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Interested by these idiosyncrasies of Bergotte’s, she did not, however, appear to consider them reprehensible, and seemed rather to give him credit for them, though she would have been hard put to it to say why. Despite this unusual mode of appreciating Bergotte’s originality, it was a fact which I was later to regard as not wholly negligible that Mme de Guermantes, greatly to the surprise of many of her friends, considered Bergotte wittier than M. de Bréauté. Thus it is that such judgments, subversive, isolated, and yet after all right, are delivered in the world of society by those rare people who are superior to the rest. And they sketch then the first rough outlines of the hierarchy of values as the next generation will establish it, instead of abiding eternally by the old standards.

The Comte d’Argencourt, Chargé d’Affaires at the Belgian Legation and a second cousin by marriage of Mme de Villeparisis, came in limping, followed presently by two young men, the Baron de Guermantes and H.H. the Duc de Châtellerault, whom Mme de Guermantes greeted with: “Good evening, my dear Châtellerault,” with a nonchalant air and without moving from her pouf, for she was a great friend of the young Duke’s mother, which had given him a deep and lifelong respect for her. Tall, slim, with golden hair and skin, thoroughly Guermantes in type, these two young men looked like a condensation of the light of the spring evening which was flooding the spacious room. Following a custom which was the fashion at that time, they laid their top hats on the floor beside them. The historian of the Fronde assumed that they must be embarrassed, like peasants coming into the mayor’s office and not knowing what to do with their hats. Feeling that he ought in charity to come to the rescue of the awkwardness and timidity which he ascribed to them:

“No, no,” he said, “don’t leave them on the floor, they’ll be trodden on.”

A glance from the Baron de Guermantes, tilting the plane of his pupils, shot suddenly from them a wave of pure and piercing blue which froze the well-meaning historian.

“What is that person’s name?” the Baron asked me, having just been introduced to me by Mme de Villeparisis.

“M. Pierre,” I whispered.

“Pierre what?”

“Pierre: it’s his name, he’s a very distinguished historian.”

“Really? You don’t say so.”

“No, it’s a new fashion with these young men to put their hats on the floor,” Mme de Villeparisis explained. “I’m like you, I can never get used to it. Still, it’s better than my nephew Robert, who always leaves his in the hall. I tell him, when I see him come in like that, that he looks just like a clockmaker, and I ask him if he’s come to wind the clocks.”

“You were speaking just now, Madame la Marquise, of M. Molé’s hat; we shall soon be able, like Aristotle, to compile a chapter on hats,” said the historian of the Fronde, somewhat reassured by Mme de Villeparisis’s intervention, but in so faint a voice that no one heard him except me.

“She really is astonishing, the little Duchess,” said M. d’Argencourt, pointing to Mme de Guermantes who was talking to G——. “Whenever there’s a prominent person in the room you’re sure to find him sitting with her. Evidently that must be the lion of the party over there. It can’t be M. de Borelli everyday, or M. Schlumberger or M. d’Avenel. But then it’s bound to be M. Pierre Loti or M. Edmond Rostand. Yesterday evening at the Doudeauvilles’, where by the way she was looking splendid in her emerald tiara and a pink dress with a long train, she had M. Deschanel on one side and the German Ambassador on the other: she was holding forth to them about China. The general public, at a respectful distance where they couldn’t hear what was being said, were wondering whether there wasn’t going to be war. Really, you’d have said she was a queen holding her circle.”

Everyone had gathered round Mme de Villeparisis to watch her painting.

“Those flowers are a truly celestial pink,” said Legrandin, “I should say sky-pink. For there is such a thing as sky-pink just as there is sky-blue. But,” he lowered his