“Well, don’t you see, she came to recite, with a bunch of lilies in her hand, and more lilies on her _dwess_.” Mme. de Guermantes shared her aunt’s affectation of pronouncing certain words in an exceedingly rustic fashion, but never rolled her ‘r’s like Mme. de Villeparisis. Before M. de Norpois, under constraint from his hostess, had taken Bloch into the little recess where they could talk more freely, I went up to the old diplomat for a moment and put in a word about my father’s Academic chair. He tried first of all to postpone the conversation to another day. I pointed out that I was going to Balbec. “What? Going again to Balbec? Why, you’re a regular globe-trotter.” He listened to what I had to say. At the name of Leroy-Beaulieu, he looked at me suspiciously. I conjectured that he had perhaps said something disparaging to M. Leroy-Beaulieu about my father and was afraid of the economist’s having repeated it to him. All at once he seemed animated by a positive affection for my father. And after one of those opening hesitations out of which suddenly a word explodes as though in spite of the speaker, whose irresistible conviction prevails over his half-hearted efforts at silence: “No, no,” he said to me with emotion, “your father _must not_ stand. In his own interest he must not; it is not fair to himself; he owes a certain respect to his own really great merits, which would be compromised by such an adventure. He is too big a man for that. If he should be elected, he will have everything to lose and nothing to gain. He is not an orator, thank heaven. And that is the one thing that counts with my dear colleagues, even if you only talk platitudes. Your father has an important goal in life; he should march straight ahead towards it, and not allow himself to turn aside to beat bushes, even the bushes (more thorny for that matter than flowery) of the grove of Academe. Besides, he would not get many votes. The Academy likes to keep a postulant waiting for some time before taking him to its bosom. For the present, there is nothing to be done. Later on, I don’t say. But he must wait until the Society itself comes in quest of him. It makes a practice, not a very fortunate practice, a fetish rather, of the _farà da sè_ of our friends across the Alps. Leroy-Beaulieu spoke to me about all this in a way I did not at all like. I pointed out to him, a little sharply perhaps, that a man accustomed as he is to dealing with colonial imports and metals could not be expected to understand the part played by the imponderables, as Bismarck used to say. But, whatever happens, your father must on no account put himself forward as a candidate. _Principis obsta_. His friends would find themselves placed in a delicate position if he suddenly called upon them for their votes. Indeed,” he broke forth, with an air of candour, fixing his blue eyes on my face, “I am going to say a thing that you will be surprised to hear coming from me, who am so fond of your father.