And of this collection, to which I am now even more attached than to my others, I say to myself, rather as Mazarin said of his library, but still without any keen regret, that it will be very tiresome to have to leave it all. But, to come back to my conversation with the Prince, I shall repeat it to one person only, and that person is going to be yourself.” My attention was distracted by the conversation that

M. de Charlus, who had returned to the cardroom, was prolonging indefinitely close beside us. “And are you a reader too? What do you do?” he asked Comte Arnulphe, who had never heard even the name of Balzac. But his shortsightedness, as he saw everything very small, gave him the appearance of seeing to great distances, so that, rare poetry in a sculptural Greek god, there seemed to be engraved upon his pupils remote, mysterious stars.