“My dear,” put in the Marie-Antoinette lady, “surely you remember that when I brought Liszt to see you he said that it was this one that was the copy.”
“I should bow to any opinion of Liszt on music, but not on painting. Besides, he was quite off his head then, and I don’t remember his ever saying anything of the sort. But it wasn’t you that brought him here. I had met him any number of times at dinner at Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein’s.”
Alix’s shot had missed fire; she stood silent, erect and motionless. Plastered with layers of powder, her face had the appearance of a face of stone. And, as the profile was noble, she seemed, on a triangular and moss-grown pedestal hidden by her cape, the time-worn stucco goddess of a park.
“Ah, I see another fine portrait,” began the historian.
The door opened and the Duchesse de Guermantes entered the room.
“Well, how are you?” Mme. de Villeparisis greeted her without moving her head, taking from her apron-pocket a hand which she held out to the newcomer; and then ceasing at once to take any notice of her niece, in order to return to the historian: “That is the portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld....”
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.”