In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [209]
It had been quite plain to me at the time that Mme Swann did not remember Bloch’s name, since she had referred to 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 astonished that I paused 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’ve 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 to me three times running, and in the most rarefied manner, between Paris and the Point-du-Jour. I’m bound to see her again some night.”
I called upon Bloch after his dinner; he returned my call, but I was out and he was seen asking for me by Françoise, who, as it happened, although he had visited us at Combray, had never set eyes on him before. So that she knew only that one of “the gentlemen” I knew had looked in to see me, she did not know “with what effect,” dressed in a nondescript way which had not made any particular impression upon her. Now though I knew quite well that certain of Françoise’s social ideas must for ever remain impenetrable to me, based as they were, perhaps, partly upon confusions between words and names which she had once and for all time mistaken for one another, I could not refrain, for all that I had long since abandoned the quest for enlightenment in such cases, from seeking—though in vain—to discover what could be the immense significance that the name of Bloch had for Françoise. For no sooner had I mentioned to her that the young man whom she had seen was M. Bloch than she took several paces backwards so great were her stupor and disappointment. “What! Is that M. Bloch?” she cried, thunder-struck, as if so portentous a personage ought to have been endowed with an appearance which “made you realise” as soon as you saw him that you were in the presence of one of the great ones of the earth; and, like someone who has discovered that an historical character is not up to the level of his reputation, she repeated in an awed tone of voice, in which I could detect the latent seeds of a universal scepticism: “So that’s M. Bloch! Well, really, you would never think it, to look at him.” She seemed also to bear me a grudge, as if I had always “overdone” the praise of Bloch to her. At the same time she was kind enough to add: “Well, he may be M. Bloch, and all that, but at least Monsieur can say he’s every bit as good.”
She had presently, with respect to Saint-Loup, whom she worshipped, a disillusionment of a different kind and of shorter duration: she discovered that he was a Republican. For although, when speaking for instance of the Queen of Portugal, she would say with that disrespect which is, among the people, the supreme form of respect: “Amélie, Philippe’s sister,” Françoise was a Royalist. But above all a marquis, a marquis who had dazzled her at first sight, and who was for the Republic, seemed no longer real. And it aroused in her the same ill-humour as if I had given her a box which she had believed to be made of gold, and had thanked me for it effusively, and then a jeweller had revealed