Mme. Swann and I, by a young man who greeted her without stopping, and whom I was not aware that she knew; it was Bloch. I inquired about him, and was told that he had been introduced to her by Mme. Bontemps, and that he was employed in the Minister’s secretariat, which was news to me. Anyhow, she could not have seen him often—or perhaps she had not cared to utter the name, hardly “smart” enough for her liking, of Bloch, for she told me that he was called M. Moreul. I assured her that she was mistaken, that his name was Bloch. The Princess gathered up the train that flowed out behind her, while Mme. Swann gazed at it with admiring eyes. “It is only a fur that the Emperor of Russia sent me,” she explained, “and as I have just been to see him I put it on, so as to show him that I’d managed to have it made up as a mantle.” “I hear that Prince Louis has joined the Russian Army; the Princess will be very sad at losing him,” went on Mme.
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