The Baron de Charlus and young students

Another of my very favourite bits from the book - the Baron, with white hair and black moustaches, confesses to be past forty. Only four more years and I shall be able to claim the same.

“The spectacle of all that laborious little world is very pleasant to an
old stick like myself. I do not know them,” he went on, raising his hand with an
air of reserve—so as not to appear to be boasting of his own conquests, to
testify to his own purity and not to allow any suspicion to rest upon that of
the students—“but they are most civil, they often go so far as to keep a place
for me, since I am a very old gentleman. Yes indeed, my dear boy, do not
protest, I am past forty,” said the Baron, who was past sixty.