Nissim Bernard’s pleasure, poetical and calmly contemplative as it might be, reminded one a little of those women-loving men who always know⁠—Swann, for example, in the past⁠—that if they go out to a party they will meet their mistress. No sooner had M. Nissim Bernard taken his seat than he would see the object of his affections appear on the scene, bearing in his hand fruit or cigars upon a tray. And so every morning, after kissing his niece, bothering my friend Bloch about his work and feeding his horses with lumps of sugar from the palm of his outstretched hand, he would betray a feverish haste to arrive in time for luncheon at the Grand Hotel. Had the house been on fire, had his niece had a stroke, he would doubtless have started off just the same. So that he dreaded like the plague a cold that would confine him to his bed⁠—for he was a hypochondriac⁠—and would oblige him to ask Aimé to send his young friend across to visit him at home, between luncheon and teatime.