bread during the Fronde, I suppose,” the historian of that movement
timidly inquired of M. de Norpois. “You could make a considerable
success of a subject like that,” (which was to say, “you would give me a
colossal advertisement,”) he added, smiling at the Ambassador
pusillanimously, but with a warmth of feeling which made him raise his
eyelids and expose a double horizon of eye. I seemed to have seen this
look before, and yet I had met the historian for the first time this
afternoon. Suddenly I remembered having seen the same expression in the
eyes of a Brazilian doctor who claimed to be able to cure choking fits
of the kind from which I suffered by some absurd inhalation of the
essential oils of plants. When, in the hope that he would pay more
attention to my case, I had told him that I knew Professor Cottard, he
had replied, as though speaking in Cottard’s interest: “Now this
treatment of mine, if you were to tell him about it, would give him the
material for a most sensational paper for the Academy of Medicine!” He
had not ventured to press the matter but had stood gazing at me with the
same air of interrogation, timid, anxious, appealing, which it had just
puzzled me to see on the face of the historian of the Fronde. Obviously
the two men were not acquainted and had little or nothing in common, but
psychological like physical laws have a more or less general
application. And the requisite conditions are the same; an identical
expression lights the eyes of different human animals, as a single
sunrise lights different places, a long way apart, which have no
connexion with one another. I did not hear the Ambassador’s reply, for
the whole party, with a good deal of noise, had again gathered round
Mme. de Villeparisis to watch her at work.
“You know who’ we’re talking about, Basin?” the Duchess asked her
husband.
“I can make a pretty good guess,” said the Duke.
“Ah! As an actress she’s not, I’m afraid, in what one would call the
great tradition.”
“You can’t imagine,” went on Mme. de Guermantes to M. d’Argencourt,
“anything more ridiculous.”
“In fact, it was drolatic,” put in M. de Guermantes, whose odd
vocabulary enabled people in society to declare that he was no fool and
literary people, at the same time, to regard him as a complete imbecile.
“What I fail to understand,” resumed the Duchess, “is how in the world
Robert ever came to fall in love with her. Oh, of course I know one
mustn’t discuss that sort of thing,” she added, with the charming pout
of a philosopher and sentimentalist whose last illusion had long been
shattered. “I know that anybody may fall in love with anybody else.
And,” she went on, for, though she might still laugh at modern
literature, it, either by its dissemination through the popular press or
else in the course of conversation, had begun to percolate into her
mind, “that is the really nice thing about love, because it’s what makes
it so ‘mysterious’.”
“Mysterious! Oh, I must confess, cousin, that’s a bit beyond me,” said
the Comte d’Argencourt.
“Oh dear, yes, it’s a very mysterious thing, love,” declared the
Duchess, with the sweet smile of a good-natured woman of the world, but
also with the rooted conviction with which a Wagnerian assures a bored
gentleman from the Club that there is something more than just noise in
the _Walküre_. “After all, one never does know what makes one person
fall in love with another; it may not be at all what we think,” she
added with a smile, repudiating at once by this interpretation the idea
she had just suggested. “After all, one never knows anything, does one?”
she concluded with an air of weary scepticism. “Besides, one
understands, doesn’t one; one simply can’t explain other people’s
choices in love.”
But having laid down this principle she proceeded at once to abandon it
and to criticise Saint-Loup’s choice.
“All the same, don’t you know, it is amazing to me that a man can find
any attraction in a person who’s simply silly.”
Bloch, hearing Saint-Loup’s name mentioned and gathering that he was in
Paris, promptly made a remark about him so outrageous that everybody was
shocked. He was beginning to nourish hatreds, and one felt that he would
stop at nothing to gratify them. Once he had established the principle
that he himself was of great moral worth and that the sort of people who
frequented La Boulie (an athletic club which he supposed to be highly
fashionable) deserved penal servitude, every blow he could get in
against them seemed to him praiseworthy. He went so far once as to speak
of a lawsuit which he was anxious to bring against one of his La Boulie
friends. In the course of the trial he proposed to give certain evidence
which would be entirely untrue, though the defendant would be unable to
impugn his veracity. In this way Bloch (who, incidentally, never put his
plan into action) counted on baffling and infuriating his antagonist.
What harm could there be in that, since he whom he sought to injure was
a man who thought only of doing the “right thing”, a La Boulie man, and
against people like that any weapon was justified, especially in the
hands of a Saint, such as Bloch himself.
“I say, though, what about Swann?” objected M. d’Argencourt, who having
at last succeeded in understanding the point of his cousin’s speech, was
impressed by her accuracy of observation, and was racking his brains for
instances of men who had fallen in love with women in whom he himself
had seen no attraction.
“Oh, but Swann’s case was quite different,” the Duchess protested. “It
was a great surprise, I admit, because she’s just a well-meaning idiot,
but she was never silly, and she was at one time good looking.”
“Oh, oh!” muttered Mme. de Villeparisis.
“You never thought so? Surely, she had some charming points, very fine
eyes, good hair, she used to dress, and does still dress wonderfully.
Nowadays, I quite agree, she’s horrible, but she has been a lovely woman
in her time. Not that that made me any less sorry when Charles married
her, because it was so unnecessary.” The Duchess had not intended to say
anything out of the common, but as M. d’Argencourt began to laugh she
repeated these last words—either because she thought them amusing or
because she thought it nice of him to laugh—and looked up at him with a
coaxing smile, to add the enchantment of her femininity to that of her
wit. She went on: “Yes, really, it wasn’t worth the trouble, was it;
still, after all, she did have some charm and I can quite understand
anybody’s falling in love with her, but if you saw Robert’s girl, I
assure you, you’ld simply die of laughter. Oh, I know somebody’s going
to quote Augier at me: ‘What matters the bottle so long as one gets
drunk?’ Well, Robert may have got drunk, all right, but he certainly
hasn’t shewn much taste in his choice of a bottle! First of all, would
you believe that she actually expected me to fit up a staircase right in
the middle of my drawing-room. Oh, a mere nothing—what?—and she
announced that she was going to lie flat on her stomach on the steps.
And then, if you’d heard the things she recited, I only remember one
scene, but I’m sure nobody could imagine anything like it: it was called
the _Seven Princesses_.”
“_Seven Princesses!_ Dear, dear, what a snob she must be!” cried M.
d’Argencourt. “But, wait a minute, why, I know the whole play. The
author sent a copy to the King, who couldn’t understand a word of it and
called on me to explain it to him.”
“It isn’t by any chance, from the Sar Peladan?” asked the historian of
the Fronde, meaning to make a subtle and topical allusion, but in so low
a tone that his question passed unnoticed.
“So you know the _Seven Princesses_, do you?” replied the Duchess. “I
congratulate you! I only know one, but she’s quite enough; I have no
wish to make the acquaintance of the other six. If they are all like the
one I’ve seen!”
“What a goose!” I thought to myself. Irritated by the coldness of her
greeting, I found a sort of bitter satisfaction in this proof of her
complete inability to understand Maeterlinck. “To think that’s the woman
I walk miles every morning to see. Really, I’m too kind. Well, it’s my
turn now not to want to see her.” Thus I reasoned with myself; but my
words ran counter to my thoughts; they were purely conversational words
such as we say to ourselves at those moments when, too much excited to
remain quietly alone, we feel the need, for want of another listener, to
talk to ourselves, without meaning what we say, as we talk to a
stranger.
“I can’t tell you what it was like,” the Duchess went on; “you simply
couldn’t help laughing. Not that anyone tried; rather the other way, I’m
sorry to say, for the young person was not at all pleased and Robert has
never really forgiven me. Though I can’t say I’m sorry, actually,
because if it had been a success the lady would perhaps have come again,
and I don’t quite see Marie-Aynard approving of that.”
This was the name given in the family to Robert’s mother, Mme. de
Marsantes, the widow of Aynard de Saint-Loup, to distinguish her from
her cousin, the Princesse de Guermantes-Bavière, also a Marie, to whose
Christian name her nephews and cousins and brothers-in-law added, to
avoid confusion, either that of her husband or another of her own,
making her Marie-Gilbert or Marie-Hedwige.
“To begin with, there was a sort of rehearsal the night before, which
was a wonderful affair!” went on Mme. de Guermantes in ironical pursuit
of her theme. “Just imagine, she uttered a sentence, no, not so much,
not a quarter of a sentence, and then she stopped; she didn’t open her
mouth—I’m not exaggerating—for a good five minutes.”
“Oh, I say,” cried M. d’Argencourt.
“With the utmost politeness I took the liberty of hinting to her that
this might seem a little unusual. And she said—I give you her actual
words—‘One ought always to repeat a thing as though one were just
composing it oneself.’ When you think of it, that really is monumental.”
“But I understood she wasn’t at all bad at reciting poetry,” said one of
the two young men.
“She hasn’t the ghost of a notion what poetry is,” replied Mme. de
Guermantes. “However, I didn’t need to listen to her to tell that. It
was quite enough to see her come in with her lilies. I knew at once that
she couldn’t have any talent when I saw those lilies!”
Everybody laughed.
“I hope, my dear aunt, you aren’t angry with me, over my little joke the
other day about the Queen of Sweden. I’ve come to ask your forgiveness.”
“Oh, no, I’m not at all angry, I even give you leave to eat at my table,
if you’re hungry.—Come along, M. Valmère, you’re the daughter of the
house,” Mme. de Villeparisis went on to the librarian, repeating a
time-honoured pleasantry.
M. de Guermantes sat upright in the armchair in which he had come to
anchor, his hat on the carpet by his side, and examined with a satisfied
smile the plate of little cakes that was being held out to him.
“Why, certainly, now that I am beginning to feel at home in this
distinguished company, I will take a sponge-cake; they look excellent.”
“This gentleman makes you an admirable daughter,” commented M.
d’Argencourt, whom the spirit of imitation prompted to keep Mme. de
Villeparisis’s little joke in circulation.
The librarian handed the plate of cakes to the historian of the Fronde.
“You perform your functions admirably,” said the latter, startled into
speech, and hoping also to win the sympathy of the crowd. At the same
time he cast a covert glance of connivance at those who had anticipated
him.
“Tell me, my dear aunt,” M. de Guermantes inquired of Mme. de
Villeparisis, “who was that rather good-looking man who was going out
just now as I came in? I must know him, because he gave me a sweeping
bow, but I couldn’t place him at all; you know I never can remember
names, it’s such a nuisance,” he added, in a tone of satisfaction.
“M. Legrandin.”
“Oh, but Oriane has a cousin whose mother, if I’m not mistaken, was a
Grandin. Yes, I remember quite well, she was a Grandin de l’Epervier.”
“No,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis, “no relation at all. These are plain
Grandins. Grandins of nothing at all. But they’ld be only too glad to be
Grandins of anything you chose to name. This one has a sister called
Mme. de Cambremer.”
“Why, Basin, you know quite well who’ my aunt means,” cried the Duchess
indignantly. “He’s the brother of that great graminivorous creature you
had the weird idea of sending to call on me the other day. She stayed a
solid hour; I thought I should go mad. But I began by thinking it was
she who was mad when I saw a person I didn’t know come browsing into the
room looking exactly like a cow.”
“Listen, Oriane; she asked me what afternoon you were at home; I
couldn’t very well be rude to her; and besides, you do exaggerate so,
she’s not in the least like a cow,” he added in a plaintive tone, though
not without a quick smiling glance at the audience.
He knew that his wife’s lively wit needed the stimulus of contradiction,
the contradiction of common sense which protests that one cannot (for
instance) mistake a woman seriously for a cow; by this process Mme. de
Guermantes, enlarging upon her original idea, had been inspired to
produce many of her most brilliant sayings. And the Duke in his innocent
fashion helped her, without seeming to do so, to bring off her effects
like, in a railway carriage, the unacknowledged partner of the
three-card player.
“I admit she doesn’t look like _a_ cow, she looks like a dozen,”
exclaimed Mme. de Guermantes. “I assure you, I didn’t know what to do
when I saw a herd of cattle come marching into my drawing-room in a hat
and heard them ask me how I was. I had half a mind to say: ‘Please, herd
of cattle, you must be making a mistake, you can’t possibly know me,
because you’re a herd of cattle,’ but after racking my brains over her I
came to the conclusion that your Cambremer woman must be the Infanta
Dorothea, who had said she was coming to see me one day, and is rather
bovine also, so that I was just on the point of saying: ‘Your Royal
Highness’ and using the third person to a herd of cattle. The cut of her
dewlap reminded me rather, too, of the Queen of Sweden. But this massed
attack had been prepared for by long range artillery fire, according to
all the rules of war. For I don’t know how long before, I was bombarded
with her cards; I used to find them lying about all over the house, on
all the tables and chairs, like prospectuses. I couldn’t think what they
were supposed to be advertising. You saw nothing in the house but
‘Marquis et Marquise de Cambremer’ with some address or other which I’ve
forgotten; you may be quite sure nothing will ever take me there.”
“But it’s a great distinction to look like a Queen,” said the historian
of the Fronde.
“Gad, sir, Kings and Queens, in these days, don’t amount to much,” said
M. de Guermantes, partly because he liked to be thought broad-minded and
modern, and also so as to not to seem to attach any importance to his
own royal friendships, which he valued highly.
Bloch and M. de Norpois had returned from the other room and came
towards us.
“Well, sir,” asked Mme. de Villeparisis, “have you been talking to him
about the Dreyfus case?”
M. de Norpois raised his eyes to the ceiling, but with a smile, as
though calling on heaven to witness the monstrosity of the caprices to
which his Dulcinea compelled him to submit. Nevertheless he spoke to
Bloch with great affability of the terrible, perhaps fatal period
through which France was passing. As this presumably meant that M. de
Norpois (to whom Bloch had confessed his belief in the innocence of
Dreyfus) was an ardent anti-Dreyfusard, the Ambassador’s geniality, his
air of tacit admission that his listener was in the right, of never
doubting that they were both of the same opinion, of being prepared to
join forces with him to overthrow the Government, flattered Bloch’s
vanity and aroused his curiosity. What were the important points which
M. de Norpois never specified but on which he seemed implicitly to
affirm that he was in agreement with Bloch; what opinion, then, did he
hold of the case, that could bring them together? Bloch was all the more
astonished at the mysterious unanimity which seemed to exist between him
and M. de Norpois, in that it was not confined to politics, Mme. de
Villeparisis having spoken at some length to M. de Norpois of Bloch’s
literary work.
“You are not of your age,” the former Ambassador told him, “and I
congratulate you upon that. You are not of this age in which
disinterested work no longer exists, in which writers offer the public
nothing but obscenities or ineptitudes. Efforts such as yours ought to
be encouraged, and would be, if we had a Government.”
Bloch was flattered by this picture of himself swimming alone amid a
universal shipwreck. But here again he would have been glad of details,
would have liked to know what were the ineptitudes to which M. de
Norpois referred. Bloch had the feeling that he was working along the
same lines as plenty of others; he had never supposed himself to be so
exceptional. He returned to the Dreyfus case, but did not succeed in
elucidating M. de Norpois’s own views. He tried to induce him to speak
of the officers whose names were appearing constantly in the newspapers
at that time; they aroused more curiosity than the politicians who were
involved also, because they were not, like the politicians, well known
already, but, wearing a special garb, emerging from the obscurity of a
different kind of life and a religiously guarded silence, simply stood
up and spoke and disappeared again, like Lohengrin landing from a skiff
drawn by a swan. Bloch had been able, thanks to a Nationalist lawyer of
his acquaintance, to secure admission to several hearings of the Zola
trial. He would arrive there in the morning and stay until the court
rose, with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of coffee, as though for
the final examination for a degree, and this change of routine
stimulating a nervous excitement which the coffee and the emotional
interest of the trial worked up to a climax, he would come out so
enamoured of everything that had happened in court that, in the evening,
as he sat at home, he would long to immerse himself again in that
beautiful dream and would hurry out, to a restaurant frequented by both
parties, in search of friends with whom he would go over interminably
the whole of the day’s proceedings, and make up, by a supper ordered in
an imperious tone which gave him the illusion of power, for the hunger
and exhaustion of a day begun so early and unbroken by any interval for
luncheon. The human mind, hovering perpetually between the two planes of
experience and imagination, seeks to fathom the ideal life of the people
it knows and to know the people whose life it has had to imagine. To
Bloch’s questions M. de Norpois replied:
“There are two officers involved in the case now being tried of whom I
remember hearing some time ago from a man in whose judgment I felt great
confidence, and who praised them both highly—I mean M. de Miribel. They
are Lieutenant-Colonel Henry and Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart.”
“But,” exclaimed Bloch, “the divine Athena, daughter of Zeus, has put in
the mind of one the opposite of what is in the mind of the other. And
they are fighting against one another like two lions. Colonel Picquart
had a splendid position in the Army, but his Moira has led him to the
side that was not rightly his. The sword of the Nationalists will carve
his tender flesh, and he will be cast out as food for the beasts of prey
and the birds that wax fat upon the bodies of men.”
M. de Norpois made no reply.
“What are those two palavering about over there?” M. de Guermantes asked
Mme. de Villeparisis, indicating M. de Norpois and Bloch.
“The Dreyfus case.”
“The devil they are. By the way, do you know who is a red-hot supporter
of Dreyfus? I give you a thousand guesses. My nephew Robert! I can tell
you that, at the Jockey, when they heard of his goings on, there was a
fine gathering of the clans, a regular hue and cry. And as he’s coming
up for election next week....”
“Of course,” broke in the Duchess, “if they’re all like Gilbert, who
keeps on saying that all the Jews ought to be sent back to Jerusalem.”
“Indeed; then the Prince de Guermantes is quite of my way of thinking,”
put in M. d’Argencourt.
The Duke made a show of his wife, but did not love her. Extremely
self-centred, he hated to be interrupted, besides he was in the habit,
at home, of treating her brutally. Convulsed with the twofold rage of a
bad husband when his wife speaks to him, and a good talker when he is
not listened to, he stopped short and transfixed the Duchess with a
glare which made everyone feel uncomfortable.
“What makes you think we want to hear about Gilbert and Jerusalem? It’s
nothing to do with that. But,” he went on in a gentler tone, “you will
agree that if one of our family were to be pilled at the Jockey,
especially Robert, whose father was chairman for ten years, it would be
a pretty serious matter. What can you expect, my dear, it’s got ’em on
the raw, those fellows; they’re all over it. I don’t blame them, either;
personally, you know that I have no racial prejudice, all that sort of
thing seems to me out of date, and I do claim to move with the times;
but damn it all, when one goes by the name of ‘Marquis de Saint-Loup’
one isn’t a Dreyfusard; what more can I say?”
M. de Guermantes uttered the words: “When one goes by the name of
Marquis de Saint-Loup,” with some emphasis. He knew very well that it
was a far greater thing to go by that of Duc de Guermantes. But if his
self-esteem had a tendency to exaggerate if anything the superiority of
the title Duc de Guermantes over all others, it was perhaps not so much
the rules of good taste as the laws of imagination that urged him thus
to attenuate it. Each of us sees in the brightest colours what he sees
at a distance, what he sees in other people. For the general laws which
govern perspective in imagination apply just as much to dukes as to
ordinary mortals. And not only the laws of imagination, but those of
speech. Now, either of two laws of speech may apply here, one being that
which makes us express ourselves like others of our mental category and
not of our caste. Under this law M. de Guermantes might be, in his
choice of expressions, even when he wished to talk about the nobility,
indebted to the humblest little tradesman, who would have said: “When
one goes by the name of Duc de Guermantes,” whereas an educated man, a
Swann, a Legrandin would not have said it. A duke may write novels
worthy of a grocer, even about life in high society, titles and
pedigrees being of no help to him there, and the epithet “aristocratic”
be earned by the writings of a plebeian. Who had been, in this instance,
the inferior from whom M. de Guermantes had picked up “when one goes by
the name”, he had probably not the least idea. But another law of speech
is that, from time to time, as there appear and then vanish diseases of
which nothing more is ever heard, there come into being, no one knows
how, spontaneously perhaps or by an accident like that which introduced
into France a certain weed from America, the seeds of which, caught in
the wool of a travelling rug, fell on a railway embankment, forms of
speech which one hears in the same decade on the lips of people who have
not in any way combined together to use them. So, just as in a certain
year I heard Bloch say, referring to himself, that “the most charming
people, the most brilliant, the best known, the most exclusive had
discovered that there was only one man in Paris whom they felt to be
intelligent, pleasant, whom they could not do without—namely Bloch,” and
heard the same phrase used by countless other young men who did not know
him and varied it only by substituting their own names for his, so I was
often to hear this “when one goes by the name”.
“What can one expect,” the Duke went on, “with the influence he’s come
under; it’s easy to understand.”
“Still it is rather comic,” suggested the Duchess, “when you think of
his mother’s attitude, how she bores us to tears with her Patrie
Française, morning, noon and night.”
“Yes, but there’s not only his mother to be thought of, you can’t humbug
us like that. There’s a damsel, too, a fly-by-night of the worst type;
she has far more influence over him than his mother, and she happens to
be a compatriot of Master Dreyfus. She has passed on her state of mind
to Robert.”
“You may not have heard, Duke, that there is a new word to describe that
sort of mind,” said the librarian, who was Secretary to the
Antirevisionist Committee. “They say ‘mentality’. It means exactly the
same thing, but it has this advantage that nobody knows what you’re
talking about. It is the very latest expression just now, the ‘last
word’ as people say.” Meanwhile, having heard Bloch’s name, he was
watching him question M. de Norpois with misgivings which aroused others
as strong though of a different order in the Marquise. Trembling before
the librarian, and always acting the anti-Dreyfusard in his presence,
she dreaded what he would say were he to find out that she had asked to
her house a Jew more or less affiliated to the “Syndicate”.
“Indeed,” said the Duke, “‘mentality’, you say; I must make a note of
that; I shall use it some day.” This was no figure of speech, the Duke
having a little pocket-book filled with such “references” which he used
to consult before dinner-parties. “I like ‘mentality’. There are a lot
of new words like that which people suddenly start using, but they never
last. I read somewhere the other day that some writer was ‘talentuous’.
You may perhaps know what it means; I don’t. And since then, I’ve never
come across the word again.”
“But ‘mentality’ is more widely used than ‘talentuous’,” the historian
of the Fronde made his way into the conversation. “I am on a Committee
at the Ministry of Education at which I have heard it used several
times, as well as at my Club, the Volney, and indeed at dinner at M.
Emile Ollivier’s.”
“I, who have not the honour to belong to the Ministry of Education,”
replied the Duke with a feigned humility but with a vanity so intense
that his lips could not refrain from curving in a smile, nor his eyes
from casting round his audience a glance sparkling with joy, the
ironical scorn in which made the poor historian blush, “I who have not
the honour to belong to the Ministry of Education,” he repeated,
relishing the sound of his words, “nor to the Volney Club (my only clubs
are the Union and the Jockey—you aren’t in the Jockey, I think, sir?” he
asked the historian, who, blushing a still deeper red, scenting an
insult and failing to understand it, began to tremble in every limb.)
“I, who am not even invited to dine with M. Emile Ollivier, I must
confess that I had never heard ‘mentality’. I’m sure you’re in the same
boat, Argencourt.
“You know,” he went on, “why they can’t produce the proofs of Dreyfus’s
guilt. Apparently it’s because the War Minister’s wife was his mistress,
that’s what people are saying.”
“Ah! I thought it was the Prime Minister’s wife,” said M. d’Argencourt.
“I think you’re all equally tiresome about this wretched case,” said the
Duchesse de Guermantes, who, in the social sphere, was always anxious to
shew that she did not allow herself to be led by anyone. “It can’t make
any difference to me, so far as the Jews are concerned, for the simple
reason that I don’t know any of them, and I intend to remain in that
state of blissful ignorance. But on the other hand I do think it
perfectly intolerable that just because they’re supposed to hold ‘sound’
views and don’t deal with Jewish tradesmen, or have ‘Down with the Jews’
printed on their sunshades, we should have a swarm of Durands and Dubois
and so forth, women we should never have known but for this business,
forced down our throats by Marie-Aynard or Victurnienne. I went to see
Marie-Aynard a couple of days ago. It used to be so nice there. Nowadays
one finds all the people one has spent one’s life trying to avoid, on
the pretext that they’re against Dreyfus, and others of whom you have no
idea who they can be.”
“No; it was the War Minister’s wife; at least, that’s the bedside
rumour,” went on the Duke, who liked to flavour his conversation with
certain expressions which he imagined to be of the old school.
“Personally, of course, as everyone knows, I take just the opposite view
to my cousin Gilbert. I am not feudal like him, I would go about with a
negro if he was a friend of mine, and I shouldn’t care two straws what
anybody thought; still after all you will agree with me that when one
goes by the name of Saint-Loup one doesn’t amuse oneself by running
clean against the rails of public opinion, which has more sense than
Voltaire or even my nephew. Nor does one go in for what I may be allowed
to call these acrobatics of conscience a week before one comes up for a
club. It is a bit stiff, really! No, it is probably that little wench of
his that has put him on his high horse. I expect she told him that he
would be classed among the ‘intellectuals’. The intellectuals, they’re
the very cream of those gentry. It’s given rise, by the way, to a rather
amusing pun, though a very naughty one.”
And the Duke murmured, lowering his voice, for his wife’s and M.
d’Argencourt’s benefit, “Mater Semita,” which had already made its way
into the Jockey Club, for, of all the flying seeds in the world, that to
which are attached the most solid wings, enabling it to be disseminated
at the greatest distance from its parent branch, is still a joke.
“We might ask this gentleman, who has a _nerudite_ air, to explain it to
us,” he went on, indicating the historian. “But it is better not to
repeat it, especially as there’s not a vestige of truth in the
suggestion. I am not so ambitious as my cousin Mirepoix, who claims that
she can trace the descent of her family before Christ to the Tribe of
Levi, and I will undertake to prove that there has never been a drop of
Jewish blood in our family. Still there is no good in our shutting our
eyes to the fact, you may be sure that my dear nephew’s highly original
views are liable to make a considerable stir at Landerneau. Especially
as Fezensac is ill just now, and Duras will be running the election; you
know how he likes to make nuisances,” concluded the Duke, who had never
succeeded in learning the exact meaning of certain phrases, and supposed
“making nuisances” to mean “making difficulties”.
Bloch tried to pin M. de Norpois down on Colonel Picquart.
“There can be no two opinions;” replied M. de Norpois, “his evidence had
to be taken. I am well aware that, by maintaining this attitude, I have
drawn screams of protest from more than one of my colleagues, but to my
mind the Government were bound to let the Colonel speak. One can’t dance
lightly out of a blind alley like that, or if one does there’s always
the risk of falling into a ditch. As for the officer himself, his
statement gave one, at the first hearing, a most excellent impression.
When one saw him, looking so well in that smart Chasseur uniform, come
into court and relate in a perfectly simple and frank tone what he had
seen and what he had deduced, and say: ‘On my honor as a soldier’” (here
M. de Norpois’s voice shook with a faint patriotic throb) “‘such is my
conviction,’ it is impossible to deny that the impression he made was
profound.”
“There; he is a Dreyfusard, there’s not the least doubt of it,” thought
Bloch.
“But where he entirely forfeited all the sympathy that he had managed to
attract was when he was confronted with the registrar, Gribelin. When
one heard that old public servant, a man who had only one answer to
make,” (here M. de Norpois began to accentuate his words with the energy
of his sincere convictions) “when one listened to him, when one saw him
look his superior officer in the face, not afraid to hold his head up to
him, and say to him in a tone that admitted of no response: ‘Colonel,
sir, you know very well that I have never told a lie, you know that at
this moment, as always, I am speaking the truth,’ the wind changed; M.
Picquart might move heaven and earth at the subsequent hearings; he made
a complete fiasco.”
“No; evidently he’s an anti-Dreyfusard; it’s quite obvious,” said Bloch
to himself. “But if he considers Picquart a traitor and a liar, how can
he take his revelations seriously, and quote them as if he found them
charming and believed them to be sincere. And if, on the other hand, he
sees in him an honest man easing his conscience, how can he suppose him
to have been lying when he was confronted with Gribelin?”
“In any case, if this man Dreyfus is innocent,” the Duchess broke in,
“he hasn’t done much to prove it. What idiotic, raving letters he writes
from that island. I don’t know whether M. Esterhazy is any better, but
he does shew some skill in his choice of words, a different tone
altogether. That can’t be very pleasant for the supporters of M.
Dreyfus. What a pity for them there’s no way of exchanging innocents.”
Everybody laughed. “You heard what Oriane said?” the Duc de Guermantes
inquired eagerly of Mme. de Villeparisis. “Yes; I think it most
amusing.” This was not enough for the Duke. “Well, I don’t know, I can’t
say that I thought it amusing; or rather it doesn’t make the slightest
difference to me whether a thing is amusing or not. I don’t care about
wit.” M. d’Argencourt protested. “It is probably because I’ve been a
Member of Parliament, where I have listened to brilliant speeches that
meant absolutely nothing. I learned there to value, more than anything,
logic. That’s probably why they didn’t elect me again. Amusing things
leave me cold.” “Basin, don’t play the heavy father like that, my child,
you know quite well that no one admires wit more than you do.” “Please
let me finish. It is just because I am unmoved by a certain type of
humour, that I am often struck by my wife’s wit. For you will find it
based, as a rule, upon sound observation. She reasons like a man; she
states her case like a writer.”
Possibly the explanation of M. de Norpois’s speaking in this way to
Bloch, as though they had been in agreement, may have lain in the fact
that he himself was so keen an anti-Dreyfusard that, finding the
Government not anti-Dreyfusard enough, he was its enemy just as much as
the Dreyfusards. Perhaps because the object to which he devoted himself
in politics was something more profound, situated on another plane, from
which Dreyfusism appeared as an unimportant modality which did not
deserve the attention of a patriot interested in large questions of
foreign policy. Perhaps, rather, because the maxims of his political
wisdom being applicable only to questions of form, of procedure, of
expediency, they were as powerless to solve questions of fact as in
philosophy pure logic is powerless to tackle the problems of existence;
or else because that very wisdom made him see danger in handling such
subjects and so, in his caution, he preferred to speak only of minor
incidents. But where Bloch made a mistake was in thinking that M. de
Norpois, even had he been less cautious by nature and of a less
exclusively formal cast of mind, could (supposing he would) have told
him the truth as to the part played by Henry, Picquart or du Paty de
Clam, or as to any of the different aspects of the case. The truth,
indeed, as to all these matters Bloch could not doubt that M. de Norpois
knew. How could he fail to know it seeing that he was a friend of all
the Ministers? Naturally, Bloch thought that the truth in politics could
be approximately reconstructed by the most luminous minds, but he
imagined, like the man in the street, that it resided permanently,
beyond the reach of argument and in a material form, in the secret files
of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, who imparted it
to their Cabinet. Now, even when a political truth does take the form of
written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a
radiographic plate on which the layman imagines that the patient’s
disease is inscribed in so many words, when, as a matter of fact, the
plate furnishes simply one piece of material for study, to be combined
with a number of others, which the doctor’s reasoning powers will take
into consideration as a whole and upon them found his diagnosis. So,
too, the truth in politics, when one goes to well-informed men and
imagines that one is about to grasp it, eludes one. Indeed, later on (to
confine ourselves to the Dreyfus case), when so startling an event
occurred as Henry’s confession, followed by his suicide, this fact was
at once interpreted in opposite ways by the Dreyfusard Ministers, and by
Cavaignac and Cuignet who had themselves made the discovery of the
forgery and conducted the examination; still more so among the
Dreyfusard Ministers themselves, men of the same shade of Dreyfusism,
judging not only from the same documents but in the same spirit, the
part played by Henry was explained in two entirely different ways, one
set seeing in him an accomplice of Esterhazy, the others assigning that
part to du Paty de Clam, thus rallying in support of a theory of their
opponent Cuignet and in complete opposition to their supporter Reinach.
All that Bloch could elicit from M. de Norpois was that if it were true
that the Chief of Staff, M. de Boisdeffre, had had a secret
communication sent to M. Rochefort, it was evident that a singularly
regrettable irregularity had occurred.
“You may be quite sure that the War Minister must (_in petto_ at any
rate) be consigning his Chief of Staff to the infernal powers. An
official disclaimer would not have been (to my mind) a work of
supererogation. But the War Minister expresses himself very bluntly on
the matter _inter pocula_. There are certain subjects, moreover, about
which it is highly imprudent to create an agitation over which one
cannot retain control afterwards.”
“But those documents are obviously forged,” put in Bloch.
M. de Norpois made no reply to this, but announced that he did not
approve of the manifestations that were being made by Prince Henri
d’Orléans:
“Besides, they can only ruffle the calm of the pretorium, and encourage
agitations which, looked at from either point of view, would be
deplorable. Certainly we must put a stop to the anti-militarist
conspiracy, but we cannot possibly tolerate, either, a brawl encouraged
by those elements on the Right who instead of serving the patriotic
ideal themselves are hoping to make it serve them. Heaven be praised,
France is not a South American Republic, and the need has not yet been
felt here for a military pronunciamento.”
Bloch could not get him to speak on the question of Dreyfus’s guilt, nor
would he utter any forecast as to the judgment in the civil trial then
proceeding. On the other hand, M. de Norpois seemed only too ready to
indicate the consequences of this judgment.
“If it is a conviction,” he said, “it will probably be quashed, for it
is seldom that, in a case where there has been such a number of
witnesses, there is not some flaw in the procedure which counsel can
raise on appeal. To return to Prince Henri’s outburst, I greatly doubt
whether it has met with his father’s approval.”
“You think Chartres is for Dreyfus?” asked the Duchess with a smile, her
eyes rounded, her cheeks bright, her nose buried in her plate, her whole
manner deliciously scandalised.
“Not at all; I meant only that there runs through the whole family, on
that side, a political sense which we have seen, in the admirable
Princesse Clémentine, carried to its highest power, and which her son,
Prince Ferdinand, has kept as a priceless inheritance. You would never
have found the Prince of Bulgaria clasping Major Esterhazy to his
bosom.”
“He would have preferred a private soldier,” murmured Mme. de
Guermantes, who often met the Bulgarian monarch at dinner at the Prince
de Joinville’s, and had said to him once, when he asked if she was not
envious: “Yes, Sir, of your bracelets.”
“You aren’t going to Mme. de Sagan’s ball this evening?” M. de Norpois
asked Mme. de Villeparisis, to cut short his conversation with Bloch. My
friend had not failed to interest the Ambassador, who told us
afterwards, not without a quaint simplicity, thinking no doubt of the
traces that survived in Bloch’s speech of the neo-Homeric manner which
he had on the whole outgrown: “He is rather amusing, with that way of
speaking, a trifle old fashioned, a trifle solemn. You expect him to
come out with ‘The Learned Sisters’, like Lamartine or Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau. It has become quite uncommon in the youth of the present day,
as it was indeed in the generation before them. We ourselves were
inclined to be romantic.” But however exceptional his companion may have
seemed to him, M. de Norpois decided that the conversation had lasted
long enough.
“No, sir, I don’t go to balls any more,” she replied with a charming
grandmotherly smile. “You’re going, all of you, I suppose? You’re the
right age for that sort of thing,” she added, embracing in a
comprehensive glance M. de Châtellerault, his friend and Bloch. “Still,
I was asked,” she went on, pretending, just for fun, to be flattered by
the distinction. “In fact, they came specially to ask me.” (“They” being
the Princesse de Sagan.)
“I haven’t had a card,” said Bloch, thinking that Mme. de Villeparisis
would at once offer to procure him one, and that Mme. de Sagan would be
glad to see at her ball the friend of a woman whom she had called in
person to invite.
The Marquise made no reply, and Bloch did not press the point, for he
had another, more serious matter to discuss with her, and, with that in
view, had already asked her whether he might call again in a couple of
days. Having heard the two young men say that they had both just
resigned from the Rue Royale Club, which was letting in every Tom, Dick
and Harry, he wished to ask Mme. de Villeparisis to arrange for his
election there.
“Aren’t they rather bad form, rather stuck-up snobs, these Sagans?” he
inquired in a tone of sarcasm.
“Not at all, they’re the best we can do for you in that line,” M.
d’Argencourt, who adopted all the catch-words of Parisian society,
assured him.
“Then,” said Bloch, still half in irony, “I suppose it’s one of the
solemnities, the great social fixtures of the season.”
Mme. de Villeparisis turned merrily to Mme. de Guermantes.
“Tell us, is it a great social solemnity, Mme. de Sagan’s ball?”
“It’s no good asking me,” answered the Duchess, “I have never yet
succeeded in finding out what a social solemnity is. Besides, society
isn’t my strong point.”
“Indeed; I thought it was just the other way,” said Bloch, who supposed
Mme. de Guermantes to be speaking seriously.
He continued, to the desperation of M. de Norpois, to ply him with
questions about the Dreyfus case. The Ambassador declared that, looking
at it from outside, he got the impression from du Paty de Clam of a
somewhat cloudy brain, which had perhaps not been very happily chosen to
conduct that delicate operation, which required so much coolness and
discernment, a judicial inquiry.
“I know that the Socialist Party are crying aloud for his head on a
charger, as well as for the immediate release of the prisoner from the
Devil’s Isle. But I think that we are not yet reduced to the necessity
of passing the Caudine Forks of MM. Gérault-Richard and Company. So far
the whole case has been an utter mystery, I don’t say that on one side
just as much as on the other there has not been some pretty dirty work
to be hushed up. That certain of your client’s more or less
disinterested protectors may have the best intentions I will not attempt
to deny, but you know that heaven is paved with such things,” he added,
with a look of great subtlety. “It is essential that the Government
should give the impression that they are not in the hands of the
factions of the Left, and that they are not going to surrender
themselves, bound hand and foot, at the demand of some pretorian guard
or other, which, believe me, is not the same thing as the Army. It
stands to reason that, should any fresh evidence come to light, a new
trial would be ordered. And what follows from that? Obviously, that to
demand a new trial is to force an open door. When the day comes, the
Government will speak with no uncertain voice or will let fall into
abeyance what is their essential prerogative. Cock and bull stories will
no longer be enough. We must appoint judges to try Dreyfus. And that
will be an easy matter because, although we have acquired the habit, in
our sweet France, where we love to belittle ourselves, of thinking or
letting it be thought that, in order to hear the words Truth and
Justice, it is necessary to cross the Channel, which is very often only
a roundabout way of reaching the Spree, there are judges to be found
outside Berlin. But once the machinery of Government has been set in
motion, will you have ears for the voice of authority? When it bids you
perform your duty as a citizen will you have ears for its voice, will
you take your stand in the ranks of law and order? When its patriotic
appeal sounds, will you have the wisdom not to turn a deaf ear but to
answer: ‘Present!’?”
M. de Norpois put these questions to Bloch with a vehemence which, while
it alarmed my friend, flattered him also; for the Ambassador spoke to
him with the air of one addressing a whole party, questioned him as
though he had been in the confidence of that party and might be held
responsible for the decisions which it would adopt. “Should you fail to
disarm,” M. de Norpois went on, without waiting for Bloch’s collective
answer, “should you, before even the ink had dried on the decree
ordering the fresh trial of the case, obeying it matters not what
insidious word of command, fail, I say, to disarm, and band yourselves,
rather, in a sterile opposition which seems to some minds the _ultima
ratio_ of policy, should you retire to your tents and burn your boats,
you would be doing so to your own damnation. Are you the prisoners of
those who foment disorder? Have you given them pledges?” Bloch was in
doubt how to answer. M. de Norpois gave him no time. “If the negative be
true, as I should like to think, and if you have a little of what seems
to me to be lamentably lacking in certain of your leaders and your
friends, namely political sense, then, on the day when the Criminal
Court assembles, if you do not allow yourselves to be dragooned by the
fishers in troubled waters, you will have won your battle. I do not
guarantee that the whole of the General Staff is going to get away
unscathed, but it will be so much to the good if some of them at least
can save their faces without setting the heather on fire.
“It stands to reason, moreover, that it is with the Government that it
rests to pronounce judgment, and to close the list—already too long—of
unpunished crimes, not certainly at the bidding of Socialist agitators,
nor yet of any obscure military mouthpiece,” he added, looking Bloch
boldly in the face, perhaps with the instinct that leads all
Conservatives to establish support for themselves in the enemy’s camp.
“Government action is not to be dictated by the highest bidder, from
wherever the bid may come. The Government are not, thank heaven, under
the orders of Colonel Driant, nor, at the other end of the scale, under
M. Clemenceau’s. We must curb the professional agitators and prevent
them from raising their heads again. France, the vast majority here in
France, desires only to be allowed to work in orderly conditions. As to
that, there can be no question whatever. But we must not be afraid to
enlighten public opinion; and if a few sheep, of the kind our friend
Rabelais knew so well, should dash headlong into the water, it would be
as well to point out to them that the water in question was troubled,
that it had been troubled deliberately by an agency not within our
borders, in order to conceal the dangers lurking in its depths. And the
Government ought not to give the impression that they are emerging from
their passivity in self-defence when they exercise the right which is
essentially their own, I mean that of setting the wheels of justice in
motion. The Government will accept all your suggestions. If it is proved
that there has been a judicial error, they can be sure of an
overwhelming majority which would give them room to act with freedom.”
“You, sir,” said Bloch, turning to M. d’Argencourt, to whom he had been
made known, with the rest of the party, on that gentleman’s arrival,
“you are a Dreyfusard, of course; they all are, abroad.”
“It is a question that concerns only the French themselves, don’t you
think?” replied M. d’Argencourt with that peculiar form of insolence
which consists in ascribing to the other person an opinion which one
must, obviously, know that he does not hold since he has just expressed
one directly its opposite.
Bloch coloured; M. d’Argencourt smiled, looking round the room, and if
this smile, so long as it was directed at the rest of the company, was
charged with malice at Bloch’s expense, it became tempered with
cordiality when finally it came to rest on the face of my friend, so as
to deprive him of any excuse for annoyance at the words which he had
heard uttered, though those words remained just as cruel. Mme. de
Guermantes murmured something to M. d’Argencourt which I could not hear,
but which must have referred to Bloch’s religion, for there flitted at
that moment over the face of the Duchess that expression to which one’s
fear of being noticed by the person of whom one is speaking gives a
certain hesitancy and unreality, while there is blended with it the
inquisitive, malicious amusement inspired in one by a group of human
beings to which one feels oneself to be fundamentally alien. To retrieve
himself, Bloch turned to the Duc de Châtellerault. “You, sir, as a
Frenchman, you must be aware that people abroad are all Dreyfusards,
although everyone pretends that in France we never know what is going on
abroad. Anyhow, I know I can talk freely to you; Saint-Loup told me so.”
But the young Duke, who felt that every one was turning against Bloch,
and was a coward as people often are in society, employing a mordant and
precious form of wit which he seemed, by a sort of collateral atavism,
to have inherited from M. de Charlus, replied: “You must not ask me,
sir, to discuss the Dreyfus case with you; it is a subject which, on
principle, I never mention except to Japhetics.” Everyone smiled, except
Bloch, not that he was not himself in the habit of making scathing
references to his Jewish origin, to that side of his ancestry which came
from somewhere near Sinai. But instead of one of these epigrams
(doubtless because he had not one ready) the operation of the internal
machine brought to Bloch’s lips something quite different. And we caught
only: “But how on earth did you know? Who told you?” as though he had
been the son of a convict. Whereas, given his name, which had not
exactly a Christian sound, and his face, his surprise argued a certain
simplicity of mind.
What M. de Norpois had said not having completely satisfied him, he went
up to the librarian and asked him whether Mme. de Villeparisis did not
sometimes have in her house M. du Paty de Clam or M. Joseph Reinach. The
librarian made no reply; he was a Nationalist, and never ceased
preaching to the Marquise that the social revolution might break out at
any moment, and that she ought to shew more caution in the choice of her
friends. He asked himself whether Bloch might not be a secret emissary
of the Syndicate, come to collect information, and went off at once to
repeat to Mme. de Villeparisis the questions that Bloch had put to him.
She decided that, at the best, he was ill-bred and might be in a
position to compromise M. de Norpois. Also, she wished to give
satisfaction to the librarian, the only person of whom she went in fear,
by whom she was being indoctrinated, though without any marked success
(every morning he read her M. Judet’s article in the _Petit Journal_).
She decided, therefore, to make it plain to Bloch that he need not come
to the house again, and had no difficulty in finding, among her social
repertory, the scene by which a great lady shews anyone her door, a
scene which does not in any way involve the raised finger and blazing
eyes that people imagine. As Bloch came up to her to say good-bye,
buried in her deep armchair, she seemed only half-awakened from a vague
somnolence. Her sunken eyes gleamed with only the feeble though charming
light of a pair of pearls. Bloch’s farewell, barely pencilling on the
Marquise’s face a languid smile, drew from her not a word, nor did she
offer him her hand. This scene left Bloch in utter bewilderment, but as
he was surrounded by a circle of spectators he felt that it could not be
prolonged without disadvantage to himself, and, to force the Marquise,
the hand which she had made no effort to take he himself thrust out at
her. Mme. de Villeparisis was startled. But doubtless, while still bent
upon giving an immediate satisfaction to the librarian and the
anti-Dreyfusard clan, she wished at the same time to provide for the
future, and so contented herself with letting her eyelids droop over her
closing eyes.
“I believe she’s asleep,” said Bloch to the librarian who, feeling that
he had the support of the Marquise, assumed an indignant air. “Good-bye,
madame,” shouted Bloch.
The old lady made the slight movement with her lips of a dying woman who
wants to open her mouth but whose eye can no longer recognise people.
Then she turned, overflowing with a restored vitality, to M.
d’Argencourt, while Bloch left the room, convinced that she must be
“soft” in the head. Full of curiosity and anxious to have more light
thrown upon so strange an incident, he came to see her again a few days
later. She received him in the most friendly fashion, because she was a
good-natured woman, because the librarian was not there, because she had
in mind the little play which Bloch was going to produce for her, and
finally because she had acted once and for all the little scene of the
indignant lady that she had wished to act, a scene that had been
universally admired and discussed the same evening in various
drawing-rooms, but in a version which had already ceased to bear any
resemblance to the truth.
“You were speaking just now of the _Seven Princesses_, Duchess; you know
(not that it’s anything to be proud of) that the author of that—what
shall I call it?—that production is a compatriot of mine,” said M.
d’Argencourt with a fine scorn blended with satisfaction at knowing more
than anyone else in the room about the author of a work which had been
under discussion. “Yes, he’s a Belgian, by nationality,” he went on.
“Indeed! No, we don’t accuse you of any responsibility for the _Seven
Princesses_. Fortunately for yourself and your compatriots you are not
like the author of that absurdity. I know several charming Belgians,
yourself, your King, who is inclined to be shy, but full of wit, my
Ligne cousins, and heaps of others, but you, I am thankful to say, do
not speak the same language as the author of the _Seven Princesses_.
Besides, if you want to know, it’s not worth talking about, because
really there is absolutely nothing in it. You know the sort of people
who are always trying to seem obscure, and even plan to make themselves
ridiculous to conceal the fact that they have not an idea in their
heads. If there was anything behind it all, I may tell you that I’m not
in the least afraid of a little daring,” she added in a serious tone,
“provided that there is some idea in it. I don’t know if you’ve seen
Borelli’s piece. Some people seem to have been shocked by it, but I must
say, even if they stone me through the streets for saying it,” she went
on, without stopping to think that she ran no very great risk of such a
punishment, “I found it immensely interesting. But the _Seven
Princesses_! It’s all very well, one of them having a fondness for my
nephew, I cannot carry family feeling quite....”
The Duchess broke off abruptly, for a lady came in who was the Comtesse
de Marsantes, Robert’s mother. Mme. de Marsantes was regarded in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain as a superior being, of a goodness, a resignation
that were positively angelic. So I had been told, and had had no
particular reason to feel surprised, not knowing at the same time that
she was the sister of the Duc de Guermantes. Later, I have always been
taken aback, whenever I have learned that such women, melancholy, pure,
victimised, venerated like the ideal forms of saints in church windows,
had flowered from the same genealogical stem as brothers brutal
debauched and vile. Brothers and sisters, when they are closely alike in
features as were the Duc de Guermantes and Mme. de Marsantes, ought (I
felt) to have a single intellect in common, the same heart, as a person
would have who might vary between good and evil moods but in whom one
could not, for all that, expect to find a vast breadth of outlook if he
had a narrow mind, or a sublime abnegation if his heart was hard.
Mme. de Marsantes attended Brunetière’s lectures. She fascinated the
Faubourg Saint-Germain and, by her saintly life, edified it as well. But
the morphological link of handsome nose and piercing gaze led one,
nevertheless, to classify Mme. de Marsantes in the same intellectual and
moral family as her brother the Duke. I could not believe that the mere
fact of her being a woman, and perhaps those of her having had an
unhappy life and won everyone’s sympathy could make a person be so
different from the rest of her family, as in the old romances, where all
the virtues and graces are combined in the sister of wild and lawless
brothers. It seemed to me that nature, less unconventional than the old
poets, must make use almost exclusively of the elements common to the
family, and I was unable to credit her with enough power of invention to
construct, out of materials analogous to those that composed a fool and
clod, a lofty mind without the least strain of clownishness, a saint
unsoiled by any brutality. Mme. de Marsantes was wearing a gown of white
surah embroidered with large palms, on which stood out flowers of a
different material, these being black. This was because, three weeks
earlier, she had lost her cousin, M. de Montmorency, a bereavement which
did not prevent her from paying calls or even from going to small
dinners, but always in mourning. She was a great lady. Atavism had
filled her with the frivolity of generations of life at court, with all
the superficial, rigorous duties that that implies. Mme. de Marsantes
had not had the strength of character to regret for any length of time
the death of her father and mother, but she would not for anything in
the world have appeared in colours in the month following that of a
cousin. She was more than pleasant to me, both because I was Robert’s
friend and because I did not move in the same world as he. This
pleasantness was accompanied by a pretence of shyness, by that sort of
intermittent withdrawal of the voice, the eyes, the mind which a woman
draws back to her like a skirt that has indiscreetly spread, so as not
to take up too much room, to remain stiff and erect even in her
suppleness, as a good upbringing teaches. A good upbringing which must
not, however, be taken too literally, many of these ladies passing very
swiftly into a complete dissolution of morals without ever losing the
almost childlike correctness of their manners. Mme. de Marsantes was a
trifle irritating in conversation since, whenever she had occasion to
speak of a plebeian, as for instance Bergotte or Elstir, she would say,
isolating the word, giving it its full value, intoning it on two
different notes with a modulation peculiar to the Guermantes: “I have
had the _honour_, the great _hon_-our of meeting Monsieur Bergotte,” or
“of making the acquaintance of Monsieur Elstir,” whether that her
hearers might marvel at her humility or from the same tendency that Mme.
de Guermantes shewed to revert to the use of obsolete forms, as a
protest against the slovenly usages of the present day, in which people
never professed themselves sufficiently “honored”. Whichever of these
was the true reason, one felt that when Mme. de Marsantes said: “I have
had the _honour_, the great _hon_-our,” she felt she was playing an
important part and shewing that she could take in the names of
distinguished men as she would have welcomed the men themselves at her
home in the country, had they happened to be in the neighbourhood. On
the other hand, as her family connexion was numerous, as she was devoted
to all her relatives, as, slow in speech and fond of explaining things
at length, she was always trying to make clear the exact degree of
kinship, she found herself (without any desire to create an effect and
without really caring to talk about anyone except touching peasants and
sublime gamekeepers) referring incessantly to all the mediatised houses
in Europe, a failing which people less brilliantly connected than
herself could not forgive, and, if they were at all intellectual,
derided as a sign of stupidity.
In the country, Mme. de Marsantes was adored for the good that she did,
but principally because the purity of a strain of blood into which for
many generations there had flowed only what was greatest in the history
of France had taken from her manner everything that the lower orders
call “manners”, and had given her a perfect simplicity. She never shrank
from kissing a poor woman who was in trouble, and would tell her to come
up to the castle for a cartload of wood. She was, people said, the
perfect Christian. She was determined to find an immensely rich wife for
Robert. Being a great lady means playing the great lady, that is to say,
to a certain extent, playing at simplicity. It is a pastime which costs
an extremely high price, all the more because simplicity charms people
only on condition that they know that you are not bound to live simply,
that is to say that you are very rich. Some one said to me afterwards,
when I had told him of my meeting her: “You saw of course that she must
have been lovely as a young woman.” But true beauty is so individual, so
novel always, that one does not recognize it as beauty. I said to myself
this afternoon only that she had a tiny nose, very blue eyes, a long
neck and a sad expression.
“Listen,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to the Duchesse de Guermantes, “I’m
expecting a woman at any moment whom you don’t wish to know. I thought
I’ld better warn you, to avoid any unpleasantness. But you needn’t be
afraid, I shall never have her here again, only I was obliged to let her
come to-day. It’s Swann’s wife.”
Mme. Swann, seeing the dimensions that the Dreyfus case had begun to
assume, and fearing that her husband’s racial origin might be used
against herself, had besought him never again to allude to the
prisoner’s innocence. When he was not present she went farther and used
to profess the most ardent Nationalism; in doing which she was only
following the example of Mme. Verdurin, in whom a middle-class
anti-semitism, latent hitherto, had awakened and grown to a positive
fury. Mme. Swann had won by this attitude the privilege of membership in
several of the women’s leagues that were beginning to be formed in
anti-semitic society, and had succeeded in making friends with various
members of the aristocracy. It may seem strange that, so far from
following their example, the Duchesse de Guermantes, so close a friend
of Swann, had on the contrary always resisted his desire, which he had
not concealed from her, to introduce to her his wife. But we shall see
in due course that this arose from the peculiar nature of the Duchess,
who held that she was not “bound to” do things, and laid down with
despotic force what had been decided by her social “free will”, which
was extremely arbitrary.
“Thank you for telling me,” said the Duchess. “It would indeed be most
unpleasant. But as I know her by sight I shall be able to get away in
time.”
“I assure you, Oriane, she is really quite nice; an excellent woman,”
said Mme. de Marsantes.
“I have no doubt she is, but I feel no need to assure myself of it.”
“Have you been invited to Lady Israels’s?” Mme de Villeparisis asked the
Duchess, to change the conversation.
“Why, thank heaven, I don’t know the woman,” replied Mme. de Guermantes.
“You must ask Marie-Aynard. She knows her. I never could make out why.”
“I did indeed know her at one time,” said Mme. de Marsantes. “I confess
my faults. But I have decided not to know her any more. It seems she’s
one of the very worst of them, and makes no attempt to conceal it.
Besides, we have all been too trusting, too hospitable. I shall never go
near anyone of that race again. While we had old friends, country
cousins, people of our own flesh and blood on whom we shut our doors, we
threw them open to Jews. And now we see what thanks we get from them.
But I’ve no right to speak; I have an adorable son, and, like a young
fool, he says and does all the maddest things you can imagine,” she went
on, having caught some allusion by M. d’Argencourt to Robert. “But,
talking of Robert, haven’t you seen him?” she asked Mme. de
Villeparisis; “being Saturday, I thought he’ld be coming to Paris on
leave, and in that case he would be sure to pay you a visit.”
As a matter of fact Mme. de Marsantes thought that her son would not
obtain leave that week; but knowing that, even if he did, he would never
dream of coming to see Mme. de Villeparisis, she hoped, by making
herself appear to have expected to find him in the room, to procure his
forgiveness from her susceptible aunt for all the visits that he had
failed to pay her.
“Robert here! But I have never had a single word from him; I don’t think
I’ve seen him since Balbec.”
“He is so busy; he has so much to do,” pleaded Mme. de Marsantes.
A faint smile made Mme. de Guermantes’s eyelashes quiver as she studied
the circle which, with the point of her sunshade, she was tracing on the
carpet. Whenever the Duke had been too openly unfaithful to his wife,
Mme. de Marsantes had always taken up the cudgels against her own
brother on her sister-in-law’s behalf. The latter had a grateful and
bitter memory of this protection, and was not herself seriously shocked
by Robert’s pranks. At this point the door opened again and Robert
himself entered the room.
“Well, talk of the Saint!” said Mme. de Guermantes.
Mme. de Marsantes, who had her back to the door, had not seen her son
come in. When she did catch sight of him, her motherly bosom was
convulsed with joy, as by the beating of a wing, her body half rose from
her seat, her face quivered and she fastened on Robert eyes big with
astonishment:
“What! You’ve come! How delightful! What a surprise!”
“Ah! _Talk of the Saint!_—I see,” cried the Belgian diplomat, with a
shout of laughter.
“Delicious, ain’t it?” came tartly from the Duchess, who hated puns, and
had ventured on this one only with a pretence of making fun of herself.
“Good afternoon, Robert,” she said, “I believe he’s forgotten his aunt.”
They talked for a moment, probably about myself, for as Saint-Loup was
leaving her to join his mother Mme. de Guermantes turned to me:
“Good afternoon; how are you?” was her greeting.
She allowed to rain on me the light of her azure gaze, hesitated for a
moment, unfolded and stretched towards me the stem of her arm, leaned
forward her body which sprang rapidly backwards like a bush that has
been pulled down to the ground and, on being released, returns to its
natural position. Thus she acted under the fire of Saint-Loup’s eyes,
which kept her under observation and were making frantic efforts to
obtain some further concession still from his aunt. Fearing that our
conversation might fail altogether, he joined in, to stimulate it, and
answered for me:
“He’s not very well just now, he gets rather tired; I think he would be
a great deal better, by the way, if he saw you more often, for I can’t
help telling you that he admires you immensely.”
“Oh, but that’s very nice of him,” said Mme. de Guermantes in a
deliberately casual tone, as if I had brought her her cloak. “I am most
flattered.”
“Look, I must go and talk to my mother for a minute; take my chair,”
said Saint-Loup, thus forcing me to sit down next to his aunt.
We are both silent.
“I see you sometimes in the morning,” she said, as though she were
telling me something that I did not know, and I for my part had never
seen her. “It’s so good for one, a walk.”
“Oriane,” began Mme. de Marsantes in a low tone, “you said you were
going on to Mme. de Saint-Ferréol’s; would you be so very kind as to
tell her not to expect me to dinner, I shall stay at home now that I’ve
got Robert. And one other thing, but I hardly like to ask you, if you
would leave word as you pass to tell them to send out at once for a box
of the cigars Robert likes. ‘Corona’, they’re called. I’ve none in the
house.”
Robert came up to us; he had caught only the name of Mme. de
Saint-Ferréol.
“Who in the world is Mme. de Saint-Ferréol?” he inquired, in a surprised
but decisive tone, for he affected a studied ignorance of everything to
do with society.
“But, my dear boy, you know quite well,” said his mother, “She’s
Vermandois’s sister. It was she gave you that nice billiard table you
liked so much.”
“What, she’s Vermandois’s sister, I had no idea of that. Really, my
family are amazing,” he went on, turning so as to include me in the
conversation and adopting unconsciously Bloch’s intonation just as he
borrowed his ideas, “they know the most unheard-of people, people called
Saint-Ferréol” (emphasising the final consonant of each word) “and names
like that; they go to balls, they drive in victorias, they lead a
fabulous existence. It’s prodigious.”
Mme. de Guermantes made in her throat a slight, short, sharp sound, as
of an involuntary laugh which one chokes back, meaning thereby to shew
that she paid just as much tribute as the laws of kinship imposed on her
to her nephew’s wit. A servant came in to say that the Prince von
Faffenheim-Munsterburg-Weinigen had sent word to M. de Norpois that he
was waiting.
“Bring him in, sir,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to the old Ambassador,
who started in quest of the German Minister.
“Stop, sir; do you think I ought to shew him the miniature of the
Empress Charlotte?”
“Why, I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” said the Ambassador in a tone of
conviction, and as though he were envying the fortunate Minister the
favour that was in store for him.
“Oh, I know he’s very _sound_,” said Mme. de Marsantes, “and that is so
rare among foreigners. But I’ve found out all about him. He is
anti-semitism personified.”
The Prince’s name preserved in the boldness with which its opening
syllables were—to borrow an expression from music—attacked, and in the
stammering repetition that scanned them, the impulse, the mannered
simplicity, the heavy delicacies of the Teutonic race, projected like
green boughs over the “heim” of dark blue enamel which glowed with the
mystic light of a Rhenish window behind the pale and finely wrought
gildings of the German eighteenth century. This name included, among the
several names of which it was composed, that of a little German
watering-place to which as a child I had gone with my grandmother, at
the foot of a mountain honoured by the feet of Goethe, from the
vineyards of which we used to drink, at the Kurhof, their illustrious
vintages with elaborate and sonorous names, like the epithets which
Homer applies to his heroes. And so, scarcely had I heard the Prince’s
name spoken than, before I had recalled the watering-place, the name
itself seemed to shrink, to grow rich with humanity, to find large
enough a little place in my memory to which it clung, familiar, earth to
earth, picturesque, savoury, light, with something about it, too, that
was authorised, prescribed. And then, M. de Guermantes, in explaining
who the Prince was, quoted a number of his titles, and I recognised the
name of a village threaded by the river on which, every evening, my cure
finished for the day, I used to go in a boat amid the mosquitoes, and
that of a forest so far away that the doctor would not allow me to make
the excursion to it. And indeed it was comprehensible that the
suzerainty of the lord extended to the surrounding places and associated
afresh in the enumeration of his titles the names which one could read,
close together, upon a map. Thus beneath the visor of the Prince of the
Holy Roman Empire and Knight of Franconia it was the face of a dear and
smiling land, on which had often lingered for me the light of the
six-o’clock sun, that I saw, at any rate before the Prince, Rheingraf
and Elector Palatine, had entered the room. For I speedily learned that
the revenues which he drew from the forest and river, peopled with
gnomes and undines, and from the enchanted mountain on which rose the
ancient Burg that cherished memories of Luther and Lewis the Germanic,
he employed in keeping five Charron motor-cars, a house in Paris and one
in London, a box on Mondays at the Opera and another for the “Tuesdays”
at the “Francais”. He did not seem to me, nor did he seem to regard
himself as different from other men of similar fortune and age who had a
less poetic origin. He had their culture, their ideals, he was proud of
his rank, but purely on account of the advantages it conferred on him,
and had now only one ambition in life, to be elected a Corresponding
Member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which was the
reason of his coming to see Mme. de Villeparisis. If he, whose wife was
a leader of the most exclusive set in Berlin, had begged to be
introduced to the Marquise, it was not the result of any desire on his
part for her acquaintance. Devoured for years past by this ambition to
be elected to the Institute, he had unfortunately never been in a
position to reckon above five the number of Academicians who seemed
prepared to vote for him. He knew that M. de Norpois could by himself
dispose of at least ten others, a number which he was capable, by
skillful negotiations, of increasing still further. And so the Prince,
who had known him in Russia when they were both there as Ambassadors,
had gone to see him and had done everything in his power to win him
over. But in vain might he multiply his friendly overtures, procure for
the Marquis Russian decorations, quote him in articles on foreign
politics; he had had before him an ingrate, a man in whose eyes all
these attentions appeared to count as nothing, who had not advanced the
prospects of his candidature one inch, had not even promised him his own
vote. No doubt M. de Norpois received him with extreme politeness,
indeed begged that he would not put himself out and “take the trouble to
come so far out of his way,” went himself to the Prince’s residence, and
when the Teutonic Knight had launched his: “I should like immensely to
be your colleague,” replied in a tone of deep emotion: “Ah! I should be
most happy!” And no doubt a simpleton, a Dr. Cottard would have said to
himself: “Well, here he is in my house; it was he who insisted on
coming, because he regards me as a more important person than himself;
he tells me that he would be happy to see me in the Academy; words do
have some meaning after all, damn it, probably if he doesn’t offer to
vote for me it is because it hasn’t occurred to him. He lays so much
stress on my great influence; presumably he imagines that larks drop
into my mouth ready roasted, that I have all the support I want, and
that is why he doesn’t offer me his; but I have only got to get him with
his back to the wall, and just say to him quietly: ‘Very well, vote for
me, will you?’ and he will be obliged to do it.”
But Prince von Faffenheim was no simpleton. He was what Dr. Cottard
would have called “a fine diplomat” and he knew that M. de Norpois was
no less fine a one than himself, nor a man who would have failed to
realise without needing to be told that he could confer a favour on a
candidate by voting for him. The Prince, in his Embassies and as Foreign
Minister, had conducted, on his country’s behalf instead of, as in the
present instance, his own, many of those conversations in which one
knows beforehand just how far one is prepared to go and at what point
one will decline to commit oneself. He was not unaware that, in this
diplomatic language, to talk meant to offer. And it was for this reason
that he had arranged for M. de Norpois to receive the Cordon of Saint
Andrew. But if he had had to report to his Government the conversation
which he had subsequently had with M. de Norpois, he would have stated
in his dispatch: “I realised that I had gone the wrong way to work.” For
as soon as he had returned to the subject of the Institute, M. de
Norpois had repeated:
“I should like nothing better; nothing could be better, for my
colleagues. They ought, I consider, to feel genuinely honoured that you
should have thought of them. It is a really interesting candidature, a
little outside our ordinary course. As you know, the Academy is very
conventional, it takes fright at everything which has at all a novel
sound. Personally, I deplore this. How often have I had occasion to say
as much to my colleagues! I cannot be sure, God forgive me, that I did
not even once let the word ‘hide-bound’ escape me,” he added, in an
undertone, with a scandalised smile, almost aside, as in a scene on the
stage, casting at the Prince a rapid, sidelong glance from his blue
eyes, like a veteran actor studying the effect on his audience. “You
understand, Prince, that I should not care to allow a personality so
eminent as yourself to embark on a venture which was hopeless from the
start. So long as my colleagues’ ideas linger so far behind the times, I
consider that the wiser course will be to abstain. But you may rest
assured that if I were ever to discern a mind that was a little more
modern, a little more alive, shewing itself in that college, which is
tending to become a mausoleum, if I could reckon upon any possible
chance of your success, I should be the first to inform you of it.”
“The Cordon was a mistake,” thought the Prince; “the negotiations have
not advanced in the least; that is not what he wanted. I have not yet
laid my hand on the right key.”
This was a kind of reasoning of which M. de Norpois, formed in the same
school as the Prince, would also have been capable. One may mock at the
pedantic silliness with which diplomats of the Norpois type go into
ecstasies over some piece of official wording which is, for all
practical purposes, meaningless. But their childishness has this
compensation; diplomats know that, in the loaded scales which assure
that European or other equilibrium which we call peace, good feeling,
sounding speeches, earnest entreaties weigh very little; and that the
heavy weight, the true determinant consists in something else, in the
possibility which the adversary does (if he is strong enough) or does
not enjoy of satisfying, in exchange for what one oneself wants, a
desire. With this order of truths, which an entirely disinterested
person, such as my grandmother for instance, would not have understood,
M. de Norpois and Prince von Faffenheim had frequently had to deal.
Chargé d’Affaires in countries with which we had been within an ace of
going to war, M. de Norpois, in his anxiety as to the turn which events
were about to take, knew very well that it was not by the word “Peace”,
nor by the word “War” that it would be revealed to him, but by some
other, apparently commonplace word, a word of terror or blessing, which
the diplomat, by the aid of his cipher, would immediately read and to
which, to safeguard the honour of France, he would respond in another
word, quite as commonplace, but one beneath which the Minister of the
enemy nation would at once see written: “War.” Moreover, in accordance
with a time-honoured custom, analogous to that which gave to the first
meeting between two young people promised to one another in marriage the
form of a chance encounter at a performance in the Théâtre du Gymnase,
the dialogue in the course of which destiny was to dictate the word
“War” or the word “Peace” was held, as a rule, not in the ministerial
sanctum but on a bench in a Kurgarten where the Minister and M. de
Norpois went independently to a thermal spring to drink at its source
their little tumblers of some curative water. By a sort of tacit
convention they met at the hour appointed for their cure, began by
taking together a short stroll which, beneath its innocent appearance,
each of the speakers knew to be as tragic as an order for mobilisation.
And so, in a private matter like this nomination for election to the
Institute, the Prince had employed the same system of induction which
had served him in his public career, the same method of reading beneath
superimposed symbols.
And certainly it would be wrong to pretend that my grandmother and the
few who resembled her would have been alone in their failure to
understand this kind of calculation. For one thing, the average human
being, practising a profession the lines of which have been laid down
for him from the start, comes near, by his want of intuition, to the
ignorance which my grandmother owed to her lofty disinterestedness.
Often one has to come down to “kept” persons, male or female, before one
finds the hidden spring of actions or words apparently of the most
innocent nature in self-interest, in the bare necessity to keep alive.
What man does not know that when a woman whom he is going to pay says to
him: “Don’t let’s talk about money,” the speech must be regarded as what
is called in music “a silent beat” and that if, later on, she declares:
“You are far too much trouble; you are always keeping things from me;
I’ve done with you,” he must interpret this as: “Some one else has been
offering her more.” And yet this is only the language of a lady of easy
virtue, not so far removed from the ladies in society. The _apache_
furnishes more striking examples. But M. de Norpois and the German
Prince, if _apaches_ and their ways were unknown to them, had been
accustomed to living on the same plane as nations, which are also,
despite their greatness, creatures of selfishness and cunning, kept in
order only by force, by consideration of their material interests which
may drive them to murder, a murder that is often symbolic also, since
its mere hesitation or refusal to fight may spell for a nation the word
“Perish”. But inasmuch as all this is not set forth in Yellow and
otherwise coloured Books, the people as a whole are naturally pacific;
should they be warlike, it is instinctively, from hatred, from a sense
of injury, not for the reasons which have made up the mind of their
ruler, on the advice of his Norpois.
The following winter the Prince was seriously ill; he recovered, but his
heart was permanently affected.
“The devil!” he said to himself, “I can’t afford to lose any time over
the Institute. If I wait too long, I may be dead before they elect me.
That really would be unpleasant.”
He composed, on the foreign politics of the last twenty years, an essay
for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he referred more than once,
and in the most flattering terms, to M. de Norpois. The French diplomat
called upon him to thank him. He added that he did not know how to
express his gratitude. The Prince said to himself, like a man who has
been trying to fit various keys into a stubborn lock: “Still not the
right one!” and, feeling somewhat out of breath as he shewed M. de
Norpois to the door, thought: “Damn it, these fellows will see me in my
grave before letting me in. We must hurry up.”
That evening, he met M. de Norpois again at the Opera.
“My dear Ambassador,” he began to him, “you told me to-day that you did
not know what you could do to prove your gratitude; it was a great
exaggeration, for you owe me none, but I am going to be so indelicate as
to take you at your word.”
M. de Norpois had no less high an esteem for the Prince’s tact than the
Prince had for his. He understood at once that it was not a request that
Prince von Faffenheim was about to present to him, but an offer, and
with a radiant affability made ready to hear it.
“Well now, you will think me highly indiscreet. There are two people to
whom I am greatly attached—in quite different ways, as you will
understand in a moment—two people both of whom have recently settled in
Paris, where they intend to remain for the future: my wife, and the
Grand Duchess John. They are thinking of giving a few dinners, chiefly
in honour of the King and Queen of England, and what they would have
liked more than anything in the world would have been to be able to
offer their guests the company of a person for whom, without knowing
her, they both of them feel a great admiration. I confess that I did not
know how I was going to gratify their wish when I learned just now, by
the most extraordinary accident, that you were a friend of this person.
I know that she lives a most retired life, and sees only a very few
people—‘happy few,’ as Stendhal would say—but if you were to give me
your backing, with the generosity that you have always shewn me, I am
sure that she would allow you to present me to her and to convey to her
the wishes of both the Grand Duchess and the Princess. Perhaps she would
consent to dine with us, when the Queen of England comes, and then (one
never knows) if we don’t bore her too much, to spend the Easter holidays
with us at Beaulieu, at the Grand Duchess John’s. The person I allude to
is called the Marquise de Villeparisis. I confess that the hope of
becoming one of the frequenters of such a school of wit would console
me, would make me contemplate without regret the abandoning of my
attempt at the Institute. For in her house, too, I understand, there is
a regular flow of intellect and brilliant talk.”
With an inexpressible sense of pleasure the Prince felt that the lock no
longer resisted, and that at last the key was turning.
“Such an alternative is wholly unnecessary, my dear Prince,” replied M.
de Norpois; “nothing is more in harmony with the Institute than the
house you speak of, which is a regular hotbed of Academicians. I shall
convey your request to Mme. la Marquise de Villeparisis: she will
undoubtedly be flattered. As for her dining with you, she goes out very
little, and that will perhaps be more difficult to arrange. But I shall
present you to her and you can plead your cause in person. You must on
no account give up the Academy; to-morrow fortnight, as it happens, I
shall be having luncheon, before going on with him to an important
meeting, at Leroy-Beaulieu’s, without whom nobody can be elected; I had
already allowed myself in conversation with him to let fall your name,
with which, naturally, he was perfectly familiar. He raised certain
objections. But it so happens that he requires the support of my group
at the next election, and I fully intend to return to the charge; I
shall tell him quite openly of the wholly cordial ties that unite us, I
shall not conceal from him that, if you were to stand, I should ask all
my friends to vote for you,” (here the Prince breathed a deep sigh of
relief) “and he knows that I have friends. I consider that if I were to
succeed in obtaining his assistance your chances would become very
strong. Come that evening, at six, to Mme. de Villeparisis’s; I will
introduce you to her and I can give you an account then of my
conversation with him.”
Thus it was that Prince von Faffenheim had been led to call upon Mme. de
Villeparisis. My profound disillusionment occurred when he spoke. It had
never struck me that, if an epoch in history has features both
particular and general which are stronger than those of a nationality,
so that in a biographical dictionary with illustrations, which go so far
as to include an authentic portrait of Minerva, Leibniz with his wig and
ruff differs little from Marivaux or Samuel Bernard, a nationality has
particular features stronger than those of a caste. In the present
instance these were rendered before me not by a discourse in which I had
expected, before I saw him, to hear the rustling of the elves and the
dance of the kobolds, but by a transposition which certified no less
plainly that poetic origin: the fact that, as he bowed, short, red,
corpulent, over the hand of Mme. de Villeparisis, the Rheingraf said to
her: “Aow to you too, Matame la Marquise,” in the accent of an Alsatian
porter.
“Won’t you let me give you a cup of tea or a little of this cake; it is
so good?” Mme. de Guermantes asked me, anxious to have shewn herself as
friendly as possible. “I do the honours in this house just as if it was
mine,” she explained in an ironical tone which gave a slightly guttural
sound to her voice, as though she were trying to stifle a hoarse laugh.
“Sir,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to M. de Norpois, “you won’t forget
that you have something to say to the Prince about the Academy?”
Mme. de Guermantes lowered her eyes and gave a semicircular turn to her
wrist to look at the time.
“Gracious! I must fly at once if I’m to get to Mme. de Saint-Ferréol’s,
and I’m dining with Mme. Leroi.”
And she rose without bidding me good-bye. She had just caught sight of
Mme. Swann, who appeared considerably embarrassed at finding me in the
room. She remembered, doubtless, that she had been the first to assure
me that she was convinced of Dreyfus’s innocence.
“I don’t want my mother to introduce me to Mme. Swann,” Saint-Loup said
to me. “She’s an ex-whore. Her husband’s a Jew, and she comes here to
pose as a Nationalist. Hallo, here’s uncle Palamède.”
The arrival of Mme. Swann had a special interest for me, due to an
incident which had occurred a few days earlier and which I am obliged to
record on account of the consequences which it was to have at a much
later date, as the reader will learn in due course. Well, a few days
before this visit to Mme. de Villeparisis, I had myself received a
visitor whom I little expected, namely Charles Morel, the son (though I
had never heard of his existence) of my great-uncle’s old servant. This
great-uncle (he in whose house I had met the lady in pink) had died the
year before. His servant had more than once expressed his intention of
coming to see me; I had no idea of the object of his visit, but should
have been glad to see him for I had learned from Françoise that he had a
genuine veneration for my uncle’s memory and made a pilgrimage regularly
to the cemetery in which he was buried. But, being obliged, for reasons
of health, to retire to his home in the country, where he expected to
remain for some time, he delegated the duty to his son. I was surprised
to see come into my room a handsome young fellow of eighteen, dressed
with expensive rather than good taste, but looking, all the same, like
anything in the world except the son of a gentleman’s servant. He made a
point, moreover, at the start of our conversation, of severing all
connexion with the domestic class from which he sprang, by informing me,
with a smile of satisfaction, that he had won the first prize at the
Conservatoire. The object of his visit to me was as follows: his father,
when going through the effects of my uncle Adolphe, had set aside some
which, he felt, could not very well be sent to my parents but were at
the same time of a nature likely to interest a young man of my age.
These were the photographs of the famous actresses, the notorious
courtesans whom my uncle had known, the last fading pictures of that gay
life of a man about town which he divided by a watertight compartment
from his family life. While young Morel was shewing them to me, I
noticed that he addressed me as though he were speaking to an equal. He
derived from saying “you” to me as often, and “sir” as seldom as
possible the pleasure natural in one whose father had never ventured,
when addressing my parents, upon anything but the third person. Almost
all these photographs bore an inscription such as: “To my best friend.”
One actress, less grateful and more circumspect than the rest, had
written: “To the best of friends,” which enabled her (so I was assured)
to say afterwards that my uncle was in no sense and had never been her
best friend but was merely the friend who had done the most little
services for her, the friend she made use of, a good, kind man, in other
words an old fool. In vain might young Morel seek to divest himself of
his lowly origin, one felt that the shade of my uncle Adolphe, venerable
and gigantic in the eyes of the old servant, had never ceased to hover,
almost a holy vision, over the childhood and boyhood of the son. While I
was turning over the photographs Charles Morel examined my room. And as
I was looking for some place in which I might keep them, “How is it,” he
asked me (in a tone in which the reproach had no need to find
expression, so implicit was it in the words themselves), “that I don’t
see a single photograph of your uncle in your room?” I felt the blood
rise to my cheeks and stammered: “Why, I don’t believe I have such a
thing.” “What, you haven’t one photograph of your uncle Adolphe, who was
so devoted to you! I will send you one of my governor’s—he has
quantities of them—and I hope you will set it up in the place of honour
above that chest of drawers, which came to you from your uncle.” It is
true that, as I had not even a photograph of my father or mother in my
room, there was nothing so very shocking in there not being one of my
uncle Adolphe. But it was easy enough to see that for old Morel, who had
trained his son in the same way of thinking, my uncle was the important
person in the family, my parents only reflecting a diminished light from
his. I was in higher favour, because my uncle used constantly to say
that I was going to turn out a sort of Racine, or Vaulabelle, and Morel
regarded me almost as an adopted son, as a child by election of my
uncle. I soon discovered that this young man was extremely “pushing”.
Thus at this first meeting he asked me, being something of a composer as
well and capable of setting short poems to music, whether I knew any
poet who had a good position in society. I mentioned one. He did not
know the work of this poet and had never heard his name, of which he
made a note. Well, I found out that shortly afterwards he wrote to the
poet telling him that, a fanatical admirer of his work, he, Morel, had
composed a musical setting for one of his sonnets and would be grateful
if the author would arrange for its performance at the Comtesse
so-and-so’s. This was going a little too fast, and exposing his hand.
The poet, taking offence, made no reply.
For the rest, Charles Morel seemed to have, besides his ambition, a
strong leaning towards more concrete realities. He had noticed, as he
came through the courtyard, Jupien’s niece at work upon a waistcoat, and
although he explained to me only that he happened to want a fancy
waistcoat at that very moment, I felt that the girl had made a vivid
impression on him. He had no hesitation about asking me to come
downstairs and introduce him to her, “but not as a connexion of your
family, you follow me, I rely on your discretion not to drag in my
father, say just a distinguished artist of your acquaintance, you know
how important it is to make a good impression on tradespeople.” Albeit
he had suggested to me that, not knowing him well enough to call him, he
quite realised, “dear friend,” I might address him, before the girl, in
some such terms as “not dear master, of course, ... although ... well,
if you like, dear distinguished artist,” once in the shop, I avoided
“qualifying” him, as Saint-Simon would have expressed it, and contented
myself with reiterating his “you”. He picked out from several patterns
of velvet one of the brightest red imaginable and so loud that, for all
his bad taste, he was never able to wear the waistcoat when it was made.
The girl settled down to work again with her two “apprentices”, but it
struck me that the impression had been mutual, and that Charles Morel,
whom she regarded as of her own “station” (only smarter and richer), had
proved singularly attractive to her. As I had been greatly surprised to
find among the photographs which his father had sent me one of the
portrait of Miss Sacripant (otherwise Odette) by Elstir, I said to
Charles Morel as I went with him to the outer gate: “I don’t suppose you
can tell me, but did my uncle know this lady well? I don’t see at what
stage in his life I can fit her in exactly; and it interests me, because
of M. Swann....” “Why, if I wasn’t forgetting to tell you that my father
asked me specially to draw your attention to that lady’s picture. As a
matter of fact, she was ‘lunching’ with your uncle the last time you
ever saw him. My father was in two minds whether to let you in. It seems
you made a great impression on the wench, and she hoped to see more of
you. But just at that time there was some trouble in the family, by what
my father tells me, and you never set eyes on your uncle again.” He
broke off with a smile of farewell, across the courtyard, at Jupien’s
niece. She was watching him and admiring, no doubt, his thin face and
regular features, his fair hair and sparkling eyes. I, as I gave him my
hand, was thinking of Mme. Swann and saying to myself with amazement, so
far apart, so different were they in my memory, that I should have
henceforth to identify her with the “Lady in pink.”
M. de Charlus was not long in taking his place by the side of Mme.
Swann. At every social gathering at which he appeared and, contemptuous
towards the men, courted by the women, promptly attached himself to the
smartest of the latter, whose garments he seemed almost to put on as an
ornament to his own, the Baron’s frock coat or swallowtails made one
think of a portrait by some great painter of a man dressed in black but
having by his side, thrown over a chair, the brilliantly coloured cloak
which he is about to wear at some costume ball. This partnership,
generally with some royal lady, secured for M. de Charlus various
privileges which he liked to enjoy. For instance, one result of it was
that his hostesses, at theatricals or concerts, allowed the Baron alone
to have a front seat, in a row of ladies, while the rest of the men were
crowded together at the back of the room. And then besides, completely
absorbed, it seemed, in repeating, at the top of his voice, amusing
stories to the enraptured lady, M. de Charlus was dispensed from the
necessity of going to shake hands with any of the others, was set free,
in other words, from all social duties. Behind the scented barrier in
which the beauty of his choice enclosed him, he was isolated amid a
crowded drawing-room, as, in a crowded theatre or concert-hall, behind
the rampart of a box; and when anyone came up to greet him, through, so
to speak, the beauty of his companion, it was permissible for him to
reply quite curtly and without interrupting his business of conversation
with a lady. Certainly Mme. Swann was scarcely of the rank of the people
with whom he liked thus to flaunt himself. But he professed admiration
for her, friendship for Swann, he knew that she would be flattered by
his attentions and was himself flattered at being compromised by the
prettiest woman in the room.