And I have never had one done in my life.’ So then she sent me along with a message to the Marquis, and he was never to let you know that it was she who had asked him, but could he take her photograph. But when I came back and told her that he would, she had changed her mind again, because she was looking so poorly. ‘It would be even worse,’ she said to me, ‘than no picture at all.’ But she was a clever one, she was, and in the end she got herself up so well in that big shady hat that it didn’t show at all when she was out of the sun. She was very glad to have that photograph, because at that time she didn’t think she would ever leave Balbec alive. It was no use my saying to her: ‘Madame, it’s wrong to talk like that, I don’t like to hear Madame talk like that,’ she had got it into her head. And, lord, there were plenty days when she couldn’t eat a thing. That was why she used to make Monsieur go and dine away out in the country with