She was not very well; she received him, wearing a wrapper of mauve
_crepe de Chine_, which draped her bosom, like a mantle, with a richly
embroidered web. As she stood there beside him, brushing his cheek with
the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one knee in what was almost a
dancer's pose, so that she could lean without tiring herself over the
picture, at which she was gazing, with bended head, out of those great
eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when there was nothing to
animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to the figure of
Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one of the Sixtine
frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination in tracing in the
paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general characteristics of
the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but rather what seems
least susceptible of generalisation, the individual features of men and
women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust of the Doge Loredan by
Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the slanting eyebrows, in short,
a speaking likeness to his own coachman Remi; in the colouring of a
Ghirlandaio, the nose of M.
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