In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [127]
“Oh, I dare say he wouldn’t care about that—I don’t . . . I scarcely know him. He’s over there,” stammered Bloch, overwhelmed with delight.
The butler had evidently failed to deliver his mistress’s message properly, for M. de Norpois, to give the impression that he had just come in from the street and had not yet seen his hostess, had picked up the first hat that he found in the vestibule, one which I thought I recognised, and came forward to kiss Mme de Villeparisis’s hand with great ceremony, asking after her health with all the interest that people show after a long separation. He was not aware that the Marquise had removed in advance any semblance of verisimilitude from this charade, which indeed she eventually cut short by introducing him to Bloch. The latter, who had observed all the polite attentions that were being shown to a person whom he had not yet discovered to be M. de Norpois, and the formal, gracious, deep bows with which the Ambassador replied to them, evidently felt inferior to all this ceremonial and vexed to think that it would never be addressed to him, and said to me in order to appear at ease: “Who is that old idiot?” Perhaps, too, all this bowing and scraping by M. de Norpois had really shocked the better element in Bloch’s nature, the freer and more straightforward manners of a younger generation, and he was partly sincere in condemning it as absurd. However that might be, it ceased to appear absurd and indeed delighted him the moment it was himself, Bloch, to whom the salutations were addressed.
“Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” said Mme de Villeparisis, “I should like you to meet this gentleman. Monsieur Bloch, Monsieur le Marquis de Norpois.” She made a point, in spite of the way she bullied M. de Norpois, of addressing him always as “Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” as a point of etiquette as well as from an exaggerated respect for his ambassadorial rank, a respect which the Marquis had inculcated in her, and also with the intention of applying that less familiar, more ceremonious posture towards one particular man which, in the salon of a distinguished woman, in contrast to the freedom with which she treats her other regular guests, marks that man out instantly as her lover.
M. de Norpois sank his azure gaze in his white beard, bent his tall body deep down as though he were bowing before all the renowned and imposing connotations of the name Bloch, and murmured: “I’m delighted . . .” whereat his young interlocutor, moved, but feeling that the illustrious diplomat was going too far, hastened to correct him, saying: “Not at all! On the contrary, it is I who am delighted.” But this ceremony, which M. de Norpois, out of friendship for Mme de Villeparisis, repeated for the benefit of every new person that his old friend introduced to him, did not seem to her adequate to the deserts of Bloch, to whom she said:
“Just ask him anything you want to know. Take him aside if it’s more convenient; he will be delighted to talk to you. I think you wished to speak to him about the Dreyfus case,” she went on, no more considering whether this would be agreeable to M. de Norpois than she would have thought of asking leave of the Duchesse de Montmorency’s portrait before having it lighted up for the historian, or of the tea before offering a cup of it.
“You must speak loud,” she warned Bloch, “he’s a little deaf, but he will tell you anything you want to know; he knew Bismarck very well, and Cavour. That is so, isn’t it?” she raised her voice, “you knew Bismarck well.”
“Have you got anything on the stocks?” M. de Norpois asked me with a knowing air as he shook my hand warmly. I took the opportunity to relieve him politely of the hat which he had felt obliged to bring ceremonially into the room, for I saw that it was my own which he had picked up at random. “You showed me a somewhat laboured little thing in which you went in for a good deal of hair-splitting. I gave you my frank opinion; what you had written was not worth the trouble of