M. de Charlus was engaged in handing over his greatcoat with the instructions of a familiar guest. But the footman to whom he was handing it was a newcomer, and quite young. Now M.

de Charlus had by this time begun, as people say, to “lose his bearings” and did not always remember what might and what might not be done. The praiseworthy desire that he had felt at Balbec to show that certain topics did not alarm him, that he was not afraid to declare with regard to some one or other: “He is a nice-looking boy,” to utter, in short, the same words as might have been uttered by somebody who was not like himself, this desire he had now begun to express by saying on the contrary things which nobody could ever have said who was not like him, things upon which his mind was so constantly fixed that he forgot that they do not form part of the habitual preoccupation of people in general.