But perhaps the image that my eye received of her, diminished by distance, was no more exact; which of the two Bermas was the real one? As for her declaration to Hippolyte, I had greatly counted on that, since, to judge by the ingenious significance which her companions were disclosing to me every moment in less beautiful passages, she would certainly render it with modulations more surprising than any which, when reading the play at home, I had contrived to imagine; but she did not attain even to the heights which Oenone or Aricie would naturally have reached, she planed down into a uniform chant the whole of a speech in which there were mingled together contrasts so striking that the least intelligent of actresses, even the pupils of an academy, could not have missed their effect; besides which, she delivered it so rapidly that it was only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware of the deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout.

Then at last I felt my first impulse of admiration, which was provoked by the frenzied applause of the audience. I mingled my own with theirs, endeavouring to prolong it so that Berma, in her gratitude, should surpass herself, and I be certain of having heard her on one of her great days. A curious thing, by the way, was that the moment when this storm of enthusiasm broke loose was, as I afterwards learned, that in which Berma has one of her finest inspirations. It would appear that certain transcendent realities emit all around them a sort of radiation to which the crowd is sensitive. Thus it is that when any great event occurs, when on a distant frontier an army is in jeopardy, or defeated, or victorious, the vague and conflicting reports from which an educated man can derive little enlightenment stimulate in the crowd an emotion which surprises him and in which, once the experts have informed him of the actual military situation, he recognises the popular perception of that “aura” which surrounds momentous happenings and which may be visible hundreds of miles away. One learns of a victory either after the event, when the war is over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one’s hall porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma’s acting either a week after one has heard her, from a review, or else on the spot, from the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this immediate recognition by the crowd being mingled with a hundred others, all erroneous, the applause came most often at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone before, just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell even after the wind has begun to subside. No matter; the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act. “I say,” a fairly ordinary-looking woman sitting next to me was saying, “she fairly gives it you, she does; you’d think she’d do herself an injury, the way she runs about. I call that acting, don’t you?” And happy to find these reasons for Berma’s superiority, though not without a suspicion that they no more accounted for it than a peasant’s gawping exclamations—“That’s a good bit of work. It’s all gold, look! Fine, ain’t it?”—would for that of the Gioconda or Benvenuto’s Perseus, I greedily imbibed the rough wine of this popular enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when the curtain had fallen for the last time, I was disappointed that the pleasure for which I had so longed had not been greater, but at the same time I felt the need to prolong it, not to relinquish for ever, by leaving the auditorium, this strange life of the theatre which for a few hours had been mine, and from which I should have torn myself away as though I were being dragged into exile by going straight home, had I not hoped there to learn a great deal more about Berma from her admirer M. de Norpois, to whom I was indebted already for having been permitted to go to Phèdre.

I was introduced to him before dinner by my father, who summoned me into his study for the purpose. As I entered, the Ambassador rose, held out his hand, bowed his tall figure and fixed his blue eyes attentively on my face. As the foreign visitors who used to be presented to him, in the days when he still represented France abroad, were all more or less (even the famous singers) persons of note, with regard to whom he therefore knew that he would be able to say later on, when he heard their names mentioned in Paris or in Petersburg, that he remembered perfectly the evening he had spent with them in Munich or Sofia, he had formed the habit of impressing upon them, by his affability, the pleasure he felt in making their acquaintance; but in addition to this, being convinced that in the life of foreign capitals, in contact at once with all the interesting personalities that passed through them and with the manners and customs of the native populations, one acquired a deeper insight than could be gleaned from books into the history, the geography, the traditions of the different nations, and into the intellectual trends of Europe, he would exercise upon each newcomer his keen power of observation, so as to decide at once with what manner of man he had to deal. It was some time since the Government had entrusted him with a post abroad, but as soon as anyone was introduced to him, his eyes, as though they had not yet received notification of their master’s retirement, began their fruitful observation, while by his whole attitude he endeavoured to convey that the stranger’s name was not unknown to him. And so, while speaking to me kindly and with the air of self-importance of a man who is conscious of the vastness of his experience, he never ceased to examine me with a sagacious curiosity for his own profit, as though I had been some exotic custom, some historic and instructive monument or some star on tour. And in this way he gave proof, in his attitude towards me, at once of the majestic benevolence of the sage Mentor and of the zealous curiosity of the young Anacharsis.

He offered me absolutely no opening to the Revue des Deux-Mondes, but put a number of questions to me about my life and my studies, and about my tastes which I heard thus spoken of for the first time as though it might be a reasonable thing to obey their promptings, whereas hitherto I had always supposed it to be my duty to suppress them. Since they inclined me towards literature, he did not dissuade me from it; on the contrary, he spoke of it with deference, as of some venerable and charming personage whose select circle, in Rome or at Dresden, one remembers with pleasure and regrets only that one’s multifarious duties in life enable one to revisit so seldom. He appeared to envy me, with an almost rakish smile, the delightful hours which, more fortunate than himself and more free, I should be able to spend with such a mistress. But the very terms that he employed showed me Literature as something entirely different from the image that I had formed of it at Combray, and I realised that I had been doubly right in renouncing it. Until now, I had concluded only that I had no gift for writing; now M. de Norpois took away from me even the desire to write. I wanted to express to him what had been my dreams; trembling with emotion, I was painfully anxious that all the words I uttered would be the sincerest possible equivalent of what I had felt and had never yet attempted to formulate; which is to say that my words were very unclear. Perhaps from a professional habit, perhaps by virtue of the calm that is acquired by every important personage whose advice is commonly sought, and who, knowing that he will keep the control of the conversation in his own hands, allows his interlocutor to fret, to struggle, to toil to his heart’s content, perhaps also to show off the character of his face (Greek, according to himself, despite his sweeping whiskers), M. de Norpois, while anything was being expounded to him, would preserve a facial immobility as absolute as if you had been addressing some ancient—and deaf—bust in a museum.