“When?”
“Next time I’m in Paris, three weeks from now, I expect.”
“We shall see; I dare say she won’t want to see me, though. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“Not at all; it’s nothing.”
“Don’t say that; it’s everything in the world, because now I can see what sort of friend you are; whether what I ask you to do is important or not, disagreeable or not, whether I am really keen about it or ask you only as a test, it makes no difference; you say you will do it, and there you shew the fineness of your mind and heart. A stupid friend would have started a discussion.”
Which was exactly what he had just been doing; but perhaps I wanted to flatter his self-esteem; perhaps also I was sincere, the sole touchstone of merit seeming to me to be the extent to which a friend could be useful in respect of the one thing that seemed to me to have any importance, namely my love. Then I went on, perhaps from cunning, possibly from a genuine increase of affection inspired by gratitude, expectancy, and the copy of Mme. de Guermantes’s very features which nature had made in producing her nephew Robert: “But, I say, we mustn’t keep them waiting any longer, and I’ve mentioned only one of the two things I wanted to ask you, the less important; the other is more important to me, but I’m afraid you will never consent. Would it bore you if we were to call each other tu?”
“Bore me? My dear fellow! Joy! Tears of joy! Undreamed-of happiness!”
“Thank you—tu I mean; you begin first—ever so much. It is such a pleasure to me that you needn’t do anything about Mme. de Guermantes if you’ld rather not, this is quite enough for me.”
“I can do both.”
“I say, Robert! Listen to me a minute,” I said to him later while we were at dinner. “Oh, it’s really too absurd the way our conversation is always being interrupted, I can’t think why—you remember the lady I was speaking to you about just now.”