PART I

_MADAME SWANN AT HOME_

My mother, when it was a question of our having M. de Norpois to dinner

for the first time, having expressed her regret that Professor Cottard

was away from home, and that she herself had quite ceased to see

anything of Swann, since either of these might have helped to entertain

the old Ambassador, my father replied that so eminent a guest, so

distinguished a man of science as Cottard could never be out of place at

a dinner-table, but that Swann, with his ostentation, his habit of

crying aloud from the house-tops the name of everyone that he knew,

however slightly, was an impossible vulgarian whom the Marquis de

Norpois would be sure to dismiss as--to use his own epithet--a

"pestilent" fellow. Now, this attitude on my father's part may be felt to

require a few words of explanation, inasmuch as some of us, no doubt,

remember a Cottard of distinct mediocrity and a Swann by whom modesty

and discretion, in all his social relations, were carried to the utmost

refinement of delicacy. But in his case, what had happened was that, to

the original "young Swann" and also to the Swann of the Jockey Club, our

old friend had added a fresh personality (which was not to be his last)

that of Odette's husband. Adapting to the humble ambitions of that lady

the instinct, the desire, the industry which he had always had, he had

laboriously constructed for himself, a long way beneath the old, a new

position more appropriate to the companion who was to share it with him.

In this he shewed himself another man. Since (while he continued to go,

by himself, to the houses of his own friends, on whom he did not care to

inflict Odette unless they had expressly asked that she should be

introduced to them) it was a new life that he had begun to lead, in

common with his wife, among a new set of people, it was quite

intelligible that, in order to estimate the importance of these new

friends and thereby the pleasure, the self-esteem that were to be

derived from entertaining them, he should have made use, as a standard

of comparison, not of the brilliant society in which he himself had

moved before his marriage but of the earlier environment of Odette. And

yet, even when one knew that it was with unfashionable officials and

their faded wives, the wallflowers of ministerial ball-rooms, that he

was now anxious to associate, it was still astonishing to hear him, who

in the old days, and even still, would so gracefully refrain from

mentioning an invitation to Twickenham or to Marlborough House, proclaim

with quite unnecessary emphasis that the wife of some Assistant

Under-Secretary for Something had returned Mme. Swann's call. It will

perhaps be objected here that what this really implied was that the

simplicity of the fashionable Swann had been nothing more than a supreme

refinement of vanity, and that, like certain other Israelites, my

parents' old friend had contrived to illustrate in turn all the stages

through which his race had passed, from the crudest and coarsest form of

snobbishness up to the highest pitch of good manners. But the chief

reason--and one which is applicable to humanity as a whole--was that our

virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we

retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so

closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which

we make it our duty to practise them, that, if we are suddenly called

upon to perform some action of a different order, it takes us by

surprise, and without our supposing for a moment that it might involve

the bringing of those very same virtues into play. Swann, in his intense

consciousness of his new social surroundings, and in the pride with

which he referred to them, was like those great artists--modest or

generous by nature--who, if at the end of their career they take to

cooking or to gardening, display a childlike gratification at the

compliments that are paid to their dishes or their borders, and will not

listen to any of the criticism which they heard unmoved when it was

applied to their real achievements; or who, after giving away a canvas,

cannot conceal their annoyance if they lose a couple of francs at

dominoes.

As for Professor Cottard, we shall meet him again and can study him at

our leisure, much later in the course of our story, with the "Mistress",

Mme. Verdurin, in her country house La Raspelière. For the present, the

following observations must suffice; first of all, in the case of Swann

the alteration might indeed be surprising, since it had been

accomplished and yet was not suspected by me when I used to see

Gilberte's father in the Champs-Elysées, where, moreover, as he never

spoke to me, he could not very well have made any display of his

political relations. It is true that, if he had done so, I might not at

once have discerned his vanity, for the idea that one has long held of a

person is apt to stop one's eyes and ears; my mother, for three whole

years, had no more noticed the salve with which one of her nieces used

to paint her lips than if it had been wholly and invisibly dissolved in

some clear liquid; until one day a streak too much, or possibly

something else, brought about the phenomenon known as super-saturation;

all the paint that had hitherto passed unperceived was now crystallised,

and my mother, in the face of this sudden riot of colour, declared, in

the best Combray manner, that it was a perfect scandal, and almost

severed relations with her niece. With Cottard, on the contrary, the

epoch in which we have seen him assisting at the first introduction of

Swann to the Verdurins was now buried in the past; whereas honours,

offices and titles come with the passage of years; moreover, a man may

be illiterate, and make stupid puns, and yet have a special gift, which

no amount of general culture can replace--such as the gift of a great

strategist or physician. And so it was not merely as an obscure

practitioner, who had attained in course of time to European celebrity,

that the rest of his profession regarded Cottard. The most intelligent

of the younger doctors used to assert--for a year or two, that is to

say, for fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change,

are quick to change also--that if they themselves ever fell ill Cottard

was the only one of the leading men to whom they would entrust their

lives. No doubt they preferred, socially, to meet certain others who

were better read, more artistic, with whom they could discuss Nietzsche

and Wagner. When there was a musical party at Mme. Cottard's, on the

evenings when she entertained--in the hope that it might one day make

him Dean of the Faculty--the colleagues and pupils of her husband, he,

instead of listening, preferred to play cards in another room. Yet

everybody praised the quickness, the penetration, the unerring

confidence with which, at a glance, he could diagnose disease. Thirdly,

in considering the general impression which Professor Cottard must have

made on a man like my father, we must bear in mind that the character

which a man exhibits in the latter half of his life is not always, even

if it is often his original character developed or withered, attenuated

or enlarged; it is sometimes the exact opposite, like a garment that has

been turned. Except from the Verdurins, who were infatuated with him,

Cottard's hesitating manner, his excessive timidity and affability had,

in his young days, called down upon him endless taunts and sneers. What

charitable friend counselled that glacial air? The importance of his

professional standing made it all the more easy to adopt. Wherever he

went, save at the Verdurins', where he instinctively became himself

again, he would assume a repellent coldness, remain silent as long as

possible, be peremptory when he was obliged to speak, and not forget to

say the most cutting things. He had every opportunity of rehearsing this

new attitude before his patients, who, seeing him for the first time,

were not in a position to make comparisons, and would have been greatly

surprised to learn that he was not at all a rude man by nature. Complete

impassivity was what he strove to attain, and even while visiting his

hospital wards, when he allowed himself to utter one of those puns which

left everyone, from the house physician to the junior student, helpless

with laughter, he would always make it without moving a muscle of his

face, while even that was no longer recognisable now that he had shaved

off his beard and moustache.

But who, the reader has been asking, was the Marquis de Norpois. Well,

he had been Minister Plenipotentiary before the War, and was actually an

Ambassador on the Sixteenth of May; in spite of which, and to the

general astonishment, he had since been several times chosen to

represent France on Extraordinary Missions,--even as Controller of the

Public Debt in Egypt, where, thanks to his great capability as a

financier, he had rendered important services--by Radical Cabinets under

which a reactionary of the middle classes would have declined to serve,

and in whose eyes M. de Norpois, in view of his past, his connexions and

his opinions, ought presumably to have been suspect. But these advanced

Ministers seemed to consider that, in making such an appointment, they

were shewing how broad their own minds were, when the supreme interests

of France were at stake, were raising themselves above the general run

of politicians, were meriting, from the _Journal des Débats_ itself,

the title of "Statesmen", and were reaping direct advantage from the

weight that attaches to an aristocratic name and the dramatic interest

always aroused by an unexpected appointment. And they knew also that

they could reap these advantages by making an appeal to M. de Norpois,

without having to fear any want of political loyalty on his part, a

fault against which his noble birth not only need not put them on their

guard but offered a positive guarantee. And in this calculation the

Government of the Republic were not mistaken. In the first place,

because an aristocrat of a certain type, brought up from his cradle to

regard his name as an integral part of himself of which no accident can

deprive him (an asset of whose value his peers, or persons of even

higher rank, can form a fairly exact estimate), knows that he can

dispense with the efforts (since they can in no way enhance his

position) in which, without any appreciable result, so many public men

of the middle class spend themselves,--to profess only the "right"

opinions, to frequent only the "sound" people. Anxious, on the other

hand, to increase his own importance in the eyes of the princely or

ducal families which take immediate precedence of his own, he knows that

he can do so by giving his name that complement which hitherto it has

lacked, which will give it priority over other names heraldically its

equals: such as political power, a literary or an artistic reputation,

or a large fortune. And so what he saves by avoiding the society of the

ineffective country squires, after whom all the professional families

run helter-skelter, but of his intimacy with whom, were he to profess

it, a prince would think nothing, he will lavish on the politicians who

(free-masons, or worse, though they be) can advance him in Diplomacy or

"back" him in an election, and on the artists or scientists whose

patronage can help him to "arrive" in those departments in which they

excel, on everyone, in fact, who is in a position to confer a fresh

distinction or to "bring off" a rich marriage.

But in the character of M. de Norpois there was this predominant

feature, that, in the course of a long career of diplomacy, he had

become imbued with that negative, methodical, conservative spirit,

called "governmental", which is common to all Governments and, under

every Government, particularly inspires its Foreign Office. He had

imbibed, during that career, an aversion, a dread, a contempt for the

methods of procedure, more or less revolutionary and in any event quite

incorrect, which are those of an Opposition. Save in the case of a few

illiterates--high or low, it makes no matter--by whom no difference in

quality is perceptible, what attracts men one to another is not a common

point of view but a consanguinity of spirit. An Academician of the kind

of Legouvé, and therefore an upholder of the classics, would applaud

Maxime Ducamp's or Mezière's eulogy of Victor Hugo with more fervour

than that of Boileau by Claudel. A common Nationalism suffices to endear

Barrès to his electors, who scarcely distinguish between him and M.

Georges Berry, but does not endear him to those of his brother

Academicians who, with a similar outlook on politics but a different

type of mind, will prefer to him even such open adversaries as M. Ribot

and M. Deschanel, with whom, in turn, the most loyal Monarchists feel

themselves more closely allied than with Maurras or Léon Daudet,

although these also are living in the hope of a glorious Restoration.

Miserly in the use of words, not only from a professional scruple of

prudence and reserve, but because words themselves have more value,

present more subtleties of definition to men whose efforts, protracted

over a decade, to bring two countries to an understanding, are

condensed, translated--in a speech or in a protocol--into a single

adjective, colourless in all appearance, but to them pregnant with a

world of meaning, M. de Norpois was considered very stiff, at the

Commission, where he sat next to my father, whom everyone else

congratulated on the astonishing way in which the old Ambassador unbent

to him. My father was himself more astonished than anyone. For not

being, as a rule, very affable, his company was little sought outside

his own intimate circle, a limitation which he used modestly and frankly

to avow. He realised that these overtures were an outcome, in the

diplomat, of that point of view which everyone adopts for himself in

making his choice of friends, from which all a man's intellectual

qualities, his refinement, his affection are a far less potent

recommendation of him, when at the same time he bores or irritates one,

than are the mere straightforwardness and good-humour of another man

whom most people would regard as frivolous or even fatuous. "De Norpois

has asked me to dinner again; it's quite extraordinary; everyone on the

Commission is amazed, as he never has any personal relations with any of

us. I am sure he's going to tell me something thrilling, again, about

the 'Seventy war." My father knew that M. de Norpois had warned, had

perhaps been alone in warning the Emperor of the growing strength and

bellicose designs of Prussia, and that Bismarck rated his intelligence

most highly. Only the other day, at the Opera, during the gala

performance given for King Theodosius, the newspapers had all drawn

attention to the long conversation which that Monarch had held with M.

de Norpois. "I must ask him whether the King's visit had any real

significance," my father went on, for he was keenly interested in

foreign politics. "I know old Norpois keeps very close as a rule, but

when he's with me he opens out quite charmingly."

As for my mother, perhaps the Ambassador had not the type of mind

towards which she felt herself most attracted. I should add that his

conversation furnished so exhaustive a glossary of the superannuated

forms of speech peculiar to a certain profession, class and period--a

period which, for that profession and that class, might be said not to

have altogether passed away--that I sometimes regret that I have not

kept any literal record simply of the things that I have heard him say.

I should thus have obtained an effect of old-fashioned courtesy by the

same process and at as little expense as that actor at the Palais-Royal

who, when asked where on earth he managed to find his astounding hats,

answered, "I do not find my hats. I keep them." In a word, I suppose

that my mother considered M. de Norpois a trifle "out-of-date", which

was by no means a fault in her eyes, so far as manners were concerned,

but attracted her less in the region--not, in this instance, of ideas,

for those of M. de Norpois were extremely modern--but of idiom. She

felt, however, that she was paying a delicate compliment to her husband

when she spoke admiringly of the diplomat who had shewn so remarkable a

predilection for him. By confirming in my father's mind the good opinion

that he already had of M. de Norpois, and so inducing him to form a good

opinion of himself also, she knew that she was carrying out that one of

her wifely duties which consisted in making life pleasant and

comfortable for her husband, just as when she saw to it that his dinner

was perfectly cooked and served in silence. And as she was incapable of

deceiving my father, she compelled herself to admire the old Ambassador,

so as to be able to praise him with sincerity. Incidentally she could

naturally, and did appreciate his kindness, his somewhat antiquated

courtesy (so ceremonious that when, as he was walking along the street,

his tall figure rigidly erect, he caught sight of my mother driving

past, before raising his hat to her he would fling away the cigar that

he had just lighted); his conversation, so elaborately circumspect, in

which he referred as seldom as possible to himself and always considered

what might interest the person to whom he was speaking; his promptness

in answering a letter, which was so astonishing that whenever my father,

just after posting one himself to M. de Norpois, saw his handwriting

upon an envelope, his first thought was always one of annoyance that

their letters must, unfortunately, have crossed in the post; which, one

was led to suppose, bestowed upon him the special and luxurious

privilege of extraordinary deliveries and collections at all hours of

the day and night. My mother marvelled at his being so punctilious

although so busy, so friendly although so much in demand, never

realising that "although", with such people, is invariably an

unrecognised "because", and that (just as old men are always wonderful

for their age, and kings extraordinarily simple, and country cousins

astonishingly well-informed) it was the same system of habits that

enabled M. de Norpois to undertake so many duties and to be so

methodical in answering letters, to go everywhere and to be so friendly

when he came to us. Moreover she made the mistake which everyone makes

who is unduly modest; she rated everything that concerned herself below,

and consequently outside the range of other people's duties and

engagements. The letter which it seemed to her so meritorious in my

father's friend to have written us promptly, since in the course of the

day he must have had ever so many letters to write, she excepted from

that great number of letters, of which actually it was a unit; in the

same way she did not consider that dining with us was, for M. de

Norpois, merely one of the innumerable activities of his social life;

she never guessed that the Ambassador had trained himself, long ago, to

look upon dining out as one of his diplomatic functions, and to display,

at table, an inveterate charm which it would have been too much to have

expected him specially to discard when he came to dine with us.

The evening on which M. de Norpois first appeared at our table, in a

year when I still went to play in the Champs-Elysées, has remained

fixed in my memory because the afternoon of the same day was that upon

which I at last went to hear Berma, at a _matinée_, in _Phèdre_, and

also because in talking to M. de Norpois I realised suddenly, and in a

new and different way, how completely the feelings aroused in me by all

that concerned Gilberte Swann and her parents differed from any that the

same family could inspire in anyone else.

It was no doubt the sight of the depression in which I was plunged by

the approach of the New Year holidays, in which, as she herself had

informed me, I was to see nothing of Gilberte, that prompted my mother

one day, in the hope of distracting my mind, to suggest, "If you are

still so anxious to hear Berma, I think that your father would allow you

perhaps to go; your grandmother can take you."

But it was because M. de Norpois had told him that he ought to let me

hear Berma, that it was an experience for a young man to remember in

later life, that my father, who had hitherto been so resolutely opposed

to my going and wasting my time, with the added risk of my falling ill

again, on what he used to shock my grandmother by calling "futilities",

was now not far from regarding this manner of spending an afternoon as

included, in some vague way, in the list of precious formulae for

success in a brilliant career. My grandmother, who, in renouncing on my

behalf the profit which, according to her, I should have derived from

hearing Berma, had made a considerable sacrifice in the interests of my

health, was surprised to find that this last had become of no account at

a mere word from M. de Norpois. Reposing the unconquerable hopes of her

rationalist spirit in the strict course of fresh air and early hours

which had been prescribed for me, she now deplored, as something

disastrous, this infringement that I was to make of my rules, and in a

tone of despair protested, "How easily led you are!" to my father, who

replied angrily "What! So it's you that are for not letting him go, now.

That is really too much, after your telling us all day and every day

that it would be so good for him."

M. de Norpois had also brought about a change in my father's plans in a

matter of far greater importance to myself. My father had always meant

me to become a diplomat, and I could not endure the thought that, even

if I did have to stay for some years, first, at the Ministry, I should

run the risk of being sent, later on, as Ambassador, to capitals in

which no Gilberte dwelt. I should have preferred to return to the

literary career that I had planned for myself, and had then abandoned,

years before, in my wanderings along the Guermantes way. But my father

had steadily opposed my devoting myself to literature, which he regarded

as vastly inferior to diplomacy, refusing even to dignify it with the

title of career, until the day when M. de Norpois, who had little love

for the more recent generations of diplomatic agents, assured him that

it was quite possible, by writing, to attract as much attention, to

receive as much consideration, to exercise as much influence, and at the

same time to preserve more independence than in the Embassies.

"Well, well, I should never have believed it. Old Norpois doesn't at all

disapprove of your idea of taking up writing," my father had reported.

And as he had a certain amount of influence himself, he imagined that

there was nothing that could not be "arranged", no problem for which a

happy solution might not be found in the conversation of people who

"counted". "I shall bring him back to dinner, one of these days, from

the Commission. You must talk to him a little, and let him see what he

thinks of you. Write something good that you can shew him; he is an

intimate friend of the editor of the _Deux-Mondes_; he will get you in

there; he will arrange it all, the cunning old fox; and, upon my soul,

he seems to think that diplomacy, nowadays----!"

My happiness in the prospect of not being separated from Gilberte made

me desirous, but not capable, of writing something good which could be

shewn to M. de Norpois. After a few laboured pages, weariness made the

pen drop from my fingers; I cried with anger at the thought that I

should never have any talent, that I was not "gifted", that I could not

even take advantage of the chance that M. de Norpois's coming visit was

to offer me of spending the rest of my life in Paris. The recollection

that I was to be taken to hear Berma alone distracted me from my grief.

But just as I did not wish to see any storms except on those coasts

where they raged with most violence, so I should not have cared to hear

the great actress except in one of those classic parts in which Swann

had told me that she touched the sublime. For when it is in the hope of

making a priceless discovery that we desire to receive certain

impressions from nature or from works of art, we have certain scruples

about allowing our soul to gather, instead of these, other, inferior,

impressions, which are liable to make us form a false estimate of the

value of Beauty. Berma in _Andromaque_, in _Les Caprices de Marianne_,

in _Phèdre_, was one of those famous spectacles which my imagination

had so long desired. I should enjoy the same rapture as on the day when

in a gondola I glided to the foot of the Titian of the Frari or the

Carpaccios of San Giorgio dei Schiavoni, were I ever to hear Berma

repeat the lines beginning,

"On dit qu'un prompt départ vous éloigne de nous,

Seigneur,----"

I was familiar with them from the simple reproduction in black and white

which was given of them upon the printed page; but my heart beat

furiously at the thought--as of the realisation of a long-planned

voyage--that I should at length behold them, bathed and brought to life

in the atmosphere and sunshine of the voice of gold. A Carpaccio in

Venice, Berma in _Phèdre_, masterpieces of pictorial or dramatic art

which the glamour, the dignity attaching to them made so living to me,

that is to say so indivisible, that if I had been taken to see

Carpaccios in one of the galleries of the Louvre, or Berma in some piece

of which I had never heard, I should not have experienced the same

delicious amazement at finding myself at length, with wide-open eyes,

before the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousand dreams.

Then, while I waited, expecting to derive from Berma's playing the

revelation of certain aspects of nobility and tragic grief, it seemed to

me that whatever greatness, whatever truth there might be in her playing

must be enhanced if the actress imposed it upon a work of real value,

instead of what would, after all, be but embroidering a pattern of truth

and beauty upon a common-place and vulgar web.

Finally, if I went to hear Berma in a new piece, it would not be easy

for me to judge of her art, of her diction, since I should not be able

to differentiate between a text which was not already familiar and what

she added to it by her intonations and gestures, an addition which would

seem to me to be embodied in the play itself; whereas the old plays, the

classics which I knew by heart, presented themselves to me as vast and

empty walls, reserved and made ready for my inspection, on which I

should be able to appreciate without restriction the devices by which

Berma would cover them, as with frescoes, with the perpetually fresh

treasures of her inspiration. Unfortunately, for some years now, since

she had retired from the great theatres, to make the fortune of one on

the boulevards where she was the "star", she had ceased to appear in

classic parts; and in vain did I scan the hoardings; they never

advertised any but the newest pieces, written specially for her by

authors in fashion at the moment. When, one morning, as I stood

searching the column of announcements to find the afternoon performances

for the week of the New Year holidays, I saw there for the first

time--at the foot of the bill, after some probably insignificant

curtain-raiser, whose title was opaque to me because it had latent in it

all the details of an action of which I was ignorant--two acts of

_Phèdre_ with Mme. Berma, and, on the following afternoons, _Le

Demi-Monde, Les Caprices de Marianne_, names which, like that of

_Phèdre_, were for me transparent, filled with light only, so familiar

were those works to me, illuminated to their very depths by the

revealing smile of art. They seemed to me to invest with a fresh

nobility Mme. Berma herself when I read in the newspapers, after the

programme of these performances, that it was she who had decided to shew

herself once more to the public in some of her early creations. She was

conscious, then, that certain stage-parts have an interest which

survives the novelty of their first production or the success of a

revival; she regarded them, when interpreted by herself, as museum

pieces which it might be instructive to set before the eyes of the

generation which had admired her in them long ago, or of that which had

never yet seen her in them. In thus advertising, in the middle of a

column of plays intended only to while away an evening, this _Phèdre_,

a title no longer than any of the rest, nor set in different type, she

added something indescribable, as though a hostess, introducing you,

before you all go in to dinner, to her other guests, were to mention,

casually, amid the string of names which are the names of guests and

nothing more, and without any change of tone:--"M. Anatole France."

The doctor who was attending me--the same who had forbidden me to

travel--advised my parents not to let me go to the theatre; I should

only be ill again afterwards, perhaps for weeks, and should in the long

run derive more pain than pleasure from the experience. The fear of this

might have availed to stop me, if what I had anticipated from such a

spectacle had been only a pleasure for which a subsequent pain could so

compensate as to cancel it. But what I demanded from this

performance--just as from the visit to Balbec, the visit to Venice for

which I had so intensely longed--was something quite different from

pleasure; a series of verities pertaining to a world more real than that

in which I lived, which, once acquired, could never be taken from me

again by any of the trivial incidents--even though it were the cause of

bodily suffering--of my otiose existence. At best, the pleasure which I

was to feel during the performance appeared to me as the perhaps

inevitable form of the perception of these truths; and I hoped only that

the illness which had been forecast for me would not begin until the

play was finished, so that my pleasure should not be in any way

compromised or spoiled. I implored my parents, who, after the doctor's

visit, were no longer inclined to let me go to _Phèdre._ I repeated,

all day long, to myself, the speech beginning,

"On dit qu'un prompt départ vous éloigne de nous,----"

seeking out every intonation that could be put into it, so as to be able

better to measure my surprise at the way which Berma would have found of

uttering the lines. Concealed, like the Holy of Holies, beneath the veil

that screened her from my gaze, behind which I invested her, every

moment, with a fresh aspect, according to which of the words of

Bergotte--in the pamphlet that Gilberte had found for me--was passing

through my mind; "plastic nobility", "Christian austerity" or "Jansenist

pallor", "Princess of Troezen and of Cleves" or "Mycenean drama",

"Delphic symbol", "Solar myth"; that divine Beauty, whom Berma's acting

was to reveal to me, night and day, upon an altar perpetually illumined,

sat enthroned in the sanctuary of my mind, my mind for which not itself

but my stern, my fickle parents were to decide whether or not it was to

enshrine, and for all time, the perfections of the Deity unveiled, in

the same spot where was now her invisible form. And with my eyes fixed

upon that inconceivable image, I strove from morning to night to

overcome the barriers which my family were putting in my way. But when

those had at last fallen, when my mother--albeit this _matinée_ was

actually to coincide with the meeting of the Commission from which my

father had promised to bring M. de Norpois home to dinner--had said to

me, "Very well, we don't wish you to be unhappy;--if you think that you

will enjoy it so very much, you must go; that's all;" when this day of

theatre-going, hitherto forbidden and unattainable, depended now only

upon myself, then for the first time, being no longer troubled by the

wish that it might cease to be impossible, I asked myself if it were

desirable, if there were not other reasons than my parents' prohibition

which should make me abandon my design. In the first place, whereas I

had been detesting them for their cruelty, their consent made them now

so dear to me that the thought of causing them pain stabbed me also with

a pain through which the purpose of life shewed itself as the pursuit

not of truth but of loving-kindness, and life itself seemed good or evil

only as my parents were happy or sad. "I would rather not go, if it

hurts you," I told my mother, who, on the contrary, strove hard to expel

from my mind any lurking fear that she might regret my going, since

that, she said, would spoil the pleasure that I should otherwise derive

from _Phèdre_, and it was the thought of my pleasure that had induced

my father and her to reverse their earlier decision. But then this sort

of obligation to find a pleasure in the performance seemed to me very

burdensome. Besides, if I returned home ill, should I be well again in

time to be able to go to the Champs-Elysées as soon as the holidays

were over and Gilberte returned? Against all these arguments I set, so

as to decide which course I should take, the idea, invisible there

behind its veil, of the perfections of Berma. I cast into one pan of the

scales "Making Mamma unhappy", "risking not being able to go on the

Champs-Elysées", and into the other, "Jansenist pallor", "Solar myth",

until the words themselves grew dark and clouded in my mind's vision,

ceased to say anything to me, lost all their force; and gradually my

hesitations became so painful that if I had now decided upon the theatre

it would have been only that I might bring them to an end, and be

delivered from them once and for all. It would have been to fix a term

to my sufferings, and no longer in the expectation of an intellectual

benediction, yielding to the attractions of perfection, that I would let

myself be taken, not now to the Wise Goddess, but to the stem,

implacable Divinity, featureless and unnamed, who had been secretly

substituted for her behind the veil. But suddenly everything was

altered. My desire to go and hear Berma received a fresh stimulus which

enabled me to await the coming of the _matinée_ with impatience and

with joy; having gone to take up, in front of the column on which the

playbills were, my daily station, as excruciating, of late, as that of a

stylite saint, I had seen there, still moist and wrinkled, the complete

bill of _Phèdre_, which had just been pasted up for the first time (and

on which, I must confess, the rest of the cast furnished no additional

attraction which could help me to decide). But it gave to one of the

points between which my indecision wavered a form at once more concrete

and--inasmuch as the bill was dated not from the day on which I read it

but from that on which the performance would take place, and from the

very hour at which the curtain would rise--almost imminent, well on the

way, already, to its realisation, so that I jumped for joy before the

column at the thought that on that day, and at that hour precisely, I

should be sitting there in my place, ready to hear the voice of Berma;

and for fear lest my parents might not now be in time to secure two good

seats for my grandmother and myself, I raced back to the house, whipped

on by the magic words which had now taken the place, in my mind, of

"Jansenist pallor" and "Solar myth";--"Ladies will not be admitted to

the stalls in hats. The doors will be closed at two o'clock."

Alas! that first _matinée_ was to prove a bitter disappointment. My

father offered to drop my grandmother and me at the theatre, on his way

to the Commission. Before leaving the house he said to my mother: "See

that you have a good dinner for us to-night; you remember, I'm bringing

de Norpois back with me." My mother had not forgotten. And all that day,

and overnight, Françoise, rejoicing in the opportunity to devote

herself to that art of the kitchen,--of which she was indeed a

past-master, stimulated, moreover, by the prospect of having a new guest

to feed, the consciousness that she would have to compose, by methods

known to her alone, a dish of beef in jelly, had been living in the

effervescence of creation; since she attached the utmost importance to

the intrinsic quality of the materials which were to enter into the

fabric of her work, she had gone herself to the Halles to procure the

best cuts of rump-steak, shin of beef, calves'-feet, as Michelangelo

passed eight months in the mountains of Carrara choosing the most

perfect blocks of marble for the monument of Julius II.--Françoise

expended on these comings and goings so much ardour that Mamma, at the

sight of her flaming cheeks, was alarmed lest our old servant should

make herself ill with overwork, like the sculptor of the Tombs of the

Medici in the quarries of Pietrasanta. And overnight Françoise had sent

to be cooked in the baker's oven, shielded with breadcrumbs, like a

block of pink marble packed in sawdust, what she called a "Nev'-York

ham". Believing the language to be less rich than it actually was in

words, and her own ears less trustworthy, the first time that she heard

anyone mention York ham she had thought, no doubt,--feeling it to be

hardly conceivable that the dictionary could be so prodigal as to

include at once a "York" and a "New York"--that she had misheard what

was said, and that the ham was really called by the name already

familiar to her. And so, ever since, the word York was preceded in her

ears, or before her eyes when she read it in an advertisement, by the

affix "New" which she pronounced "Nev'". And it was with the most

perfect faith that she would say to her kitchen-maid: "Go and fetch me a

ham from Olida's. Madame told me especially to get a Nev'-York." On that

particular day, if Françoise was consumed by the burning certainty of

creative genius, my lot was the cruel anxiety of the seeker after truth.

No doubt, so long as I had not yet heard Berma speak, I still felt some

pleasure. I felt it in the little square that lay in front of the

theatre, in which, in two hours' time, the bare boughs of the chestnut

trees would gleam with a metallic lustre as the lighted gas-lamps shewed

up every detail of their structure; before the attendants in the

box-office, the selection of whom, their promotion, all their destiny

depended upon the great artist--for she alone held power in the theatre,

where ephemeral managers followed one after the other in an obscure

succession--who took our tickets without even glancing at us, so

preoccupied were they with their anxiety lest any of Mme. Berma's

instructions had not been duly transmitted to the new members of the

staff, lest it was not clearly, everywhere, understood that the hired

applause must never sound for her, that the windows must all be kept

open so long as she was not on the stage, and every door closed tight,

the moment that she appeared; that a bowl of hot water must be concealed

somewhere close to her, to make the dust settle: and, for that matter,

at any moment now her carriage, drawn by a pair of horses with flowing

manes, would be stopping outside the theatre, she would alight from it

muffled in furs, and, crossly acknowledging everyone's salute, would

send one of her attendants to find out whether a stage box had been kept

for her friends, what the temperature was "in front", who were in the

other boxes, if the programme sellers were looking smart; theatre and

public being to her no more than a second, an outermost cloak which she

would put on, and the medium, the more or less "good" conductor through

which her talent would have to pass. I was happy, too, in the theatre

itself; since I had made the discovery that--in contradiction of the

picture so long entertained by my childish imagination--there was but

one stage for everybody, I had supposed that I should be prevented from

seeing it properly by the presence of the other spectators, as one is

when in the thick of a crowd; now I registered the fact that, on the

contrary, thanks to an arrangement which is, so to speak, symbolical of

all spectatorship, everyone feels himself to be the centre of the

theatre; which explained to me why, when Françoise had been sent once

to see some melodrama from the top gallery, she had assured us on her

return that her seat had been the best in the house, and that instead of

finding herself too far from the stage she had been positively

frightened by the mysterious and living proximity of the curtain. My

pleasure increased further when I began to distinguish behind the said

lowered curtain such confused rappings as one hears through the shell of

an egg before the chicken emerges, sounds which speedily grew louder and

suddenly, from that world which, impenetrable by our eyes, yet

scrutinised us with its own, addressed themselves, and to us

indubitably, in the imperious form of three consecutive hammer-blows as

moving as any signals from the planet Mars. And--once this curtain had

risen,--when on the stage a writing-table and a fireplace, in no way out

of the ordinary, had indicated that the persons who were about to enter

would be, not actors come to recite, as I had seen them once and heard

them at an evening party, but real people, just living their lives at

home, on whom I was thus able to spy without their seeing me--my

pleasure still endured; it was broken by a momentary uneasiness; just as

I was straining my ears in readiness before the piece began, two men

entered the theatre from the side of the stage, who must have been very

angry with each other, for they were talking so loud that in the

auditorium, where there were at least a thousand people, we could hear

every word, whereas in quite a small _café_ one is obliged to call the

waiter and ask what it is that two men, who appear to be quarrelling,

are saying; but at that moment, while I sat astonished to find that the

audience was listening to them without protest, drowned as it was in a

universal silence upon which broke, presently, a laugh here and there, I

understood that these insolent fellows were the actors, and that the

short piece known as the "curtain-raiser" had now begun. It was followed

by an interval so long that the audience, who had returned to their

places, grew impatient and began to stamp their feet. I was terrified at

this; for just as in the report of a criminal trial, when I read that

some noble-minded person was coming, against his own interests, to

testify on behalf of an innocent prisoner, I was always afraid that they

would not be nice enough to him, would not shew enough gratitude, would

not recompense him lavishly, and that he, in disgust, would then range

himself on the side of injustice; so now attributing to genius, in this

respect, the same qualities as to virtue, I was afraid lest Berma,

annoyed by the bad behaviour of so ill-bred an audience--in which, on

the other hand, I should have liked her to recognise, with satisfaction,

a few celebrities to whose judgment she would be bound to attach

importance--should express her discontent and disdain by acting badly.

And I gazed appealingly round me at these stamping brutes who were about

to shatter, in their insensate rage, the rare and fragile impression

which I had come to seek. The last moments of my pleasure were during

the opening scenes of _Phèdre._ The heroine herself does not appear in

these first scenes of the second act; and yet, as soon as the curtain

rose, and another curtain, of red velvet this time, was parted in the

middle (a curtain which was used to halve the depth of the stage in all

the plays in which the "star" appeared), an actress entered from the

back who had the face and voice which, I had been told, were those of

Berma. The cast must therefore have been changed; all the trouble that I

had taken in studying the part of the wife of Theseus was wasted. But a

second actress now responded to the first. I must, then, have been

mistaken in supposing that the first was Berma, for the second even more

closely resembled her, and, more than the other, had her diction. Both

of them, moreover, enriched their parts with noble gestures--which I

could vividly distinguish, and could appreciate in their relation to the

text, while they raised and let fall the lovely folds of their

tunics--and also with skilful changes of tone, now passionate, now

ironical, which made me realise the significance of lines that I had

read to myself at home without paying sufficient attention to what they

really meant. But all of a sudden, in the cleft of the red curtain that

veiled her sanctuary, as in a frame, appeared a woman, and

simultaneously with the fear that seized me, far more vexing than

Berma's fear could be, lest someone should upset her by opening a

window, or drown one of her lines by rustling a programme, or annoy her

by applauding the others and by not applauding her enough;--in my own

fashion, still more absolute than Berma's, of considering from that

moment theatre, audience, play and my own body only as an acoustic

medium of no importance, save in the degree to which it was favourable

to the inflexions of that voice,--I realised that the two actresses whom

I had been for some minutes admiring bore not the least resemblance to

her whom I had come to hear. But at the same time all my pleasure had

ceased; in vain might I strain towards Berma eyes, ears, mind, so as not

to let one morsel escape me of the reasons which she would furnish for

my admiring her, I did not succeed in gathering a single one. I could

not even, as I could with her companions, distinguish in her diction and

in her playing intelligent intonations, beautiful gestures. I listened

to her as though I were reading _Phèdre_, or as though Phaedra herself

had at that moment uttered the words that I was hearing, without its

appearing that Berma's talent had added anything at all to them. I could

have wished, so as to be able to explore them fully, so as to attempt to

discover what it was in them that was beautiful, to arrest, to

immobilise for a time before my senses every intonation of the artist's

voice, every expression of her features; at least I did attempt, by dint

of my mental agility in having, before a line came, my attention ready

and tuned to catch it, not to waste upon preparations any morsel of the

precious time that each word, each gesture occupied, and, thanks to the

intensity of my observation, to manage to penetrate as far into them as

if I had had whole hours to spend upon them, by myself. But how short

their duration was! Scarcely had a sound been received by my ear than it

was displaced there by another. In one scene, where Berma stands

motionless for a moment, her arm raised to the level of a face bathed,

by some piece of stagecraft, in a greenish light, before a back-cloth

painted to represent the sea, the whole house broke out in applause; but

already the actress had moved, and the picture that I should have liked

to study existed no longer. I told my grandmother that I could not see

very well; she handed me her glasses. Only, when one believes in the

reality of a thing, making it visible by artificial means is not quite

the same as feeling that it is close at hand. I thought now that it was

no longer Berma at whom I was looking, but her image in a magnifying

glass. I put the glasses down, but then possibly the image that my eye

received of her, diminished by distance, was no more exact; which of the

two Bermas was the real? As for her speech to Hippolyte, I had counted

enormously upon that, since, to judge by the ingenious significance

which her companions were disclosing to me at every moment in less

beautiful parts, she would certainly render it with intonations more

surprising than any which, when reading the play at home, I had

contrived to imagine; but she did not attain to the heights which Œnone

or Aricie would naturally have reached, she planed down into a uniform

flow of melody the whole of a passage in which there were mingled

together contradictions so striking that the least intelligent of tragic

actresses, even the pupils of an academy could not have missed their

effect; besides which, she ran through the speech so rapidly that it was

only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware of the

deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout.

Then, at last, a sense of admiration did possess me, provoked by the

frenzied applause of the audience. I mingled my own with theirs,

endeavouring to prolong the general sound so that Berma, in her

gratitude, should surpass herself, and I be certain of having heard her

on one of her great days. A curious thing, by the way, was that the

moment when this storm of public enthusiasm broke loose was, as I

afterwards learned, that in which Berma reveals one of her richest

treasures. It would appear that certain transcendent realities emit all

around them a radiance to which the crowd is sensitive. So it is that

when any great event occurs, when on a distant frontier an army is in

jeopardy, or defeated, or victorious, the vague and conflicting reports

which we receive, from which an educated man can derive little

enlightenment, stimulate in the crowd an emotion by which that man is

surprised, and in which, once expert criticism has informed him of the

actual military situation, he recognises the popular perception of that

"aura" which surrounds momentous happenings, and which may be visible

hundreds of miles away. One learns of a victory either after the war is

over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one's hall porter. One

discovers the touch of genius in Berma's acting a week after one has

heard her, in the criticism of some review, or else on the spot, from

the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this immediate recognition

by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others, all quite erroneous; the

applause came, most often, at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it

was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone

before, just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it

will continue to swell, even after the wind has begun to subside. No

matter; the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma

act. "I say," came from a woman sitting near me, of no great social

pretensions, "she fairly gives it you, she does; you'd think she'd do

herself an injury, the way she runs about. I call that acting, don't

you?" And happy to find these reasons for Berma's superiority, though

not without a suspicion that they no more accounted for it than would

for that of the Gioconda or of Benvenuto's Perseus a peasant's gaping

"That's a good bit of work. It's all gold, look! Fine, ain't it?", I

greedily imbibed the strong wine of this popular enthusiasm. I felt, all

the same, when the curtain had fallen for the last time, disappointed

that the pleasure for which I had so longed had been no greater, but at

the same time I felt the need to prolong it, not to depart for ever,

when I left the theatre, from this strange life of the stage which had,

for a few hours, been my own, from which I should be tearing myself

away, as though I were going into exile, when I returned to my own home,

had I not hoped there to learn a great deal more about Berma from her

admirer, to whom I was indebted already for the permission to go to

_Phèdre_, M. de Norpois. I was introduced to him before dinner by my

father, who summoned me into his study for the purpose. As I entered,

the Ambassador rose, held out his hand, bowed his tall figure and fixed

his blue eyes attentively on my face. As the foreign visitors who used

to be presented to him, in the days when he still represented France

abroad, were all more or less (even the famous singers) persons of note,

with regard to whom he could tell, when he met them, that he would be

able to say, later on, when he heard their names mentioned in Paris or

in Petersburg, that he remembered perfectly the evening he had spent

with them at Munich or Sofia, he had formed the habit of impressing upon

them, by his affability, the pleasure with which he was making their

acquaintance; but in addition to this, being convinced that in the life

of European capitals, in contact at once with all the interesting

personalities that passed through them and with the manners and customs

of the native populations, one acquired a deeper insight than could be

gained from books into the intellectual movement throughout Europe, he

would exercise upon each newcomer his keen power of observation, so as

to decide at once with what manner of man he had to deal. The Government

had not for some time now entrusted to him a post abroad, but still, as

soon as anyone was introduced to him, his eyes, as though they had not

yet been informed of their master's retirement, began their fruitful

observation, while by his whole attitude he endeavoured to convey that

the stranger's name was not unknown to him. And so, all the time, while

he spoke to me kindly and with the air of importance of a man who is

conscious of the vastness of his own experience, he never ceased to

examine me with a sagacious curiosity, and to his own profit, as though

I had been some exotic custom, some historic and instructive building or

some "star" upon his course. And in this way he gave proof at once, in

his attitude towards me, of the majestic benevolence of the sage Mentor

and of the zealous curiosity of the young Anacharsis.

He offered me absolutely no opening to the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_, but

put a number of questions to me on what I had been doing and reading;

asked what were my own inclinations, which I heard thus spoken of for

the first time as though it might be a quite reasonable thing to obey

their promptings, whereas hitherto I had always supposed it to be my

duty to suppress them. Since they attracted me towards Literature, he

did not dissuade me from that course; on the contrary, he spoke of it

with deference, as of some venerable personage whose select circle, in

Rome or at Dresden, one remembers with pleasure, and regrets only that

one's multifarious duties in life enable one to revisit it so seldom. He

appeared to be envying me, with an almost jovial smile, the delightful

hours which, more fortunate than himself and more free, I should be able

to spend with such a Mistress. But the very terms that he employed

shewed me Literature as something entirely different from the image that

I had formed of it at Combray, and I realised that I had been doubly

right in abandoning my intention. Until now, I had reckoned only that I

had not the "gift" for writing; now M. de Norpois took from me the

ambition also. I wanted to express to him what had been my dreams;

trembling with emotion, I was painfully apprehensive that all the words

which I could utter would not be the sincerest possible equivalent of

what I had felt, what I had never yet attempted to formulate; that is to

say that my words had no clear significance. Perhaps by a professional

habit, perhaps by virtue of the calm that is acquired by every important

personage whose advice is commonly sought, and who, knowing that he will

keep the control of the conversation in his own hands, allows the other

party to fret, to struggle, to take his time; perhaps also to emphasise

the dignity of his head (Greek, according to himself, despite his

sweeping whiskers), M. de Norpois, while anything was being explained to

him, would preserve a facial immobility as absolute as if you had been

addressing some ancient and unhearing bust in a museum. Until suddenly,

falling upon you like an auctioneer's hammer, or a Delphic oracle, the

Ambassador's voice, as he replied to you, would be all the more

impressive, in that nothing in his face had allowed you to guess what

sort of impression you had made on him, or what opinion he was about to

express.

"Precisely;" he suddenly began, as though the case were now heard and

judged, and after allowing me to writhe in increasing helplessness

beneath those motionless eyes which never for an instant left my face.

"There is the case of the son of one of my friends, which, _mutatis

mutandis_, is very much like yours." He adopted in speaking of our

common tendency the same reassuring tone as if it had been a tendency

not to literature but to rheumatics, and he had wished to assure me that

it would not necessarily prove fatal. "He too has chosen to leave the

Quai d'Orsay, although the way had been paved for him there by his

father, and without caring what people might say, he has settled down to

write. And certainly, he's had no reason to regret it. He published two

years ago--of course, he's much older than you, you understand--a book

dealing with the Sense of the Infinite on the Western Shore of Victoria

Nyanza, and this year he has brought out a little thing, not so

important as the other, but very brightly, in places perhaps almost too

pointedly written, on the Repeating Rifle in the Bulgarian Army; and

these have put him quite in a class by himself. He's gone pretty far

already, and he's not the sort of man to stop half-way; I happen to know

that (without any suggestion, of course, of his standing for election)

his name has been mentioned several times, in conversation, and not at

all unfavourably, at the Academy of Moral Sciences. And so, one can't

say yet, of course, that he has reached the pinnacle of fame, still he

has made his way, by sheer industry, to a very fine position indeed, and

success--which doesn't always come only to agitators and mischief-makers

and men who make trouble which is usually more than they are prepared to

take--success has crowned his efforts."

My father, seeing me already, in a few years' time, an Academician, was

tasting a contentment which M. de Norpois raised to the supreme pitch

when, after a momentary hesitation in which he appeared to be

calculating the possible consequences of so rash an act, he handed me

his card and said: "Why not go and see him yourself? Tell him, I sent

you. He may be able to give you some good advice," plunging me by his

words into as painful a state of anxiety as if he had told me that, next

morning, I was to embark as cabin-boy on board a sailing ship, and to go

round the world.

My Aunt Léonie had bequeathed to me, together with all sorts of other

things and much of her furniture, with which it was difficult to know

what to do, almost all her unsettled estate--revealing thus after her

death an affection for me which I had hardly suspected in her lifetime.

My father, who was trustee of this estate until I came of age, now

consulted M. de Norpois with regard to several of the investments. He

recommended certain stocks bearing a low rate of interest, which he

considered particularly sound, notably English consols and Russian four

per cents. "With absolutely first class securities such as those," said

M. de Norpois, "even if your income from them is nothing very great, you

may be certain of never losing any of your capital." My father then told

him, roughly, what else he had bought. M. de Norpois gave a just

perceptible smile of congratulation; like all capitalists, he regarded

wealth as an enviable thing, but thought it more delicate to compliment

people upon their possessions only by a half-indicated sign of

intelligent sympathy; on the other hand, as he was himself immensely

rich, he felt that he shewed his good taste by seeming to regard as

considerable the meagre revenues of his friends, with a happy and

comforting resilience to the superiority of his own. He made amends for

this by congratulating my father, without hesitation, on the

"composition" of his list of investments, selected "with so sure, so

delicate, so fine a taste." You would have supposed, to hear him, that

he attributed to the relative values of investments, and even to

investments themselves something akin to aesthetic merit. Of one,

comparatively recent and still little known, which my father mentioned,

M. de Norpois, like the people who have always read the books of which,

you imagine, you yourself alone have ever heard, said at once, "Ah, yes,

I used to amuse myself for some time with watching it in the papers; it

was quite interesting," with the retrospective smile of a regular

subscriber who has read the latest novel already, in monthly

instalments, in his magazine. "It would not be at all a bad idea to

apply for some of this new issue. It is distinctly attractive; they are

offering it at a most tempting discount." But when he came to some of

the older investments, my father, who could not remember their exact

names, which it was easy to confuse with others of the same kind, opened

a drawer and shewed the securities themselves to the Ambassador. The

sight of them enchanted me. They were ornamented with cathedral spires

and allegorical figures, like the old, romantic editions that I had

pored over as a child. All the products of one period have something in

common; the artists who illustrate the poetry of their generation are

the same artists who are employed by the big financial houses. And

nothing reminds me so much of the monthly parts of _Notre-Dame de

Paris_, and of various books by Gérard de Nerval, that used to hang

outside the grocer's door at Combray, than does, in its rectangular and

flowery border, supported by recumbent river-gods, a "personal share" in

the Water Company.

The contempt which my father had for my kind of intelligence was so far

tempered by his natural affection for me that, in practice, his attitude

towards anything that I might do was one of blind indulgence. And so he

had no qualm about telling me to fetch a little "prose poem" which I had

made up, years before, at Combray, while coming home from a walk. I had

written it down in a state of exaltation which must, I felt certain,

infect everyone who read it. But it was not destined to captivate M. de

Norpois, for he handed it back to me without a word.

My mother, who had the most profound respect for all my father's

occupations, came in now, timidly, to ask whether dinner might be

served. She was afraid to interrupt a conversation in which she herself

could have no part. And indeed my father was continually reminding the

Marquis of some useful suggestion which they had decided to make at the

next meeting of the Commission; speaking in the peculiar tone always

adopted, when in a strange environment by a pair of colleagues--as

exclusive, in this respect, as two young men from the same

college--whose professional routine has furnished them with a common

fund of memories to which the others present have no access, and to

which they are unwilling to refer before an audience.

But the absolute control over his facial muscles to which M. de Norpois

had attained allowed him to listen without seeming to hear a word. At

last my father became uneasy: "I had thought," he ventured, after an

endless preamble, "of asking the advice of the Commission . . ." Then

from the face of the noble virtuoso, who had been sitting inert as a

player in an orchestra sits until the moment comes for him to begin his

part, were uttered, with an even delivery, on a sharp note, and as

though they were no more than the completion (but scored for a different

voice) of the phrase that my father had begun, the words: "of which you

will not hesitate, of course, to call a meeting; more especially as the

present members are all known to you personally, and there may be a

change any day." This was not in itself a very remarkable ending. But

the immobility that had preceded it made it detach itself with the

crystal clarity, the almost malicious unexpectedness of those phrases in

which the piano, silent until then, "takes up", at a given moment, the

violoncello to which one has just been listening, in a Mozart concerto.

"Well, did you enjoy your _matinée?_" asked my father, as we moved to

the dining-room; meaning me to "shew off", and with the idea that my

enthusiasm would give M. de Norpois a good opinion of me. "He has just

been to hear Berma. You remember, we were talking about it the other

day," he went on, turning towards the diplomat, in the same tone of

retrospective, technical, mysterious allusiveness as if he had been

referring to a meeting of the Commission.

"You must have been enchanted, especially if you had never heard her

before. Your father was alarmed at the effect that the little jaunt

might have upon your health, which is none too good, I am told, none too

robust. But I soon set his mind at rest. Theatres to-day are not what

they were even twenty years ago. You have more or less comfortable seats

now, and a certain amount of ventilation, although we have still a long

way to go before we come up to Germany or England, which in that respect

as in many others are immeasurably ahead of us. I have never seen Mme.

Berma in _Phèdre_, but I have always heard that she is excellent in the

part. You were charmed with her, of course?"

M. de Norpois, a man a thousand times more intelligent than myself, must

know that hidden truth which I had failed to extract from Berma's

playing; he knew, and would reveal it to me; in answering his question I

would implore him to let me know in what that truth consisted; and he

would tell me, and so justify me in the longing that I had felt to see

and hear the actress. I had only a moment, I must make what use I could

of it and bring my cross-examination to bear upon the essential points.

But what were they? Fastening my whole attention upon my own so confused

impressions, with no thought of making M. de Norpois admire me, but

only that of learning from him the truth that I had still to discover, I

made no attempt to substitute ready made phrases for the words that

failed me--I stood there stammering, until finally, in the hope of

provoking him into declaring what there was in Berma that was admirable,

I confessed that I had been disappointed.

"What's that?" cried my father, annoyed at the bad impression which this

admission of my failure to appreciate the performance must make on M. de

Norpois, "What on earth do you mean; you didn't enjoy it? Why, your

grandmother has been telling us that you sat there hanging on every word

that Berma uttered, with your eyes starting out of your head; that

everyone else in the theatre seemed quite bored, beside you."

"Oh, yes, I was listening as hard as I could, trying to find out what it

was that was supposed to be so wonderful about her. Of course, she's

frightfully good, and all that . . ."

"If she is 'frightfully good', what more do you want?"

"One of the things that have undoubtedly contributed to the success of

Mme. Berma," resumed M. de Norpois, turning with elaborate courtesy

towards my mother, so as not to let her be left out of the conversation,

and in conscientious fulfilment of his duty of politeness to the lady of

the house, "is the perfect taste that she shews in selecting her parts;

thus she can always be assured of success, and success of the right

sort. She hardly ever appears in anything trivial. Look how she has

thrown herself into the part of Phèdre. And then, she brings the same

good taste to the choice of her costumes, and to her acting. In spite of

her frequent and lucrative tours in England and America, the

vulgarity--I will not say of John Bull; that would be unjust, at any

rate to the England of the Victorian era--but of Uncle Sam has not

infected her. No loud colours, no rant. And then that admirable voice,

which has been of such service to her, with which she plays so

delightfully--I should almost be tempted to describe it as a musical

instrument!"

My interest in Berma's acting had continued to grow ever since the fall

of the curtain, because it was then no longer compressed within the

limits of reality; but I felt the need to find explanations for it;

moreover it had been fixed with the same intensity, while Berma was on

the stage, upon everything that she offered, in the indivisibility of a

living whole, to my eyes and ears; there was nothing separate or

distinct; it welcomed, accordingly, the discovery of a reasonable cause

in these tributes paid to the simplicity, to the good taste of the

actress, it attracted them to itself by its power of absorption, seized

hold of them, as the optimism of a drunken man seizes hold of the

actions of his neighbour, in each of which he finds an excuse for

emotion. "He is right!" I told myself. "What a charming voice, what an

absence of shrillness, what simple costumes, what intelligence to have

chosen _Phèdre._ No; I have not been disappointed!"

The cold beef, spiced with carrots, made its appearance, couched by the

Michelangelo of our kitchen upon enormous crystals of jelly, like

transparent blocks of quartz.

"You have a chef of the first order, Madame," said M. de Norpois, "and

that is no small matter. I myself, who have had, when abroad, to

maintain a certain style in housekeeping, I know how difficult it often

is to find a perfect master-cook. But this is a positive banquet that

you have set before us!"

And indeed Françoise, in the excitement of her ambition to make a

success, for so distinguished a guest, of a dinner the preparation of

which had been obstructed by difficulties worthy of her powers, had

given herself such trouble as she no longer took when we were alone, and

had recaptured her incomparable Combray manner.

"That is a thing you can't get in a chophouse,--in the best of them, I

mean; a spiced beef in which the jelly does not taste of glue and the

beef has caught the flavour of the carrots; it is admirable! Allow me to

come again," he went on, making a sign to shew that he wanted more of

the jelly. "I should be interested to see how your Vatel managed a dish

of quite a different kind; I should like, for instance, to see him

tackle a _bœuf Stroganoff._"

M. de Norpois, so as to add his own contribution to the gaiety of the

repast, entertained us with a number of the stories with which he was in

the habit of regaling his colleagues in "the career", quoting now some

ludicrous sentence uttered by a politician, an old offender, whose

sentences were always long and packed with incoherent images, now some

monumental epigram of a diplomat, sparkling with attic salt. But, to

tell the truth, the criterion which for him set apart these two kinds of

phrase in no way resembled that which I was in the habit of applying to

literature. Most of the finer shades escaped me; the words which he

repeated with derision seemed to me not to differ very greatly from

those which he found remarkable. He belonged to the class of men who,

had we come to discuss the books that I liked, would have said; "So you

understand that, do you? I must confess that I do not understand, I am

not initiated," but I could have matched his attitude, for I did not

grasp the wit or folly, the eloquence or pomposity which he found in a

statement or a speech, and the absence of any perceptible reason for

one's being badly and the other's well expressed made that sort of

literature seem more mysterious, more obscure to me than any other. I

could distinguish only that to repeat what everybody else was thinking

was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.

When M. de Norpois made use of certain expressions which were "common

form" in the newspapers, and uttered them with emphasis, one felt that

they became an official pronouncement by the mere fact of his having

employed them, and a pronouncement which would provoke a string of

comment.

My mother was counting greatly upon the pineapple and truffle salad. But

the Ambassador, after fastening for a moment on the confection the

penetrating gaze of a trained observer, ate it with the inscrutable

discretion of a diplomat, and without disclosing to us what he thought

of it. My mother insisted upon his taking some more, which he did, but

saying only, in place of the compliment for which she was hoping: "I

obey, Madame, for I can see that it is, on your part, a positive ukase!"

"We saw in the 'papers that you had a long talk with King Theodosius,"

my father ventured.

"Why, yes; the King, who has a wonderful memory for faces, was kind

enough to remember, when he noticed me in the stalls, that I had had the

honour to meet him on several occasions at the Court of Bavaria, at a

time when he had never dreamed of his oriental throne--to which, as you

know, he was summoned by a European Congress, and indeed had grave

doubts about accepting the invitation, regarding that particular

sovereignty as unworthy of his race, the noblest, heraldically speaking,

in the whole of Europe. An aide-de-camp came down to bid me pay my

respects to his Majesty, whose command I hastened, naturally, to obey."

"And I trust, you are satisfied with the results of his visit?"

"Enchanted! One was justified in feeling some apprehension as to the

manner in which a Sovereign who is still so young would handle a

situation requiring tact, particularly at this highly delicate juncture.

For my own part, I reposed entire confidence in the King's political

sense. But I must confess that he far surpassed my expectations. The

speech that he made at the Elysée, which, according to information that

has come to me from a most authoritative source, was composed, from

beginning to end, by himself, was fully deserving of the interest that

it has aroused in all quarters. It was simply masterly; a trifle daring,

I quite admit, but with an audacity which, after all, has been fully

justified by the event. Traditional diplomacy is all very well in its

way, but in practice it has made his country and ours live in an

hermetically sealed atmosphere in which it was no longer possible to

breathe. Very well! There is one method of letting in fresh air,

obviously not one of the methods which one could officially recommend,

but one which King Theodosius might allow himself to adopt--and that is

to break the windows. Which he accordingly did, with a spontaneous good

humour that delighted everybody, and also with an aptness in his choice

of words in which one could at once detect the race of scholarly princes

from whom he is descended through his mother. There can be no question

that when he spoke of the 'affinities' that bound his country to France,

the expression, rarely as it may occur in the vocabulary of the

Chancellories, was a singularly happy one. You see that literary ability

is no drawback, even in diplomacy, even upon a throne," he went on,

turning for a moment to myself. "The community of interests had long

been apparent, I quite admit, and the relations of the two Powers were

excellent. Still, it needed putting into words. The word was what we

were all waiting for, it was chosen with marvellous aptitude; you have

seen the effect it had. For my part, I must confess I applauded openly."

"Your friend M. de Vaugoubert will be pleased, after preparing for the

agreement all these years."

"All the more so that his Majesty, who is quite incorrigible, really, in

some ways, had taken care to spring it on him as a surprise. And it did

come as a complete surprise, incidentally, to everyone concerned,

beginning with the Foreign Minister himself, who--I have heard--did not

find it at all to his liking. It appears that someone spoke to him about

it and that he replied, pretty sharply, and loud enough to be overheard

by the people on either side of them: 'I have been neither consulted nor

informed!' indicating clearly by that that he declined to accept any

responsibility for the consequences. I must own that the incident has

given rise to a great deal of comment, and I should not go so far as to

deny," he went on with a malicious smile, "that certain of my

colleagues, for whom the supreme law appears to be that of inertia, may

have been shaken from their habitual repose. As for Vaugoubert, you are

aware that he has been bitterly attacked for his policy of bringing that

country into closer relations with France, which must have been more

than ordinarily painful to him, he is so sensitive, such an exquisite

nature. I can amply testify to that, since, for all that he is

considerably my junior, I have had many dealings with him, we are

friends of long standing and I know him intimately. Besides, who could

help knowing him? His is a heart of crystal. Indeed, that is the one

fault that there is to be found with him; it is not necessary for the

heart of a diplomat to be as transparent as all that. Still, that does

not prevent their talking of sending him to Rome, which would be a fine

rise for him, but a pretty big plum to swallow. Between ourselves, I

fancy that Vaugoubert, utterly devoid of ambition as he is, would be

very well pleased, and would by no means ask for that cup to pass from

him. For all we know, he may do wonders down there; he is the chosen

candidate of the Consulta, and for my part I can see him very well

placed, with his artistic leanings, in the setting of the Farnese Palace

and the Caracci Gallery. At least you would suppose that it was

impossible for any one to hate him; but there is a whole camarilla

collected round King Theodosius which is more or less held in fief by

the Wilhelmstrasse, whose inspiration its members dutifully absorb, and

these men have done everything in their power to checkmate him. Not only

has Vaugoubert had to face these backstairs intrigues, he has had to

endure also the insults of a gang of hireling pamphleteers who later on,

being like every subsidised journalist the most arrant cowards, have

been the first to cry quits, but in the interval had not shrunk from

hurling at our Representative the most fatuous accusations that the wit

of irresponsible fools could invent. For a month and more Vaugoubert's

enemies had been dancing round him, howling for his scalp," M. de

Norpois detached this word with sharp emphasis. "But forewarned is

forearmed; as for their insults, he spurned I them with his foot!" he

went on with even more determination, and with so fierce a glare in his

eye that for a moment we forgot our food. "In the words of a fine Arab

proverb, 'The dogs may bark; the caravan goes on!'"

After launching this quotation M. de Norpois paused and examined our

faces, to see what effect it had had upon us. Its effect was great, the

proverb being familiar to us already. It had taken the place, that year,

among people who "really counted", of "He who sows the wind shall reap

the whirlwind", which was sorely in need of a rest, not having the

perennial freshness of "Working for the King of Prussia". For the

culture of these eminent men was an alternate, if not a tripartite and

triennial culture. Of course, the use of quotations such as these, with

which M. de Norpois excelled in jewelling his articles in the _Revue_,

was in no way essential to their appearing solid and well-informed. Even

without the ornament which the quotations supplied, it sufficed that M.

de Norpois should write at a given point (as he never failed to write):

"The Court of St. James's was not the last to be sensible of the peril,"

or "Feeling ran high on the Singers' Bridge, which with anxious eyes was

following the selfish but, skilful policy of the Dual Monarchy," or "A

cry of alarm sounded from Montecitorio," or yet again, "That everlasting

double dealing which is so characteristic of the Ballplatz." By these

expressions the profane reader had at once recognised and had paid

deference to the diplomat _de carrière._ But what had made people say

that he was something more than that, that he was endowed with a

superior culture, had been his careful use of quotations, the perfect

example of which, at that date, was still: "Give me a good policy and I

will give you good finances, _to quote the favourite words of Baron

Louis_": for we had not yet imported from the Far East: "Victory is on

the side that can hold out a quarter of an hour longer than the other,

_as the Japanese say_". This reputation for immense literary gifts,

combined with a positive genius for intrigue which he kept concealed

beneath a mask of indifference, had secured the election of M. de

Norpois to the Académie des Sciences Morales. And there were some who

even thought that he would not be out of place in the Académie

Française, on the famous day when, wishing to indicate that it was only

by drawing the Russian Alliance closer that we could hope to arrive at

an understanding with Great Britain, he had not hesitated to write: "Be

it clearly understood in the Quai d'Orsay, be it taught henceforward in

all the manuals of geography, which appear to be incomplete in this

respect, be his certificate of graduation remorselessly withheld from

every candidate who has not learned to say, 'If all roads lead to Rome,

nevertheless the way from Paris to London runs of necessity through St.

Petersburgh.'"

"In short," M. de Norpois went on, addressing my father, "Vaugoubert has

won himself considerable distinction from this affair, quite beyond

anything on which he can have reckoned. He expected, you understand, a

correctly worded speech (which, after the storm-clouds of recent years,

would have been something to the good) but nothing more. Several persons

who had the honour to be present have assured me that it is impossible,

when one merely reads the speech, to form any conception of the effect

that it produced when uttered--when articulated with marvellous

clearness of diction by the King, who is a master of the art of public

speaking and in that passage underlined every possible shade of meaning.

I allowed myself, in this connexion, to listen to a little anecdote

which brings into prominence once again that frank, boyish charm by

which King Theodosius has won so many hearts. I am assured that, just as

he uttered that word 'affinities', which was, of course, the startling

innovation of the speech, and one that, as you will see, will provoke

discussion in the Chancellories for years to come, his Majesty,

anticipating the delight of our Ambassador, who was to find in that word

the seal, the crown set upon all his labours, on his dreams, one might

almost say, and, in a word, his marshal's baton, made a half turn

towards Vaugoubert and fixing upon him his arresting gaze, so

characteristic of the Oettingens, fired at him that admirably chosen

word 'affinities', a positive treasure-trove, uttering it in a tone

which made it plain to all his hearers that it was employed of set

purpose and with full knowledge of the circumstances. It appears that

Vaugoubert found some difficulty in mastering his emotion, and I must

confess that, to a certain extent, I can well understand it. Indeed, a

person who is entirely to be believed has told me, in confidence, that

the King came up to Vaugoubert after the dinner, when His Majesty was

holding an informal court, and was heard to say, 'Well, are you

satisfied with your pupil, my dear Marquis?'

"One thing, however," M. de Norpois concluded, "is certain; and that is

that a speech like that has done more than twenty years of negotiation

towards bringing the two countries together, uniting their 'affinities',

to borrow the picturesque expression of Theodosius II. It is no more

than a word, if you like, but look what success it has had, how the

whole of the European press is repeating it, what interest it has

aroused, what a new note it has struck. Besides it is distinctly in the

young Sovereign's manner. I will not go so far as to say that he lights

upon a diamond of that water every day. But it is very seldom that, in

his prepared speeches, or better still in the impulsive flow of his

conversation, he does not reveal his character--I was on the point of

saying 'does not affix his signature'--by the use of some incisive word.

I myself am quite free from any suspicion of partiality in this respect,

for I am stoutly opposed to all innovations in terminology. Nine times

out of ten they are most dangerous."

"Yes, I was thinking, only the other day, that the German Emperor's

telegram could not be much to your liking," said my father.

M. de Norpois raised his eyes to heaven, as who should say, "Oh, that

fellow!" before he replied: "In the first place, it is an act of

ingratitude. It is more than a crime; it is a blunder, and one of a

crassness which I can describe only as pyramidal! Indeed, unless some

one puts a check on his activities, the man who has got rid of Bismarck

is quite capable of repudiating by degrees the whole of the Bismarckian

policy; after which it will be a leap in the dark."

"My husband tells me, sir, that you are perhaps going to take him to

Spain one summer; that will be nice for him; I am so glad."

"Why, yes; it is an idea that greatly attracts me; I amuse myself,

planning a tour. I should like to go there with you, my dear fellow. But

what about you, Madame; have you decided yet how you are going to spend

your holidays?"

"I shall perhaps go with my son to Balbec, but I am not certain."

"Oh, but Balbec is quite charming, I was down that way a few years ago.

They are beginning to build some very pretty little villas there; I

think you'll like the place. But may I ask what has made you choose

Balbec?"

"My son is very anxious to visit some of the churches in that

neighbourhood, and Balbec church in particular. I was a little afraid

that the tiring journey there, and the discomfort of staying in the

place might be too much for him. But I hear that they have just opened

an excellent hotel, in which he will be able to get all the comfort that

he requires."

"Indeed! I must make a note of that, for a certain person who will not

turn up her nose at a comfortable hotel."

"The church at Balbec is very beautiful, sir, is it not?" I inquired,

repressing my sorrow at learning that one of the attractions of Balbec

consisted in its pretty little villas.

"No, it is not bad; but it cannot be compared for a moment with such

positive jewels in stone as the Cathedrals of Rheims and Chartres, or

with what is to my mind the pearl among them all, the Sainte-Chapelle

here in Paris."

"But, surely, Balbec church is partly romanesque, is it not?"

"Why, yes, it is in the romanesque style, which is to say very cold and

lifeless, with no hint in it anywhere of the grace, the fantasy of the

later gothic builders, who worked their stone as if it had been so much

lace. Balbec church is well worth a visit, if you are in those parts; it

is decidedly quaint; on a wet day, when you have nothing better to do,

you might look inside; you will see the tomb of Tourville."

"Tell me, were you at the Foreign Ministry dinner last night?" asked my

father. "I couldn't go."

"No," M. de Norpois smiled, "I must confess that I renounced it for a

party of a very different sort. I was, dining with a lady whose name you

may possibly have heard, the beautiful Mme. Swann." My mother checked an

impulsive movement, for, being more rapid in perception than my father,

she used to alarm herself on his account over things which only began to

upset him a moment later. Anything unpleasant that might occur to him

was discovered first by her, just as bad news from France is always

known abroad sooner than among ourselves. But she was curious to know

what sort of people the Swanns managed to entertain, and so inquired of

M. de Norpois as to whom he had met there.

"Why, my dear lady, it is a house which (or so it struck me) is

especially attractive to gentlemen. There were several married men there

last night, but their wives were all, as it happened, unwell, and so had

not come with them," replied the Ambassador with a mordancy sheathed in

good-humour, casting on each of us a glance the gentleness and

discretion of which appeared to be tempering while in reality they

deftly intensified its malice.

"In all fairness," he went on, "I must add that women do go to the

house, but women who belong rather--what shall I say--to the Republican

world than to Swann's" (he pronounced it "Svann's") "circle. Still, you

can never tell. Perhaps it will turn into a political or a literary

salon some day. Anyhow, they appear to be quite happy as they are.

Indeed, I feel that Swann advertises his happiness just a trifle too

blatantly. He told us the names of all the people who had asked him and

his wife out for the next week, people with whom there was no particular

reason to be proud of being intimate, with a want of reserve, of taste,

almost of tact which I was astonished to remark in so refined a man. He

kept on repeating, 'We haven't a free evening!' as though that had been

a thing to boast of, positively like a _parvenu_, and he is certainly

not that. For Swann had always plenty of friends, women as well as men,

and without seeming over-bold, without the least wish to appear

indiscreet, I think I may safely say that not all of them, of course,

nor even the majority of them, but one at least, who is a lady of the

very highest rank, would perhaps not have shewn herself inexorably

averse from the idea of entering upon relations with Mme. Swann, in

which case it is safe to assume that more than one sheep of the social

flock would have followed her lead. But it seems that there has been no

indication on Swann's part of any movement in that direction.

"What do I see? A Nesselrode pudding! As well! I declare, I shall need a

course at Carlsbad after such a Lucullus-feast as this.

"Possibly Swann felt that there would be too much resistance to

overcome. The marriage--so much is certain--was not well received. There

has been some talk of his wife's having money, but that is all humbug.

Anyhow, the whole affair has been looked upon with disfavour. And then,

Swann has an aunt who is excessively rich and in an admirable position

socially, married to a man who, financially speaking, is a power. Not

only has she refused to meet Mme. Swann, she has actually started a

campaign to force her friends and acquaintance to do the same. I do not

mean to say that anyone who moves in a good circle in Paris has shewn

any actual incivility to Mme. Swann. . . . No! A hundred times no! Quite

apart from her husband's being eminently a man to take up the challenge.

Anyhow, there is one curious thing about it, to see the immense

importance that Swann, who knows so many and such exclusive people,

attaches to a society of which the best that can be said is that it is

extremely mixed. I myself, who knew him in the old days, must admit that

I felt more astonished than amused at seeing a man so well-bred as he

is, so much at home in the best houses, effusively thanking the Chief

Secretary to the Minister of Posts for having come to them, and asking

him whether Mme. Swann might _take the liberty_ of calling upon his

wife. He must feel something of an exile, don't you know; evidently,

it's quite a different world. I don't think, all the same, that Swann is

unhappy. It is true that for some years before the marriage she was

always trying to blackmail him in a rather disgraceful way; she would

take the child away whenever Swann refused her anything. Poor Swann, who

is as unsophisticated as he is, for all that, sharp, believed every time

that the child's disappearance was a coincidence, and declined to face

the facts. Apart from that, she made such continual scenes that everyone

expected that, from the day she attained her object and was safely

married, nothing could possibly restrain her and that their life would

be a hell on earth. Instead of which, just the opposite has happened.

People are inclined to laugh at the way in which Swann speaks of his

wife; it's become a standing joke. Of course, one could hardly expect

that, conscious, more or less of being a--(you remember Molière's line)

he would go and proclaim it _urbi et orbi_; still that does not prevent

one from finding a tendency in him to exaggerate when he declares that

she makes an excellent wife. And yet that is not so far from the truth

as people imagine. In her own way--which is not, perhaps, what all

husbands would prefer, but then, between you and me, I find it difficult

to believe that Swann, who has known her for ever so long and is far

from being an utter fool, did not know what to expect--there can be no

denying that she does seem to have a certain regard for him. I do not

say that she is not flighty, and Swann himself has no fault to find with

her for that, if one is to believe the charitable tongues which, as you

may suppose, continue to wag. But she is distinctly grateful to him for

what he has done for her, and, despite die fears that were everywhere

expressed of the contrary, her temper seems to have become angelic."

This alteration was perhaps not so extraordinary as M. de Norpois

professed to find it. Odette had not believed that Swann would ever

consent to marry her; each time that she made the suggestive

announcement that some man about town had just married his mistress she

had seen him stiffen into a glacial silence, or at the most, if she were

directly to challenge him, asking: "Don't you think it very nice, a very

fine thing that he has done, for a woman who sacrificed all her youth to

him?" had heard him answer dryly: "But I don't say that there's anything

wrong in it. Everyone does what he himself thinks right." She came very

near, indeed, to believing that (as he used to threaten in moments of

anger) he was going to leave her altogether, for she had heard it said,

not long since, by a woman sculptor, that "You cannot be surprised at

anything men do, they're such brutes," and impressed by the profundity

of this maxim of pessimism she had appropriated it for herself, and

repeated it on every possible occasion with an air of disappointment

which seemed to imply: "After all, it's not impossible in any way; it

would be just my luck." Meanwhile all the virtue had gone from the

optimistic maxim which had hitherto guided Odette through life: "You can

do anything with men when they're in love with you, they're such

idiots!" a doctrine which was expressed on her face by the same tremor

of an eyelid that might have accompanied such words as: "Don't be

frightened; he won't break anything." While she waited, Odette was

tormented by the thought of what one of her friends, who had been

married by a man who had not lived with her for nearly so long as Odette

herself had lived with Swann, and had had no child by him, and who was

now in a definitely respectable position, invited to the balls at the

Elysée and so forth, must think of Swann's behaviour. A consultant more

discerning than M. de Norpois would doubtless have been able to diagnose

that it was this feeling of shame and humiliation that had embittered

Odette, that the devilish characteristics which she displayed were no

essential part of her, no irremediable evil, and so would easily have

foretold what had indeed come to pass, namely that a new rule of life,

the matrimonial, would put an end, with almost magic swiftness, to these

painful incidents, of daily occurrence but in no sense organic.

Practically everyone was surprised at the marriage, and this, in itself,

is surprising. No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective

nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to

speak, a fresh, a third, a supplementary person, distinct from the

person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose

constituent elements are derived from ourself, the lover. And so there

are very few who can regard as natural the enormous proportions that a

creature comes to assume in our eyes who is not the same as the creature

that they see. It would appear, none the less, that so far as Odette was

concerned people might have taken into account the fact that if, indeed,

she had never entirely understood Swann's mentality, at least she was

acquainted with the titles, and with all the details of his studies, so

much so that the name of Vermeer was as familiar to her as that of her

own dressmaker; while as for Swann himself she knew intimately those

traits of character of which the rest of the world must remain ignorant

or merely laugh at them, and only a mistress or a sister may gain

possession of the revealing, cherished image; and so strongly are we

attached to such eccentricities, even to those of them which we are most

anxious to correct, that it is because a woman comes in time to acquire

an indulgent, an affectionately mocking familiarity, such as we

ourselves have with them, or our relatives have, that amours of long

standing have something of the sweetness and strength of family

affection. The bonds that unite us to another creature receive their

consecration when that creature adopts the same point of view as ourself

in judging one of our imperfections. And among these special traits

there were others, besides, which belonged as much to his intellect as

to his character, which, all the same, because they had their roots in

the latter, Odette had been able more easily to discern. She complained

that when Swann turned author, when he published his essays, these

characteristics were not to be found in them as they were in his

letters, or in his conversation, where they abounded. She urged him to

give them a more prominent place. She would have liked that because it

was these things that she herself preferred in him, but since she

preferred them because they were the things most typical of himself, she

was perhaps not wrong in wishing that they might be found in his

writings. Perhaps also she thought that his work, if endowed with more

vitality, so that it ultimately brought him success, might enable her

also to form what at the Verdurins' she had been taught to value above

everything else in the world--a salon.

Among the people to whom this sort of marriage appeared ridiculous,

people who in their own case would ask themselves, "What will M. de

Guermantes think, what will Bréauté say when I marry Mlle. de

Montmorency?", among the people who cherished that sort of social ideal

would have figured, twenty years earlier, Swann himself, the Swann who

had taken endless pains to get himself elected to the Jockey Club, and

had reckoned at that time on making a brilliant marriage which, by

consolidating his position, would have made him one of the most

conspicuous figures in Paris. Only, the visions which a marriage like

that suggests to the mind of the interested party need, like all

visions, if they are not to fade away and be altogether lost, to receive

sustenance from without. Your most ardent longing is to humiliate the

man who has insulted you. But if you never hear of him again, having

removed to some other place, your enemy will come to have no longer the

slightest importance for you. If one has lost sight for a score of years

of all the people on whose account one would have liked to be elected to

the Jockey Club or the Institute, the prospect of becoming a member of

one or other of those corporations will have ceased to tempt one. Now

fully as much as retirement, ill-health or religious conversion,

protracted relations with a woman will substitute fresh visions for the

old. There was not on Swann's part, when he married Odette, any

renunciation of his social ambitions, for from these ambitions Odette

had long ago, in the spiritual sense of the word, detached him. Besides,

had he not been so detached, his marriage would have been all the more

creditable. It is because they imply the sacrifice of a more or less

advantageous position to a purely private happiness that, as a general

rule, "impossible" marriages are the happiest of all. (One cannot very

well include among the "impossible" marriages those that are made for

money, there being no instance on record of a couple, of whom the wife

or even the husband has thus sold himself, who have not sooner or later

been admitted into society, if only by tradition, and on the strength of

so many precedents, and so as not to have two conflicting standards.)

Perhaps, on the other hand, the artistic, if not the perverse side of

Swann's nature would in any event have derived a certain amount of

pleasure from coupling with himself, in one of those crossings of

species such as Mendelians practise and mythology records, a creature of

a different race, archduchess or prostitute, from contracting a royal

alliance or from marrying beneath him. There had been but one person in

all the world whose opinion he took into consideration whenever he

thought of his possible marriage with Odette; that was, and from no

snobbish motive, the Duchesse de Guermantes. With whom Odette, on the

contrary, was but little concerned, thinking only of those people whose

position was immediately above her own, rather than in so vague an

empyrean. But when Swann in his daydreams saw Odette as already his wife

he invariably formed a picture of the moment in which he would take

her--her, and above all her daughter--to call upon the Princesse des

Laumes (who was shortly, on the death of her father-in-law, to become

Duchesse de Guermantes). He had no desire to introduce them anywhere

else, but his heart would soften as he invented--uttering their actual

words to himself--all the things that the Duchess would say of him to

Odette, and Odette to the Duchess, the affection that she would shew for

Gilberte, spoiling her, making him proud of his child. He enacted to

himself the scene of this introduction with the same precision in each

of its imaginary details that people shew when they consider how they

would spend, supposing they were to win it, a lottery prize the amount

of which they have arbitrarily determined. In so far as a mental picture

which accompanies one of our resolutions may be said to be its motive,

so it might be said that if Swann married Odette it was in order to

present her and Gilberte, without anyone's else being present, without,

if need be, anyone's else ever coming to know of it, to the Duchesse de

Guermantes. We shall see how this sole social ambition that he had

entertained for his wife and daughter was precisely that one the

realisation of which proved to be forbidden him by a veto so absolute

that Swann died in the belief that the Duchess would never possibly come

to know them. We shall see also that, on the contrary, the Duchesse de

Guermantes did associate with Odette and Gilberte after the death of

Swann. And doubtless he would have been wiser--seeing that he could

attach so much importance to so small a matter--not to have formed too

dark a picture of the future, in this connexion, but to have consoled

himself with the hope that the meeting of the ladies might indeed take

place when he was no longer there to enjoy it. The laborious process of

causation which sooner or later will bring about every possible effect,

including (consequently) those which one had believed to be most nearly

impossible, naturally slow at times, is rendered slower still by our

impatience (which in seeking to accelerate only obstructs it) and by our

very existence, and comes to fruition only when we have ceased to desire

it--have ceased, possibly, to live. Was not Swann conscious of this from

his own experience, had there not been already, in his life, as it were

a prefiguration of what was to happen after his death, a posthumous

happiness in this marriage with this Odette whom he had passionately

loved--even if she had not been pleasing to him at first sight--whom he

had married when he no longer loved her, when the creature that, in

Swann, had so longed to live, had so despaired of living all its life in

company with Odette, when that creature was extinct?

I began next to speak of the Comte de Paris, to ask whether he was not

one of Swann's friends, for I was afraid lest the conversation should

drift away from him. "Why, yes!" replied M. de Norpois, turning towards

me and fixing upon my modest person the azure gaze in which floated, as

in their vital element, his immense capacity for work and his power of

assimilation. And "Upon my word," he added, once more addressing my

father, "I do not think that I shall be overstepping the bounds of the

respect which I have always professed for the Prince (though without,

you understand, maintaining any personal relations with him, which would

inevitably compromise my position, unofficial as that may be), if I tell

you of a little episode which is not without point; no more than four

years ago, at a small railway station in one of the countries of Central

Europe, the Prince happened to set eyes on Mme. Swann. Naturally, none

of his circle ventured to ask his Royal Highness what he thought of her.

That would not have been seemly. But when her name came up by chance in

conversation, by certain signs--imperceptible, if you like, but quite

unmistakable--the Prince appeared willing enough to let it be understood

that his impression of her had, in a word, been far from unfavourable."

"But there could have been no possibility, surely, of her being

presented to the Comte de Paris?" inquired my father.

"Well, we don't know; with Princes one never does know," replied M. de

Norpois. "The most exalted, those who know best how to secure what is

due to them, are as often as not the last to let themselves be

embarrassed by the decrees of popular opinion, even by those for which

there is most justification, especially when it is a question of their

rewarding a personal attachment to themselves. Now it is certain that

the Comte de Paris has always most graciously recognised the devotion of

Swann, who is, for that matter, a man of character, in spite of it all."

"And what was your own impression, your Excellency? Do tell us!" my

mother asked, from politeness as well as from curiosity.

All the energy of the old connoisseur broke through the habitual

moderation of his speech as he answered: "Quite excellent!"

And knowing that the admission that a strong impression has been made on

one by a woman takes its place, provided that one makes it in a playful

tone, in a certain category of the art of conversation that is highly

appreciated, he broke into a little laugh that lasted for several

seconds, moistening the old diplomat's blue eyes and making his

nostrils, with their network of tiny scarlet veins, quiver. "She is

altogether charming!"

"Was there a writer of the name of Bergotte at this dinner, sir?" I

asked timidly, still trying to keep the conversation to the subject of

the Swanns.

"Yes, Bergotte was there," replied M. de Norpois, inclining his head

courteously towards me, as though in his desire to be pleasant to my

father he attached to everything connected with him a real importance,

even to the questions of a boy of my age who was not accustomed to see

such politeness shewn to him by persons of his. "Do you know him?" he

went on, fastening on me that clear gaze, the penetration of which had

won the praise of Bismarck.

"My son does not know him, but he admires his work immensely," my mother

explained.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed M. de Norpois, inspiring me with doubts of my

own intelligence far more serious than those that ordinarily distracted

me, when I saw that what I valued a thousand times more than myself,

what I regarded as the most exalted thing in the world, was for him at

the very foot of the scale of admiration. "I do not share your son's

point of view. Bergotte is what I call a flute-player: one must admit

that he plays on it very agreeably, although with a great deal of

mannerism, of affectation. But when all is said, it is no more than

that, and that is nothing very great. Nowhere does one find in his

enervated writings anything that could be called construction. No

action--or very little--but above all no range. His books fail at the

foundation, or rather they have no foundation at all. At a time like the

present, when the ever increasing complexity of life leaves one scarcely

a moment for reading, when the map of Europe has undergone radical

alterations, and is on the eve, very probably, of undergoing others more

drastic still, when so many new and threatening problems are arising on

every side, you will allow me to suggest that one is entitled to ask

that a writer should be something else than a fine intellect which makes

us forget, amid otiose and byzantine discussions of the merits of pure

form, that we may be overwhelmed at any moment by a double tide of

barbarians, those from without and those from within our borders. I am

aware that this is a blasphemy against the sacrosanct school of what

these gentlemen term 'Art for Art's sake', but at this period of history

there are tasks more urgent than the manipulation of words in a

harmonious manner. Not that Bergotte's manner is not now and then quite

attractive. I have no fault to find with that, but taken as a whole, it

is all very precious, very thin, and has very little virility. I can now

understand more easily, when I bear in mind your altogether excessive

regard for Bergotte, the few lines that you shewed me just now, which it

would have been unfair to you not to overlook, since you yourself told

me, in all simplicity, that they were merely a childish scribbling." (I

had, indeed, said so, but I did not think anything of the sort.) "For

every sin there is forgiveness, and especially for the sins of youth.

After all, others as well as yourself have such sins upon their

conscience, and you are not the only one who has believed himself to be

a poet in his day. But one can see in what you have shewn me the evil

influence of Bergotte. You will not, of course, be surprised when I say

that there was in it none of his good qualities, since he is a

past-master in the art--incidentally quite superficial--of handling a

certain style of which, at your age, you cannot have acquired even the

rudiments. But already there is the same fault, that paradox of

stringing together fine-sounding words and only afterwards troubling

about what they mean. That is putting the cart before the horse, even in

Bergotte's books. All those Chinese puzzles of form, all these

deliquescent mandarin subtleties seem to me to be quite futile. Given a

few fireworks, let off prettily enough by an author, and up goes the

shout of genius. Works of genius are not so common as all that! Bergotte

cannot place to his credit--does not carry in his baggage, if I may use

the expression--a single novel that is at all lofty in its conception,

any of those books which one keeps in a special corner of one's library.

I do not discover one such in the whole of his work. But that does not

exclude the fact that, with him, the work is infinitely superior to the

author. Ah! there is a man who justifies the wit who insisted that one

ought never to know an author except through his books. It would be

impossible to imagine an individual who corresponded less to his--more

pretentious, more pompous, less fitted for human society. Vulgar at some

moments, at others talking like a book, and not even like one of his

own, but like a boring book, which his, to do them justice, are

not--such is your Bergotte. He has the most confused mind, alembicated,

what our ancestors called a _diseur de phébus_, and he makes the things

that he says even more unpleasant by the manner in which he says them. I

forget for the moment whether it is Loménie or Sainte-Beuve who tells

us that Vigny repelled people by the same eccentricity. But Bergotte has

never given us a _Cinq-Mars_, or a _Cachet Rouge_, certain pages of

which are regular anthology pieces."

Paralysed by what M. de Norpois had just said to me with regard to the

fragment which I had submitted to him, and remembering at the same time

the difficulties that I experienced when I attempted to write an essay

or merely to devote myself to serious thought, I felt conscious once

again of my intellectual nullity and that I was not born for a literary

life. Doubtless in the old days at Combray certain impressions of a very

humble order, or a few pages of Bergotte used to plunge me into a state

of musing which had appeared to me to be of great value. But this state

was what my poem in prose reflected; there could be no doubt that M. de

Norpois had at once grasped and had seen through the fallacy of what I

had discovered to be beautiful simply by a mirage that must be entirely

false since the Ambassador had not been taken in by it. He had shewn me,

on the other hand, what an infinitely unimportant place was mine when I

was judged from outside, objectively, by the best-disposed and most

intelligent of experts. I felt myself to be struck speechless,

overwhelmed; and my mind, like a fluid which is without dimensions save

those of the vessel that is provided for it, just as it had been

expanded a moment ago so as to fill all the vast capacity of genius,

contracted now was entirely contained in the straitened mediocrity in

which M. de Norpois had of a sudden enclosed and sealed it.