shew that he could be regal to the last in his entertainment of his son’s two ‘chums’, gave the order for champagne to be served, and announced casually that, as a treat for us, he had taken three stalls for the performance which a company from the Opéra-Comique was giving that evening at the Casino. He was sorry that he had not been able to get a box. They had all been taken. However, he had often been in the boxes, and really one saw and heard better down by the orchestra. All very well, only, if the defect of his son, that is to say the defect which his son believed to be invisible to other people, was coarseness, the father’s was avarice. And so it was in a decanter that we were served with, under the name of champagne, a light sparkling wine, while under that of orchestra stalls he had taken three in the pit, which cost half as much, miraculously persuaded by the divine intervention of his defect that neither at table nor in the theatre (where the boxes were all empty) would the defect be noticed. When M. Bloch had let us moisten our lips in the flat glasses which his son dignified with the style and tide of “craters with deeply hollowed flanks”, he made us admire a picture to which he was so much attached that he had brought it with him to Balbec. He told us that it was a Rubens. Saint-Loup asked innocently if it was signed. M. Bloch replied, blushing, that he had had the signature cut off to make it fit the frame, but that it made no difference, as he had no intention of selling the picture. Then he hurriedly bade us good night, in order to bury himself in the Journal Officiel, back numbers of which littered the house, and which, he informed us, he was obliged to read carefully on account of his “parliamentary position” as to the precise nature of which, however, he gave us no enlightenment. “I shall take a muffler,” said Bloch, “for Zephyrus and Boreas are disputing to which of them shall belong the fish-teeming sea, and should we but tarry a little after the show is over, we shall not be home before the first flush of Eos, the rosy-fingered. By the way,” he asked Saint-Loup when we were outside, and I trembled, for I realised at once that it was of M. de Charlus that Bloch was speaking in that tone of irony, “who was that excellent old card dressed in black that I saw you walking with, the day before yesterday, on the beach?” “That was my uncle.” Saint-Loup was ruffled. Unfortunately, a “floater” was far from seeming to Bloch a thing to be avoided. He shook with laughter. “Heartiest congratulations; I ought to have guessed; he has an excellent style, the most priceless dial of an old ‘gaga’ of the highest lineage.” “You are absolutely mistaken; he is an extremely clever man,” retorted Saint-Loup, now furious. “I am sorry about that; it makes him less complete. All the same, I should like very much to know him, for I flatter myself I could write some highly adequate pieces about old buffers like that. Just to see him go by, he’s killing. But I should leave out of account the caricaturale side, which really is hardly worthy of an artist enamoured of the plastic beauty of phrases, of his mug, which (you’ll forgive me) doubled me up for a moment with joyous laughter, and I should bring into prominence the aristocratic side of your uncle, who after all has a distinct bovine effect, and when one has finished laughing does impress one by his great air of style. But,” he went on, addressing myself this time, “there is also a matter of a very different order about which I have been meaning to question you, and every time we are together, some god, blessed denizen of Olympus, makes me completely forget to ask for a piece of information which might before now have been and is sure some day to be of the greatest use to me. Tell me, who was the lovely lady I saw you with in the Jardin d’Acclimatation accompanied by a gentleman whom I seem to know by sight and a little girl with long hair?” It had been quite plain to me at the time that Mme. Swann did not remember Bloch’s name, since she had spoken of him by another, and had described my friend as being on the staff of some Ministry, as to which I had never since then thought of finding out whether he had joined it. But how came it that Bloch, who, according to what she then told me, had got himself introduced to her, was ignorant of her name? I was so much surprised that I stopped for a moment before answering. “Whoever she is,” he went on, “hearty congratulations; you can’t have been bored with her. I picked her up a few days before that on the Zone railway, where, speaking of zones, she was so kind, as to undo hers for the benefit of your humble servant; I have never had such a time in my life, and we were just going to make arrangements to meet again when somebody she knew had the bad taste to get in at the last station but one.” My continued silence did not appear to please Bloch. “I was hoping,” he said, “thanks to you, to learn her address, so as to go there several times a week to taste in her arms the delights of Eros, dear to the gods; but I do not insist since you seem pledged to discretion with respect to a professional who gave herself
