“Delicious, ain’t it?” came tartly from the Duchess, who hated puns, and had ventured on this one only with a pretence of making fun of herself. “Good afternoon, Robert,” she said, “I believe he’s forgotten his aunt.” They talked for a moment, probably about myself, for as Saint-Loup was leaving her to join his mother Mme. de Guermantes turned to me: “Good afternoon; how are you?” was her greeting. She allowed to rain on me the light of her azure gaze, hesitated for a moment, unfolded and stretched towards me the stem of her arm, leaned forward her body which sprang rapidly backwards like a bush that has been pulled down to the ground and, on being released, returns to its natural position. Thus she acted under the fire of Saint-Loup’s eyes, which kept her under observation and were making frantic efforts to obtain some further concession still from his aunt. Fearing that our conversation might fail altogether, he joined in, to stimulate it, and answered for me: “He’s not very well just now, he gets rather tired; I think he would be a great deal better, by the way, if he saw you more often, for I can’t help telling you that he admires you immensely.” “Oh, but that’s very nice of him,” said Mme. de Guermantes in a deliberately casual tone, as if I had brought her her cloak. “I am most flattered.” “Look, I must go and talk to my mother for a minute; take my chair,” said Saint-Loup, thus forcing me to sit down next to his aunt. We are both silent. “I see you sometimes in the morning,” she said, as though she were telling me something that I did not know, and I for my part had never seen her. “It’s so good for one, a walk.” “Oriane,” began Mme. de Marsantes in a low tone, “you said you were going on to Mme. de Saint-Ferréol’s; would you be so very kind as to tell her not to expect me to dinner, I shall stay at home now that I’ve got Robert. And one other thing, but I hardly like to ask you, if you would leave word as you pass to tell them to send out at once for a box of the cigars Robert likes. ‘Corona’, they’re called. I’ve none in the house.” Robert came up to us; he had caught only the name of Mme. de Saint-Ferréol. “Who in the world is Mme. de Saint-Ferréol?” he inquired, in a surprised but decisive tone, for he affected a studied ignorance of everything to do with society. “But, my dear boy, you know quite well,” said his mother, “She’s Vermandois’s sister. It was she gave you that nice billiard table you liked so much.” “What, she’s Vermandois’s sister, I had no idea of that. Really, my family are amazing,” he went on, turning so as to include me in the conversation and adopting unconsciously Bloch’s intonation just as he borrowed his ideas, “they know the most unheard-of people, people called Saint-Ferréol” (emphasising the final consonant of each word) “and names like that; they go to balls, they drive in victorias, they lead a fabulous existence. It’s prodigious.”