In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [236]
Something said by one of the diners behind me made me turn my head for a moment. I had caught, instead of the words: “Wing of chicken, excellent; and a glass of champagne, only not too dry,” these: “I should prefer glycerine. Yes, hot, excellent.” I had wanted to see who the ascetic was who was inflicting upon himself such a diet, but I quickly turned back to Saint-Loup in order not to be recognised by the man of strange appetite. It was simply a doctor whom I happened to know and of whom another customer, taking advantage of the fog to buttonhole him here in the café, was asking his professional advice. Like stockbrokers, doctors employ the first person singular.
Meanwhile I looked as follows. There were at Robert, and my thoughts ran in this café, and I had myself known at other times in my life, plenty of foreigners, intellectuals, budding geniuses of all sorts, resigned to the laughter excited by their pretentious capes, their 1830 ties and still more by the clumsiness of their movements, going so far as to provoke that laughter in order to show that they paid no heed to it, who yet were men of real intellectual and moral worth, of profound sensibility. They repelled—the Jews among them principally, the unassimilated Jews, that is to say, for with the other kind we are not concerned—those who could not endure any oddity or eccentricity of appearance (as Bloch repelled Albertine). Generally speaking, one realised afterwards that, if it could be held against them that their hair was too long, their noses and eyes were too big, their gestures abrupt and theatrical, it was puerile to judge them by this, that they had plenty of wit and good-heartedness, and were men to whom, in the long run, one could become closely attached. Among the Jews especially there were few whose parents and kinsfolk had not a warmth of heart, a breadth of mind, a sincerity, in comparison with which Saint-Loup’s mother and the Duc de Guermantes cut the poorest of moral figures by their aridity, their skin-deep religiosity which denounced only the most open scandal, their apology for a Christianity which led invariably (by the unexpected channels of the uniquely prized intellect) to a colossally mercenary marriage. But in Saint-Loup, when all was said, however the faults of his parents had combined to create a new blend of qualities, there reigned the most charming openness of mind and heart. And whenever (it must be allowed to the undying glory of France) these qualities are found in a man who is purely French, whether he belongs to the aristocracy or the people, they flower—flourish would be too strong a word, for moderation persists in this field, as well as restriction—with a grace which the foreigner, however estimable he may be, does not present to us. Of these intellectual and moral qualities others undoubtedly have their share, and, if we have first to overcome what repels us and what makes us smile, they remain no less precious. But it is all the same a pleasant thing, and one which is perhaps exclusively French, that what is fine in all equity of judgment, what is admirable to the mind and the heart, should be first of all attractive to the eyes, pleasingly coloured, consummately chiselled, should express as well in substance as in form an inner perfection. I looked at Saint-Loup,