because I couldn't see you."
Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who
declined it with:
"Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn't matter in the least where
I sit." And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the
simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: "There
now, that hassock, that's all I want. It will make me keep my back
straight. Oh! Good heavens, I'm making a noise again; they'll be telling
you to have me 'chucked out'."
Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the
music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments
about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every
other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him,
which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told
that a young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously,
trying to catch her hostess's eye so as to flash a token of her
gratitude for the other's having 'thought of her' in connection with so
delightful an entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm
than Mme. de Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she
followed the flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist's
fate but the piano's, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each
_fortissimo_, threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to
spill wax upon the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer,
and, running up the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood,
flung herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her
hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished,
and the pianist rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn
by this young woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her
and the pianist which resulted from it, produced an impression that was
favourable on the whole.
"Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?" asked General de
Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her
for a moment. "Odd, wasn't it? Is she one of the performers?"
"No, she's a little Mme. de Cambremer," replied the Princess carelessly,
and then, with more animation: "I am only repeating what I heard just
now, myself; I haven't the faintest notion who said it, it was some one
behind me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in
the country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be
'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly
'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've
no idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose
they do with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's
parties? She must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs
and the food. 'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're
rather splendid, General. But can she really have the courage to hire
the same 'supers' every week? It isn't possible!"
"Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too," protested the
General.
"I see no objection to its being old," the Princess answered dryly, "but
whatever else it is it's not euphonious," she went on, isolating the
word euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation
to which the Guermantes set were addicted.
"You think not, eh! She's a regular little peach, though," said the
General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. "Don't you
agree with me, Princess?"
"She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman,
that's not very nice--for I don't suppose she's my generation," replied
Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to Gallardon
and Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was still
gazing at Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards the
lady, half wishing to oblige the General: "Not very nice... for her
husband! I am sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract
you so much; I might have introduced you to her," said the Princess,
who, if she had known the young woman, would most probably have done
nothing of the sort. "And now I must say good night, because one of
my friends is having a birthday party, and I must go and wish her many
happy returns," she explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the
fashionable gathering to which she was going to the simple proportions
of a ceremony which would be boring in the extreme, but at which she was
obliged to be present, and there would be something touching about her
appearance. "Besides, I must pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's
gone to see those friends of his--you know them too, I'm sure,--who are
called after a bridge--oh, yes, the Iénas."
"It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!"
said the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went
on, wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying
a fresh dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess
instinctively looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's
not the same thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine
of its kind; they were people who really did fight like heroes."
"But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented,
though with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see
this Princesse d'Iéna, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because
I don't know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not
what you think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face
against! Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face
against them?" she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that,
ever since the day upon which the Prince des Laumes had married his
fascinating cousin, he had been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow,
it isn't that at all. They're people he has known for ever so long, they
do him very well, and that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell
you what he's told me about their house; it's quite enough. Can you
imagine it, all their furniture is 'Empire'!"
"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
grandparents."
"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say?
I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that
hideous style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like
bath-taps!"
"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough
from the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be
beautiful ... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that
myself, that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in
the attics at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all,
that's not the point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even
go to see them among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them,
but--I don't know them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a
little girl, that it was not polite to call on people one didn't know."
She assumed a tone of childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what
I was taught to do. Can't you see those good people, with a totally
strange woman bursting into their house? Why, I might get a most hostile
reception."
And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
"My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
"No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell
her so. "Why? How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most
unpleasant thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them,
but if they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see
the people I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know
as well, even if they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad.
Besides, except when it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite
apart from that, I'm not sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in
society. It's often quite boring enough to have to give a dinner-party,
but if one had to offer one's arm to Spartacus, to let him take one
down...! Really, no; it would never be Vercingetorix I should send for,
to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I should keep him for really big
'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
"Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You
have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
"But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied
him, with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked
to the service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with
a radiant sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such
speeches--even if the Princess had to make them herself--as were in
praise of her wit or of her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your
Cambremer woman; over there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see
him? Ask him to introduce you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
"Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
"My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think
he didn't want to see me!"
Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of
her recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all
that country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not
to be separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
half-amorous--with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess--a
manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words,
for his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
"Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has
come up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the
birds, and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go
and pick a few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are
even some drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost
which must be making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty
indeed, my dear Princess."
"What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress,
"Why, you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not
chestnuts, no,--oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess
have known what was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't
tell me, even."
Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept
up the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
compliments which most other people would not and need not understand,
did not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had
been speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of
laughter, both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set,
and because she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself
without finding it exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
"Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with
your approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person,
are you also her neighbour in the country?"
Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy
talking to Swann, had drifted away.
"But you are, yourself, Princess!"
"I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
wish I had!"
"No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used
to come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are
Comtesse de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
"I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
for a hundred francs, every year, by the Curé, which is a due that I
could very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a
startling name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with
a laugh.
"It begins no better." Swann took the point.
"Yes; that double abbreviation!"
"Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
word."
"But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in
the most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of
taste--but how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in
a coaxing tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not
make that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the
name Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only
when I see you that I stop feeling bored."
Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the
trouble to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that
enwrapped them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one
found that they were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they
had the 'tone' of the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and
the Princess had not an idea in common. But since Swann had become so
melancholy, and was always in that trembling condition which precedes
a flood of tears, he had the same need to speak about his grief that
a murderer has to tell some one about his crime. And when he heard
the Princess say that life was a dreadful business, he felt as much
comforted as if she had spoken to him of Odette.
"Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
spend a most pleasant evening together."
"I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but
I must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a
horror of 'picturesque spots'."
"I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to
be happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there
speak to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields
begin to stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that
I am going to hear some news; and those little houses by the water's
edge... I should be quite wretched!"
"Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off
her daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),--perhaps both--to
each other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince...
Pretend to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and
invite me to dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now
that I have seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you
off and take you to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased
to see you (you know), and Basin too, for that matter; he's meeting me
there. If one didn't get news of you, sometimes, from Mémé... Remember,
I never see you at all now!"
Swann declined. Having told M. de Charlus that, on leaving Mme. de
Saint-Euverte's, he would go straight home, he did not care to run the
risk, by going on now to the Princesse de Parme's, of missing a message
which he had, all the time, been hoping to see brought in to him by one
of the footmen, during the party, and which he was perhaps going to find
left with his own porter, at home.
"Poor Swann," said Mme. des Laumes that night to her husband; "he is
always charming, but he does look so dreadfully unhappy. You will see
for yourself, for he has promised to dine with us one of these days. I
do feel that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should
let himself be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even
interesting, for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded
with the wisdom invariably shewn by people who, not being in love
themselves, feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such
persons as are worth his while; which is rather like being astonished
that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so
insignificant a creature as the common bacillus.
Swann now wished to go home, but, just as he was making his escape,
General de Froberville caught him and asked for an introduction to Mme.
de Cambremer, and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for
her.
"I say, Swann, I'd rather be married to that little woman than killed by
savages, what do you say?"
The words 'killed by savages' pierced Swann's aching heart; and at once
he felt the need of continuing the conversation. "Ah!" he began, "some
fine lives have been lost in that way... There was, you remember, that
explorer whose remains Dumont d'Urville brought back, La Pérouse..."
(and he was at once happy again, as though he had named Odette). "He was
a fine character, and interests me very much, does La Pérouse," he ended
sadly.
"Oh, yes, of course, La Pérouse," said the General. "It's quite a
well-known name. There's a street called that."
"Do you know anyone in the Rue La Pérouse?" asked Swann excitedly.
"Only Mme. de Chanlivault, the sister of that good fellow Chaussepierre.
She gave a most amusing theatre-party the other evening. That's a house
that will be really smart some day, you'll see!"
"Oh, so she lives in the Rue La Pérouse. It's attractive; I like that
street; it's so sombre."
"Indeed it isn't. You can't have been in it for a long time; it's not at
all sombre now; they're beginning to build all round there."
When Swann did finally introduce M. de Froberville to the young Mme. de
Cambremer, since it was the first time that she had heard the General's
name, she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise
with which she would have greeted him if she had never, in the whole
of her life, heard anything else; for, as she did not yet know all the
friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented to her, she
assumed that he must be one of them, and thinking that she would shew
her tact by appearing to have heard 'such a lot about him' since her
marriage, she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which
was meant as a proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to
overcome and of the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame
it. And so her parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most
eminent pair in France, declared that she was an angel; all the more
that they preferred to appear, in marrying her to their son, to have
yielded to the attraction rather of her natural charm than of her
considerable fortune.
"It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said
the General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not
now go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being
shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded
him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable,
had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than
smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of
insanity, they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective
state which existed for himself alone, whose reality there was nothing
external to confirm; he suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which
even the sound of the instruments made him want to cry, from having to
prolong his exile in this place to which Odette would never come, in
which no one, nothing was aware of her existence, from which she was
entirely absent.
But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes,
on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which
it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation
with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a
desperate effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before
itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its
remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a
door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had
had time to understand what was happening, to think: "It is the little
phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of
the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded,
up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being,
deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they
supposed, had dawned again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken
wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his
present desolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.