Page 507 - swanns-way

that had kept him away, went on, ‘You’re looking well, old
man!’ while M. de Bréauté turned with, ‘My dear fellow,
what on earth are you doing here?’ to a ‘society novelist’
who had just fitted into the angle of eyebrow and cheek
his own monocle, the sole instrument that he used in his
psychological investigations and remorseless analyses of
character, and who now replied, with an air of mystery and
importance, rolling the ‘r’:—‘I am observing!’
The Marquis de Forestelle’s monocle was minute and
rimless, and, by enforcing an incessant and painful contrac-
tion of the eye over which it was incrusted like a superfluous
cartilage, the presence of which there was inexplicable and
its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a melancholy
refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suf-
fering terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Candé,
girdled, like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre
of gravity of a face which composed itself afresh every mo-
ment in relation to the glass, while his thrusting red nose
and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their grimaces to
rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled in the
polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravish-
ing eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women
whom it set dreaming of artificial charms and a refinement
of sensual bliss; and then, behind him, M. de Palancy, who
with his huge carp’s head and goggling eyes moved slow-
ly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking
his great mandibles at every moment as though in search
of his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his
person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical

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