That first day on which I met him with Gilberte’s parents, I mentioned to Bergotte that I had recently been to hear Berma in Phèdre ; and he told me that in the scene in which she stood with her arm raised to the level of her shoulder⁠—one of those very scenes that had been greeted with such applause⁠—she had managed to suggest with great nobility of art certain classical figures which, quite possibly, she had never even seen, a Hesperid carved in the same attitude upon a metope at Olympia, and also the beautiful primitive virgins on the Erechtheum.

“It may be sheer divination, and yet I fancy that she visits the museums. It would be interesting to ‘establish’ that.” (“Establish” was one of those regular Bergotte expressions, and one which various young men who had never met him had caught from him, speaking like him by some sort of telepathic suggestion.)

“Do you mean the Cariatides?” asked Swann.