. If so, she was not far wrong. There is still a street near Notre-Dame called Rue Chanoinesse, a name which must have been given to it (since it was never inhabited by any but male Canons) by those Frenchmen of olden days of whom Françoise was, properly speaking, the contemporary. She proceeded, moreover, at once to furnish another example of this way of forming feminine endings, for she went on: “But one thing sure and certain is that it’s the Duchess that has Guermantes Castle. And it’s she that is the Lady Mayoress down in those parts. That’s always something.”

“I can well believe that it is something,” came with conviction from the footman, who had not detected the irony.