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“Never mind,” his mother went on, stroking his cheek, “never mind; it’s good to see my little boy again.”

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 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 all those that littered the carpet, and I wondered with a vague curiosity to whom could belong one that was not the Duc de Guermantes’s 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, pointing him out to her. “It’s true that Robert de Saint-Loup says he’s a pest, but . . .”

“He’s 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. Pleased, perhaps, to appear to be very taken up with someone in this room where she hardly knew anyone, she took me into a corner.

“I’m 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 very highly—I’m an ‘honest Injun,’ you know. The other day, Charlus was dining at the Princesse de Guermantes’s, and for some reason or other your name was mentioned. It appears that M. de Norpois 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 hysterical 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 spoken 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 infinitely variable and remains unknown to ourselves; having learned from 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 everyone and at every opportunity on the subject of Mme Swann, thinking that among so many scattered seeds one at least would germinate) has at once, often because of our very anxiety, been hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word which we ourselves have forgotten, which may not even have been uttered by us but formed along its way by the imperfect refraction of a different word, could be transported, without ever being halted in its progress, infinite distances—in the present instance to the Princesse de Guermantes—and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the gods! What we remember 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 in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions and demeanour no more resembles our own than an inaccurate tracing, on which for the black line we find an empty space and for a blank area an inexplicable contour, resembles the original drawing. It may happen however that what has not been transcribed is a non-existent feature which only our purblind self-esteem reveals to us, and what seems to us to have been added does indeed belong to us, but so quintessentially that it escapes