A young servant with a bold manner and a charming face (but so finely chiselled, to ensure its perfection, that the nose was a little red and the rest of the skin slightly flushed as though they were still smarting from the recent and sculptural incision) came in bearing a card on a salver. “It is that gentleman who has been several times to see Mme. la Marquise.” “Did you tell him I was at home?” “He heard the voices.” “Oh, very well then, shew him in. It’s a man who was introduced to me,” she explained. “He told me he was very anxious to come to the house. I certainly never said he might. But here he’s taken the trouble to call five times now; it doesn’t do to hurt people’s feelings. Sir,” she went on to me, “and you, Sir,” to the historian of the Fronde, “let me introduce my niece, the Duchesse de Guermantes.” The historian made a low bow, as I did also, and since he seemed to suppose that some friendly remark ought to follow this salute, his eyes brightened and he was preparing to open his mouth when he was once more frozen by the sight of Mme. de Guermantes who had taken advantage of the independence of her torso to throw it forward with an exaggerated politeness and bring it neatly back to a position of rest without letting face or eyes appear to have noticed that anyone was standing before them; after breathing a gentle sigh she contented herself with manifesting the nullity of the impression that had been made on her by the sight of the historian and myself by performing certain movements of her nostrils with a precision that testified to the absolute inertia of her unoccupied attention. The importunate visitor entered the room, making straight for Mme. de Villeparisis with an ingenuous, fervent air: it was Legrandin. “Thank you so very much for letting me come and see you,” he began, laying stress on the word “very”. “It is a pleasure of a quality altogether rare and subtle that you confer on an old solitary; I assure you that its repercussion....” He stopped short on catching sight of me. “I was just shewing this gentleman a fine portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, the wife of the author of the _Maxims_; it’s a family picture.” Mme. de Guermantes meanwhile had greeted Alix, with apologies for not having been able, that year as in every previous year, to go and see her. “I hear all about you from Madeleine,” she added. “She was at luncheon with me to-day,” said the Marquise of the Quai Malaquais, with the satisfying reflexion that Mme. de Villeparisis could never say that.