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The thought that we were perhaps viewed with disfavour by this lady because we never brought any sprays of lilac or fine roses to her bower made me blush, and in the hope of escaping physically (or of being condemned only in absentia) from an adverse judgment, I moved towards the exit. But it is not always in this world the people who bring us fine roses to whom we are most friendly, for the “Marquise,” thinking that I was bored, turned to me:

“You wouldn’t like me to open a little cabin for you?”

And, on my declining:

“No? You’re sure you won’t?” she persisted, smiling. “You’re welcome to it, but of course, not having to pay for a thing won’t make you want to do it if you’ve got nothing to do.”

At this moment a shabbily dressed woman hurried into the place who seemed to be feeling precisely the want in question. But she did not belong to the “Marquise’s” world, for the latter, with the ferocity of a snob, said to her curtly:

“I’ve nothing vacant, Madame.”

“Will they be long?” asked the poor lady, flushed beneath the yellow flowers in her hat.

“Well, ma’am, if you want my advice you’d better try somewhere else. You see, there’s still these two gentlemen waiting, and I’ve only one closet; the others are out of order.”

“Looked like a bad payer to me,” she explained when the other had gone. “That’s not the sort we want here, either; they’re not clean, don’t treat the place with respect. It’d be me who’d have to spend the next hour cleaning up after her ladyship. I’m not sorry to lose her couple of sous.”

At last, after a good half-hour, my grandmother emerged, and fearing that she might not seek to atone by a lavish gratuity for the indiscretion she had shown by remaining so long inside, I beat a retreat so as not to have to share in the scorn which the “Marquise” would no doubt heap on her, and strolled down a path, but slowly, so that my grandmother should not have to hurry to overtake me, as presently she did. I expected her to begin: “I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting; I hope you’ll still be in time for your friends,” but she did not utter a single word, so much so that, feeling a little hurt, I was disinclined to speak first. Finally, looking up at her I noticed that as she walked beside me she kept her face turned the other way. I was afraid that she might be feeling sick again. I looked at her more closely and was struck by the disjointedness of her gait. Her hat was crooked, her cloak stained; she had the dishevelled and disgruntled appearance, the flushed, slightly dazed look of a person who has just been knocked down by a carriage or pulled out of a ditch.

“I was afraid you were feeling sick, Grandmamma; are you feeling better now?” I asked her.

Doubtless she thought that it would be impossible for her not to make some answer without alarming me.

“I heard the whole of the ‘Marquise’s’ conversation with the keeper,” she told me. “Could anything have been more typical of the Guermantes, or the Verdurins and their little clan? ‘Ah! in what courtly terms those things were put!’ ”18 And she added, with deliberate application, this from her own special Marquise, Mme de Sévigné: “As I listened to them I thought that they were preparing for me the delights of a farewell.”

Such were the remarks that she addressed to me, remarks into which she had put all her critical delicacy, her love of quotation, her memory of the classics, more thoroughly even than she would normally have done, and as though to prove that she retained possession of all these faculties. But I guessed rather than heard what she said, so inaudible was the voice in which she mumbled her sentences, clenching her teeth more than could be accounted for by the fear of vomiting.

“Come!” I said lightly enough not to seem to be taking her illness too seriously, “since you’re feeling a little sick I suggest we go home. I don’t want to trundle a grandmother with indigestion about the Champs-Elysées.”

“I didn’t like to suggest it because of your friends,” she replied. “Poor pet! But