Bloch whenever he wished to travel on a line of which Sir Rufus was a director, the result of which was that old Bloch would say: “I’m just going round to the Club to ask Sir Rufus for a line to the Company.” And the card enabled him to dazzle the guards on the trains. The misses Bloch were more interested in Bergotte and, reverting to him rather than pursue the subject of the Ganaches, the youngest asked her brother, in the most serious tone imaginable, for she believed that there existed in the world, for the designation of men of talent, no other terms than those which he was in the habit of using: “Is he really an amazing good egg, this Bergotte? Is he in the category of the great lads, good eggs like Villiers and Catullus?” “I’ve met him several times at dress rehearsals,” said M. Nissim Bernard. “He is an uncouth creature, a sort of Schlemihl.” There was nothing very serious in this allusion to Chamisso’s story but the epithet “Schlemihl” formed part of that dialect, half-German, half-Jewish, the use of which delighted M.