Verdurin’s mannerisms, and notably her tone of petulant autocracy. “Toast” being as incomprehensible to me as “Colombin’s,” this further promise could not add to my temptation. It will appear stranger still, now that everyone uses such expressions⁠—and perhaps even at Combray they are creeping in⁠—that I had not at first understood of whom Mme. Swann was speaking when I heard her sing the praises of our old “nurse.” I did not know any English; I gathered, however, as she went on that the word was intended to denote Françoise. I who, in the Champs-Élysées, had been so terrified of the bad impression that she must make, I now learned from Mme. Swann that it was all the things that Gilberte had told them about my “nurse” that had attracted her husband and her to me. “One feels that she is so devoted to you; she must be nice!” (At once my opinion of Françoise was diametrically changed. By the same token, to have a governess equipped with a waterproof and a feather in her hat no longer appeared quite so essential.) Finally I learned from some words which Mme.