de Charlus a state of things no less unsuspected by him than were Morel’s peculiar and intimate relations with Léa. What most disturbed the Baron was the word “so.” Ignorant at first of its application, he had eventually, at a time already remote in the past, learned that he himself was “so.” And now the notion that he had acquired of this word was again put to the challenge. When he had discovered that he was “so,” he had supposed this to mean that his tastes, as Saint-Simon says, did not lie in the direction of women. And here was this word “so” applied to Morel with an extension of meaning of which M.