While it may be true that the authority of something or someone rests not on their intrinsic qualities but rather on that social magic which renders them worthy of admiration, little consideration has been given to what the act of admiring actually entails. Through an analysis of the scenes featuring the actress La Berma in À la recherche du temps perdu, wherein Marcel fails to admire a theatre spectacle which he had primed himself to admire, this article shows that admiration is not the enactment of collective rules of appreciation, but rather a specific event produced by the encounter between what is considered admirable at a given historical point and the evolving and highly personal perceptions of an individual.