In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust

in order to forestall any criticism that we might feel tempted to make of our guest, said to my mother: “Upon my word, old Norpois was a bit ‘stuffy,’ as you call it, this evening, wasn’t he? When he said that it wouldn’t have been ‘seemly’ to ask the Comte de Paris a question, I was quite afraid you would burst out laughing.”
    “Not at all!” answered my mother. “I was delighted to see a man of his standing and his age with that sort of simplicity, which is really a sign of decency and good breeding.”
    “I dare say. But that doesn’t prevent him from having a shrewd and discerning mind—as I know very well since I see him on the Commission, remember, where he’s very different from what he was here,” exclaimed my father, who was glad to see that Mamma appreciated M. de Norpois, and anxious to persuade her that he was even better than she supposed, because a cordial nature exaggerates a friend’s qualities with as much pleasure as a mischievous one finds in depreciating them. “What was it that he said, again—‘With princes one never does know’ . . . ?”
    “Yes, that was it. I noticed it at the time; it was very shrewd. You can see that he has a profound experience of life.”
    “It’s extraordinary that he should have dined with the Swanns, and that he seems to have found quite re
spectable people there, government officials. How on earth can Mme Swann have managed to get hold of them?”
    “Did you notice the malicious way he said: ‘It is a house which is especially attractive to gentlemen!’?”
    And each of them attempted to reproduce the manner in which M. de Norpois had uttered these words, as they might have attempted to capture some intonation of Bressant’s voice or of Thiron’s in
L’Aventurière
or in
Le Gendre de M. Poirier
. But of all his sayings there was none so keenly relished as one was by Françoise, who, years afterwards, could not “keep a straight face” if we reminded her that she had been described by the Ambassador as “a first-rate chef,” a compliment which my mother had gone in person to transmit to her, like a War Minister passing on the congratulations of a visiting sovereign after reviewing the troops. I had, as it happened, preceded my mother to the kitchen. For I had extorted from Françoise, who though a pacifist was cruel, a promise that she would cause no undue suffering to the rabbit which she had to kill, and I had had no report yet of its death. Françoise assured me that it had passed away as peacefully as could be desired, and very swiftly. “I’ve never seen a beast like it; it died without saying a blessed word; you would have thought it was dumb.” Being but little versed in the language of beasts, I suggested that rabbits perhaps did not squeal like chickens. “Just wait till you see,” said Françoise, filled with contempt for my ignorance, “if rabbits don’t squeal every bit as much as chickens. Why, their voices are even louder.”
    Françoise received the compliments of M. de Norpois with the proud simplicity, the joyful and (if only momentarily) intelligent expression of an artist when someone speaks to him of his art. My mother had sent her when she first came to us to several of the big restaurants to see how the cooking there was done. I had the same pleasure, that evening, in hearing her dismiss the most famous of them as mere cookshops, that I had had long ago when I learned with regard to theatrical artists that the hierarchy of their merits did not at all correspond to that of their reputations. “The Ambassador,” my mother told her, “assured me that he knows nowhere where one can get cold beef and soufflés as good as yours.” Françoise, with an air of modesty and of paying just homage to the truth, agreed, but seemed not at all impressed by the title “Ambassador”; she said of M. de Norpois, with the friendliness due to a man who had taken her for a chef: “He’s a good old soul, like me.” She had