But this show of affection seeming to irritate Robert, Mme. de Marsantes led her son away to the other end of the room where in an alcove hung with yellow silk a group of Beauvais armchairs massed their violet-hued tapestries like purple irises in a field of buttercups. Mme. Swann, finding herself alone and having realised that I was a friend of Saint-Loup, beckoned to me to come and sit beside her. Not having seen her for so long I did not know what to talk to her about. I was keeping an eye on my hat, among the crowd of hats that littered the carpet, and I asked myself with a vague curiosity to whom one of them could belong which was not that of the Duc de Guermantes and yet in the lining of which a capital ‘G’ was surmounted by a ducal coronet. I knew who everyone in the room was, and could not think of anyone whose hat this could possibly be. “What a pleasant man M. de Norpois is,” I said to Mme. Swann, looking at the Ambassador. “It is true, Robert de Saint-Loup says he’s a pest, but ...” “He is quite right,” she replied. Seeing from her face that she was thinking of something which she was keeping from me, I plied her with questions. For the satisfaction of appearing to be greatly taken up by some one in this room where she knew hardly anyone, she took me into a corner. “I am sure this is what M. de Saint-Loup meant,” she began, “but you must never tell him I said so, for he would think me indiscreet, and I value his esteem very highly; I am an ‘honest Injun,’ don’t you know. The other day, Charlus was dining at the Princesse de Guermantes’s; I don’t know how it was, but your name was mentioned. M. de Norpois seems to have told them—it’s all too silly for words, don’t go and worry yourself to death over it, nobody paid any attention, they all knew only too well the mischievous tongue that said it—that you were a hypocritical little flatterer.”