M. Brichot interests me greatly,” I said to Mme. Verdurin as she joined me, and I slipped Mme. de Cambremer’s letter into my pocket. “He has a cultured mind and is an excellent man,” she replied coldly. “Of course what he lacks is originality and taste, he has a terrible memory. They used to say of the ‘forebears’ of the people we have here this evening, the émigrés, that they had forgotten nothing. But they had at least the excuse,” she said, borrowing one of Swann’s epigrams, “that they had learned nothing. Whereas Brichot knows everything, and hurls chunks of dictionary at our heads during dinner. I’m sure you know everything now about the names of all the towns and villages.” While Mme. Verdurin was speaking, it occurred to me that I had determined to ask her something, but I could not remember what it was. I could not at this moment say what Mme.