In Search of Lost Time, Volume II Read Free Page A

father went on, for he was keenly interested in foreign policy. “I know old Norpois keeps very close as a rule, but when he’s with me he opens out quite charmingly.”
    As for my mother, perhaps the Ambassador had not the type of mind towards which she felt herself most attracted. And it must be said that his conversation furnished so exhaustive a glossary of the superannuated forms of speech peculiar to a certain profession, class and period—a period which, for that profession and that class, might be said not to have altogether passed away—that I sometimes regret not having kept a literal record simply of the things that I heard him say. I should thus have obtained an effect of old-fashioned usage by the same process and at as little expense as that actor at the Palais-Royal who, when asked where on earth he managed to find his astounding hats, answered, “I do not find my hats. I keep them.” In a word, I suppose that my mother considered M. de Norpois a trifle “out-of-date,” which was by no means a fault in her eyes, so far as manners were concerned, but attracted her less in the realm, not, in this instance, of ideas—for those of M. de Norpois were extremely modern—but of idiom. She felt, however, that she was paying a delicate compliment to her husband when she spoke admiringly of the diplomat who had shown so remarkable a predilection for him. By reinforcing in my father’s mind the good opinion that he already had of M. de Norpois, and so inducing him to form a good opinion of himself also, she knew that she was carrying out that wifely duty which consisted in making life pleasant and comfortable for her husband, just as when she saw to it that his dinner was perfectly cooked and served in silence. And as she was incapable of deceiving my father, she compelled herself to admire the Ambassador in order to be able to praise him with sincerity. In any event she could naturally appreciate his air of kindliness, his somewhat antiquated courtesy (so ceremonious that when, as he was walking along the street, his tall figure rigidly erect, he caught sight of my mother driving past, before raising his hat to her he would fling away the cigar that he had just lighted), his conversation, so elaborately circumspect, in which he referred as seldom as possible to himself and always considered what might interest the person to whom he was speaking, and his promptness in answering a letter, which was so astonishing that whenever my father, just after posting one himself to M. de Norpois, saw his handwriting on an envelope, his first impulse was always one of annoyance that their letters must unfortunately have crossed: it was as though he enjoyed at the post office the special and luxurious privilege of supplementary deliveries and collections at all hours of the day and night. My mother marvelled at his being so punctilious although so busy, so friendly although so much in demand, never realising that “although,” with such people, is invariably an unrecognised “because,” and that (just as old men are always wonderful for their age, and kings extraordinarily simple, and country cousins astonishingly well-informed) it was the same system of habits that enabled M. de Norpois to meet so many social demands and to be so methodical in answering letters, to go everywhere and to be so friendly when he came to us. Moreover she made the mistake which everyone makes who is unduly modest; she rated everything that concerned herself below, and consequently outside, the range of other people’s duties and engagements. The letter which it seemed to her so meritorious in my father’s friend to have written us promptly, since in the course of the day he must have had so many letters to write, she excepted from that great number of letters of which it was only one; in the same way she did not consider that dining with us was, for M. de Norpois, merely one of the innumerable activities of his social life: she never guessed