distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on
those days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with,
but at once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if
Eulalie were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the
rapture of waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never
cease from looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of
her symptoms in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door
at the very end of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would
almost make her ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of
nothing else than this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended
Françoise would become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that
she might go upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever
from the day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the
proud hour of noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which
it blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown,
would long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which
too had come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still
be found seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down
by the heat of the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon
the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and
biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us,
Françoise would add--as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest
of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and
her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare,
like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals
in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the
seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill, because the fish-woman
had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty
in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she
had never done them for us in that way before; a roast leg of mutton,
because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be plenty of time
for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner; spinach,
by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to get;
gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first
to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two
years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an
almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy
loaf, because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when all
these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but
dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such
things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the
hand of Françoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an
'occasional piece' of music, into which she had poured the whole of her
talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I
have finished; I am not hungry," would at once have been lowered to the
level of the Philistines who, when an artist makes them a present of one
of his works, examine its weight and material, whereas what is of value
is the creator's intention and his signature. To have left even the
tiniest morsel in the dish would have shewn as much discourtesy as to
rise and leave a concert hall while the 'piece' was still being played,
and under the composer's very eyes.
At length my mother would say to me: "Now, don't stay here all day;
you can go up to your room if you are too hot outside, but get a little
fresh air first; don't start reading immediately after your food."
And I would go and sit down beside the pump and its trough, ornamented
here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled
upon a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender,
allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a
lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by
a service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected
soil rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and
apparently a separate building, my aunt's back-kitchen. One could see
its red-tiled floor gleaming like porphyry. It seemed not so much the
cave of Françoise as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing
with the offerings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come
sometimes from distant villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of
their fields. And its roof was always surmounted by the cooing of a
dove.
In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred grove which
surrounded this temple, for, before going upstairs to read, I would
steal into the little sitting-room which my uncle Adolphe, a brother of
my grandfather and an old soldier who had retired from the service as a
major, used to occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the sun
which seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit that vague and
yet fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-air and an old-fashioned
kind of existence, which sets and keeps the nostrils dreaming when one
goes into a disused gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into
my uncle Adolphe's room, since he no longer came to Combray on account
of a quarrel which had arisen between him and my family, by my fault,
and in the following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris,
I used to be sent to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon,
wearing a plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a
working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would complain
that I had not been to see him for a long time; that he was being
neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a tangerine, and we would
cross a room in which no one ever sat, whose fire was never lighted,
whose walls were picked out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted
blue in imitation of the sky, and its furniture upholstered in satin, as
at my grandparents', only yellow; then we would enter what he called his
'study,' a room whose walls were hung with prints which shewed, against
a dark background, a plump and rosy goddess driving a car, or standing
upon a globe, or wearing a star on her brow; pictures which were popular
under the Second Empire because there was thought to be something about
them that suggested Pompeii, which were then generally despised, and
which now people are beginning to collect again for one single and
consistent reason (despite any others which they may advance), namely,
that they suggest the Second Empire. And there I would stay with my
uncle until his man came, with a message from the coachman, to ask him
at what time he would like the carriage. My uncle would then be lost
in meditation, while his astonished servant stood there, not daring to
disturb him by the least movement, wondering and waiting for his
answer, which never varied. For in the end, after a supreme crisis of
hesitation, my uncle would utter, infallibly, the words: "A quarter past
two," which the servant would echo with amazement, but without disputing
them: "A quarter past two! Very good, sir... I will go and tell him...."
At this date I was a lover of the theatre: a Platonic lover, of
necessity, since my parents had not yet allowed me to enter one, and
so incorrect was the picture I drew for myself of the pleasures to be
enjoyed there that I almost believed that each of the spectators looked,
as into a stereoscope, upon a stage and scenery which existed for
himself alone, though closely resembling the thousand other spectacles
presented to the rest of the audience individually.
Every morning I would hasten to the Moriss column to see what new plays
it announced. Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the
dreams with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took
their form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the
title of the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and
wrinkled with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless
it were such strange titles as the _Testament de César Girodot, or
Oedipe-Roi_, inscribed not on the green bills of the Opéra-Comique, but
on the wine-coloured bills of the Comédie-Française, nothing seemed
to me to differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of
the _Diamants de la Couronne_ than the sleek, mysterious satin of the
_Domino Noir_; and since my parents had told me that, for my first visit
to the theatre, I should have to choose between these two pieces, I
would study exhaustively and in turn the title of one and the title
of the other (for those were all that I knew of either), attempting to
snatch from each a foretaste of the pleasure which it offered me, and to
compare this pleasure with that latent in the other title, until in the
end I had shewn myself such vivid, such compelling pictures of, on
the one hand, a play of dazzling arrogance, and on the other a gentle,
velvety play, that I was as little capable of deciding which play I
should prefer to see as if, at the dinner-table, they had obliged me to
choose between _rice à l'Impératrice_ and the famous cream of chocolate.
All my conversations with my playfellows bore upon actors, whose art,
although as yet I had no experience of it, was the first of all its
numberless forms in which Art itself allowed me to anticipate its
enjoyment. Between one actor's tricks of intonation and inflection and
another's, the most trifling differences would strike me as being of an
incalculable importance. And from what I had been told of them I would
arrange them in the order of their talent in lists which I used to
murmur to myself all day long: lists which in the end became petrified
in my brain and were a source of annoyance to it, being irremovable.
And later, in my schooldays, whenever I ventured in class, when the
master's head was turned, to communicate with some new friend, I would
always begin by asking him whether he had begun yet to go to theatres,
and if he agreed that our greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second
Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron,
or Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of
Coquelin, forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in
which it moved upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which
the name of Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip
down to fourth, would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of
budding and blossoming life.
But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of
Maubant, coming out one afternoon from the Théâtre-Français, had plunged
me in the throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the
name of a 'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more,
seen through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the
hair over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who,
I would think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting
disturbance, a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her
private life.
I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah
Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was
interested in them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and
also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses
in my mind. He used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to
see him on certain days only, that was because on the other days ladies
might come whom his family could not very well have met. So we at least
thought; as for my uncle, his fatal readiness to pay pretty widows (who
had perhaps never been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding
titles were probably no more than _noms de guerre_) the compliment of
presenting them to my grandmother or even of presenting to them some
of our family jewels, had already embroiled him more than once with
my grandfather. Often, if the name of some actress were mentioned in
conversation, I would hear my father say, with a smile, to my mother:
"One of your uncle's friends," and I would think of the weary novitiate
through which, perhaps for years on end, a grown man, even a man of real
importance, might have to pass, waiting on the doorstep of some such
lady, while she refused to answer his letters and made her hall-porter
drive him away; and imagine that my uncle was able to dispense a little
jackanapes like myself from all these sufferings by introducing me in
his own home to the actress, unapproachable by all the world, but for
him an intimate friend.
And so--on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my
uncle--one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I
took advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier
than usual; I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on
their column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied,
I ran all the way to his house. I noticed before his door a carriage and
pair, with red carnations on the horses' blinkers and in the coachman's
buttonhole. As I climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a
woman's voice, and, as soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of
shutting doors. The man-servant who let me in appeared embarrassed, and
said that my uncle was extremely busy and probably could not see me; he
went in, however, to announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard
before said: "Oh, yes! Do let him come in; just for a moment; it will be
so amusing. Is that his photograph there, on your desk? And his mother
(your niece, isn't she?) beside it? The image of her, isn't he? I should
so like to see the little chap, just for a second."
I could hear my uncle grumbling and growing angry; finally the
manservant told me to come in.
On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my
uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him,
in a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat,
sat a young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty
whether I ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush,
and not daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be
obliged to speak to her, I hurried across to kiss my uncle. She looked
at me and smiled; my uncle said "My nephew!" without telling her my name
or telling me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with
my grandfather, he had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any
association of his family with this other class of acquaintance.
"How like his mother he is," said the lady.
"But you have never seen my niece, except in photographs," my uncle
broke in quickly, with a note of anger.
"I beg your pardon, dear friend, I passed her on the staircase last year
when you were so ill. It is true I only saw her for a moment, and your
staircase is rather dark; but I saw well enough to see how lovely she
was. This young gentleman has her beautiful eyes, and also this," she
went on, tracing a line with one finger across the lower part of her
forehead. "Tell me," she asked my uncle, "is your niece Mme.----; is her
name the same as yours?"
"He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
over, and also like my poor mother."
"I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her
head slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it
was just after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."
I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way
different from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at
home, especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I
went every New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's
friend had the same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly
manner. I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance
which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical
expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead.
I had difficulty in believing that this was one of 'those women,' and
certainly I should never have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I
not seen the carriage and pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had
I not been aware, too, that my uncle knew only the very best of them.
But I asked myself how the millionaire who gave her her carriage and her
flat and her jewels could find any pleasure in flinging his money away
upon a woman who had so simple and respectable an appearance. And yet,
when I thought of what her life must be like, its immorality disturbed
me more, perhaps, than if it had stood before me in some concrete and
recognisable form, by its secrecy and invisibility, like the plot of a
novel, the hidden truth of a scandal which had driven out of the home
of her middle-class parents and dedicated to the service of all mankind
which had brought to the flowering-point of her beauty, had raised
to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose features, the
intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already knew, made me
regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good family, her who
was no longer of a family at all.
We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.
"No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
the Grand Duke sends me. I tell him that they make you jealous." And
she drew from a case cigarettes covered with inscriptions in gold, in
a foreign language. "Why, yes," she began again suddenly. "Of course I
have met this young man's father with you. Isn't he your nephew? How on
earth could I have forgotten? He was so nice, so charming to me," she
went on, modestly and with feeling. But when I thought to myself what
must actually have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been
so charming), I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked,
as though at some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the
excessive recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality.
It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part
played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote
all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of
sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise
the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame
of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the
fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched
and ill-polished lives of men. And just as this one filled the
smoking-room, where my uncle was entertaining her in his alpaca coat,
with her charming person, her dress of pink silk, her pearls, and the
refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke, so, in the same
way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had worked it up
delicately, given it a 'turn,' a precious title, set in it the gem of a
glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended of humility
and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a jewel, a work
of art, into something altogether charming.
"Look here, my boy, it is time you went away," said my uncle.
I rose; I could scarcely resist a desire to kiss the hand of the lady
in pink, but I felt that to do so would require as much audacity as a
forcible abduction of her. My heart beat loud while I counted out to
myself "Shall I do it, shall I not?" and then I ceased to ask myself
what I ought to do so as at least to do something. Blindly, hotly,
madly, flinging aside all the reasons I had just found to support such
action, I seized and raised to my lips the hand she held out to me.
"Isn't he delicious! Quite a ladies' man already; he takes after his
uncle. He'll be a perfect 'gentleman,'" she went on, setting her teeth
so as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. "Couldn't he come
to me some day for 'a cup of tea,' as our friends across the channel
say; he need only send me a 'blue' in the morning?"
I had not the least idea of what a 'blue' might be. I did not understand
half the words which the lady used, but my fear lest there should be
concealed in them some question which it would be impolite in me not to
answer kept me from withdrawing my close attention from them, and I was
beginning to feel extremely tired.
"No, no; it is impossible," said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders. "He
is kept busy at home all day; he has plenty of work to do. He brings
back all the prizes from his school," he added in a lower tone, so that
I should not hear this falsehood and interrupt with a contradiction.
"You can't tell; he may turn out a little Victor Hugo, a kind of
Vaulabelle, don't you know."
"Oh, I love artistic people," replied the lady in pink; "there is no
one like them for understanding women. Them, and really nice men like
yourself. But please forgive my ignorance. Who, what is Vaulabelle? Is
it those gilt books in the little glass case in your drawing-room? You
know you promised to lend them to me; I will take great care of them."
My uncle, who hated lending people books, said nothing, and ushered me
out into the hall. Madly in love with the lady in pink, I covered my
old uncle's tobacco-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, and while he,
awkwardly enough, gave me to understand (without actually saying) that
he would rather I did not tell my parents about this visit, I assured
him, with tears in my eyes, that his kindness had made so strong an
impression upon me that some day I would most certainly find a way of
expressing my gratitude. So strong an impression had it made upon me
that two hours later, after a string of mysterious utterances which did
not strike me as giving my parents a sufficiently clear idea of the new
importance with which I had been invested, I found it simpler to let
them have a full account, omitting no detail, of the visit I had paid
that afternoon. In doing this I had no thought of causing my uncle any
unpleasantness. How could I have thought such a thing, since I did not
wish it? And I could not suppose that my parents would see any harm in
a visit in which I myself saw none. Every day of our lives does not
some friend or other ask us to make his apologies, without fail, to some
woman to whom he has been prevented from writing; and do not we forget
to do so, feeling that this woman cannot attach much importance to a
silence which has none for ourselves? I imagined, like everyone else,
that the brains of other people were lifeless and submissive receptacles
with no power of specific reaction to any stimulus which might be
applied to them; and I had not the least doubt that when I deposited in
the minds of my parents the news of the acquaintance I had made at my
uncle's I should at the same time transmit to them the kindly judgment
I myself had based on the introduction. Unfortunately my parents had
recourse to principles entirely different from those which I suggested
they should adopt when they came to form their estimate of my uncle's
conduct. My father and grandfather had 'words' with him of a violent
order; as I learned indirectly. A few days later, passing my uncle in
the street as he drove by in an open carriage, Î felt at once all the
grief, the gratitude, the remorse which I should have liked to convey to
him. Beside the immensity of these emotions I considered that merely to
raise my hat to him would be incongruous and petty, and might make
him think that I regarded myself as bound to shew him no more than the
commonest form of courtesy. I decided to abstain from so inadequate a
gesture, and turned my head away. My uncle thought that, in doing so I
was obeying my parents' orders; he never forgave them; and though he
did not die until many years later, not one of us ever set eyes on him
again.