“Good gracious; I shall be forgetting my own name next!” she exclaimed. “Here am I calling you Baron de Guermantes. Let me introduce the Baron de Charlus. After all, it’s not a very serious mistake,” she went on, “for you’re a thorough Guermantes whatever else you are.”

By this time my grandmother had reappeared, and we all set out together. Saint-Loup’s uncle declined to honour me not only with a word, with so much as a look, even, in my direction. If he stared strangers out of countenance (and during this short excursion he two or three times hurled his terrible and searching scrutiny like a sounding lead at insignificant people of obviously humble extraction who happened to pass), to make up for that he never for a moment, if I was to judge by myself, looked at the people whom he did know, just as a detective on special duty might except his personal friends from his professional vigilance. Leaving them, my grandmother, Mme. de Villeparisis and him to talk to one another, I fell behind with Saint-Loup.