“What! You’ve come! How delightful! What a surprise!”
“Ah! Talk of the Saint!—I see,” cried the Belgian diplomat, with a shout of laughter.
“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.