Swann had written to me a few days before, asking me to come to luncheon with “just a few people.” There were, however, sixteen of us, among whom I never suspected for a moment that I was to find Bergotte. Mme.

Swann, who had already “named” me, as she called it, to several of her guests, suddenly, after my name, in the same tone that she had used in uttering it (in fact, as though we were merely two of the guests at her party, who ought each to feel equally flattered on meeting the other), pronounced that of the sweet Singer with the snowy locks. The name Bergotte made me jump like the sound of a revolver fired at me point blank, but instinctively, for appearance’s sake, I bowed; there, straight in front of me, as by one of those conjurers whom we see standing whole and unharmed, in their frock coats, in the smoke of a pistol shot out of which a pigeon has just fluttered, my salute was returned by a young common little thickset peering person, with a red nose curled like a snail-shell and a black tuft on his chin.