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“Oh, no!”

“Yes he is . . . Anyhow his cousin the Prince de Guermantes is, and they’ve come in for a lot of abuse because of it. I have some relatives who are very particular about that sort of thing. I can’t afford to mix with those people, I should alienate the whole of my family.”

“Since the Prince de Guermantes is a Dreyfusard, that will make things all the easier,” said Mme de Cambremer, “because Saint-Loup, who is said to be going to marry his niece, is one too. In fact it may well be the reason for the marriage.”

“Come now, my dear,” her husband replied, “you mustn’t say that Saint-Loup, who’s a great friend of ours is a Dreyfusard. One oughtn’t to make such allegation. lightly. You’ll make him highly popular in the Army!”

“He was once, but he isn’t any longer,” I explained to M. de Cambremer. “As for his marrying Mlle de Guermantes-Brassac, is there any truth in that?”

“People are talking of nothing else, but you shoul be in a position to know.”

“But I tell you, he himself told me he was a Drey fusard,” said Mme de Cambremer, “—not that there isn’ every excuse for him, the Guermantes are half German.”

“As regards the Guermantes of the Rue de Varenne you can say entirely,” said Cancan, “but Saint-Loup is another kettle of fish; he may have any number of German relations, but his father insisted on maintaining his title as a French nobleman; he joined the colours in 1871 and was killed in the war in the most gallant fashion. Although I’m a stickler in these matters, it doesn’t do to exaggerate either one way or the other. In medio . . . virtus, ah, I forget the exact words. It’s a remark I’ve heard Dr Cottard make. Now, there’s a man who always has a word for it. You ought to have a Petit Larousse here.”

To avoid having to give a verdict on the Latin quotation, and to get away from the subject of Saint-Loup, as to whom her husband seemed to think that she was wanting in tact, Mme de Cambremer fell back upon the Mistress, whose quarrel with them was even more in need of an explanation. “We were delighted to let La Raspelière to Mme Verdurin,” said the Marquise. “The only trouble is that she appears to imagine that together with the house and everything else that she has managed to lay her hands on, the use of the meadow, the old hangings all sorts of things which weren’t in the lease at all, she should also be entitled to make friends with us. The two things are entirely distinct. Our mistake lay in not getting everything done quite simply through a lawyer or an agency. At Féterne it doesn’t much matter, but I can just imagine the face my aunt de Ch’nouville would make if she saw old mother Verdurin come marching in on one of my days with her hair all over the place. As for M. de Charlus, of course he knows some very nice people, but he knows some very nasty people too.” I asked who. Driven into a corner, Mme de Cambremer finally said: “People say that it was he who was keeping a certain Monsieur Moreau, Morille, Morue, I can’t remember exactly. Nothing to do, of course, with Morel the violinist,” she added, blushing. “When I realised that Mme Verdurin imagined that because she was our tenant in the Manche she would have the right to come and call upon me in Paris, I saw that it was time to cut the painter.”

Notwithstanding this quarrel with the Mistress, the Cambremers were on quite good terms with the faithful, and would readily get into our compartment when they were travelling by the train. Just before we reached Douville, Albertine, taking out her mirror for the last time, would sometimes deem it necessary to change her gloves or to take off her hat for a moment, and, with the tortoiseshell comb which I had given her and which she wore in her hair, to smooth out the knots, to fluff up the curls, and if necessary to push up her chignon over the waves which descended in regular valleys to her nape. Once we were in the carriages which had come to meet us, we no longer had any idea where we were; the roads were not lighted; we could tell by the louder