Verdurin continued, “I feel that you ought not to endure any longer this degrading promiscuity with a tainted person whom nobody will have in her house,” she went on, regardless of the fact that this was untrue and forgetting that she herself entertained him almost daily. “You are the talk of the Conservatoire,” she added, feeling that this was the argument that carried most weight; “another month of this life and your artistic future is shattered, whereas, without Charlus, you ought to be making at least a hundred thousand francs a year.” “But I have never heard anyone utter a word, I am astounded, I am very grateful to you,” Morel murmured, the tears starting to his eyes. But, being obliged at once to feign astonishment and to conceal his shame, he had turned redder and was perspiring more abundantly than if he had played all Beethoven’s sonatas in succession, and tears welled from his eyes which the Bonn Master would certainly not have drawn from him. “If you have never heard anything, you are unique in that respect. He is a gentleman with a vile reputation and the most shocking stories are told about him. I know that the police are watching him and that is perhaps the best thing for him if he is not to end like all those men, murdered by hooligans,” she went on, for as she thought of Charlus the memory of