Bloch had come bounding into the room like a hyena. "He is at home now," I thought, "in drawing-rooms into which twenty years ago he would never have been able to penetrate." But he was also twenty years older. He was nearer to death. What did this profit him? At close quarters, in the translucency of a face in which, at a greater distance or in a bad light, I saw only youth gaiety (whether because it survived there or because I with my recollections evoked it), I could detect another face, almost frightening, racked with anxiety, the face of an old Shylock, waiting in the wings, with his make-up prepared, for the moment when he would make his entry to the stage and already reciting his first line under his breath. In ten years, in drawing-rooms like this which their own feebleness of spirit would allow him to dominate, he would enter on crutches to be greeted as "the Master" for whom a visit to the La Tremoilles was merely a tedious obligation. And what could this profit him?
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1012-1013
Bloch makes his first appearance in the novel in some time, and a long time has passed: "But he was also twenty years older. He was nearer to death." Marcel notes that he was now able to enter society in ways that he could have not have before, but, he asks himself, "What did this profit him?" I suppose when we are finally famous enough (or hopefully society has grown more tolerant) to be received in smart society being received in smart society should be the last thing that interests us. And this is another of the many, many things that makes Trump so sad and pathetic; he clearly still lives to be noticed.
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