Chapter XXXI: Part II (14)

If the Duke and Duchess had not been still at Cannes, I might have tried to find out from them whether the invitation which I had received was genuine. This state of doubt in which I was plunged was not due, as I flattered myself for a time by supposing, to a sentiment which a man of fashion would not have felt and which, consequently, a writer, even if he belonged apart from his writership to the fashionable caste, ought to reproduce in order to be thoroughly “objective” and to depict each class differently. I happened, in fact, only the other day, in a charming volume of memoirs, to come upon the record of uncertainties analogous to those which the Princesse de Guermantes’s card made me undergo. “Georges and I” (or “Hély and I”, I have not the book at hand to verify the reference) “were so keen to be asked to Mme. Delessert’s that, having received an invitation from her, we thought it prudent, each of us independently, to make certain that we were not the victims of an April fool.” Now, the writer is none other than the Comte d’Haussonville (he who married the Duc de Broglie’s daughter) and the other young man who “independently” makes sure that he is not having a practical joke played on him is, according to whether he is called Georges or Hély, one or other of the two inseparable friends of M. d’Haussonville, either M. d’Harcourt or the Prince de Chalais.

The day on which the party was to be given at the Princesse de Guermantes’s, I learned that the Duke and Duchess had just returned to Paris. The Princess’s ball would not have brought them back, but one of their cousins was seriously ill, and moreover the Duke was greatly taken up with a revel which was to be held the same night, and at which he himself was to appear as Louis XI and his wife as Isabel of Bavaria. And I determined to go and see her that morning. But, having gone out early, they had not yet returned; I watched first of all from a little room, which had seemed to me to be a good look-out post, for the arrival of their carriage. As a matter of fact I had made a singularly bad choice in my observatory from which I could barely make out our courtyard, but I did see into several others, and this, though of no value to me, occupied my mind for a time. It is not only in Venice that one has those outlooks on to several houses at once which have proved so tempting to painters; it is just the same in Paris. Nor do I cite Venice at random. It is of its poorer quarters that certain poor quarters of Paris make one think, in the morning, with their tall, wide chimneys to which the sun imparts the most vivid pinks, the brightest reds; it is a whole garden that flowers above the houses, and flowers in such a variety of tints that one would call it, planted on top of the town, the garden of a tulip-fancier of Delft or Haarlem. And then also, the extreme proximity of the houses, with their windows looking opposite one another on to a common courtyard, makes of each casement the frame in which a cook sits dreamily gazing down at the ground below, in which farther off a girl is having her hair combed by an old woman with the face, barely distinguishable in the shadow, of a witch: thus each courtyard provides for the adjoining house, by suppressing all sound in its interval, by leaving visible a series of silent gestures in a series of rectangular frames, glazed by the closing of the windows, an exhibition of a hundred Dutch paintings hung in rows. Certainly from the Hôtel de Guermantes one did not have the same kind of view, but one had curious views also, especially from the strange trigonometrical point at which I had placed myself and from which one’s gaze was arrested by nothing nearer than the distant heights formed by the comparatively vague plots of ground which preceded, on a steep slope, the mansion of the Marquise de Plassac and Mme. de Tresmes, cousins (of the most noble category) of M. de Guermantes, whom I did not know. Between me and this house (which was that of their father, M. de Bréquigny) nothing but blocks of buildings of low elevation, facing in every conceivable direction, which, without blocking the view, increased the distance with their diagonal perspective. The red-tiled turret of the coach-house in which the Marquis de Frécourt kept his carriages did indeed end in a spire that rose rather higher, but was so slender that it concealed nothing, and made one think of those picturesque old buildings in Switzerland which spring up in isolation at the foot of a mountain. All these vague and divergent points on which my eyes rested made more distant apparently than if it had been separated from us by several streets or by a series of foothills the house of Mme. de Plassac, actually quite near but chimerically remote as in an Alpine landscape. When its large paned windows, glittering in the sunlight like flakes of rock crystal, were thrown open so as to air the rooms, one felt, in following from one floor to the next the footmen whom it was impossible to see clearly but who were visibly shaking carpets, the same pleasure as when one sees in a landscape by Turner or Elstir a traveller in a mail-coach, or a guide, at different degrees of altitude on the Saint-Gothard. But from this point of view in which I had ensconced myself I should have been in danger of not seeing M. or Mme. de Guermantes come in, so that when in the afternoon I was free to resume my survey I simply stood on the staircase, from which the opening of the carriage-gate could not escape my notice, and it was on this staircase that I posted myself, albeit there did not appear there, so entrancing with their footmen rendered minute by distance and busily cleaning, the Alpine beauties of the Bréquigny-Tresmes mansion. Now this wait on the staircase was to have for me consequences so considerable, and to reveal to me a picture no longer Turneresque but ethical, of so great importance, that it is preferable to postpone the account of it for a little while by interposing first that of my visit to the Guermantes when I knew that they had come home. It was the Duke alone who received me in the library. As I went in there came out a little man with snow-white hair, a look of poverty, a little black neckcloth such as was worn by the lawyer at Combray and by several of my grandfather’s friends, but of a more timid aspect than they, who, making me a series of profound bows, refused absolutely to go downstairs until I had passed him. The Duke shouted after him from the library something which I did not understand, and the other responded with further bows, addressed to the wall, for the Duke could not see him, but endlessly repeated nevertheless, like the purposeless smiles on the faces of people who are talking to one over the telephone; he had a falsetto voice, and saluted me afresh with the humility of a man of business. And he might, for that matter, have been a man of business from Combray, so much was he in the style, provincial, out of date and mild, of the small folk, the modest elders of those parts. “You shall see Oriane in a minute,” the Duke told me when I had entered the room. “As Swann is coming in presently and bringing her the proofs of his book on the coinage of the Order of Malta, and, what is worse, an immense photograph he has had taken shewing both sides of each of the coins, Oriane preferred to get dressed early so that she can stay with him until it’s time to go out to dinner. We have such a heap of things in the house already that we don’t know where to put them all, and I ask myself where on earth we are going to stick this photograph. But I have too good-natured a wife, who is too fond of giving people pleasure. She thought it would be polite to ask Swann to let her see side by side on one sheet the heads of all those Grand Masters of the Order whose medals he has found at Rhodes. I said Malta, didn’t I, it is Rhodes, but it’s all the same Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, she is interested in them only because Swann makes a hobby of it. Our family is very much mixed up in the whole story; even at the present day, my brother, whom you know, is one of the highest dignitaries in the Order of Malta. But I might have told all that to Oriane, she simply wouldn’t have listened to me. On the other hand, it was quite enough that Swann’s researches into the Templars (it’s astonishing the passion that people of one religion have for studying others) should have led him on to the history of the Knights of Rhodes, who succeeded the Templars, for Oriane at once to insist on seeing the heads of these Knights. They were very small fry indeed compared with the Lusignans, Kings of Cyprus, from whom we descend in a direct line. But so far, as Swann hasn’t taken them up, Oriane doesn’t care to hear anything about the Lusignans.” I could not at once explain to the Duke why I had come. What happened was that several relatives or friends, including Mme. de Silistrie and the Duchesse de Montrose, came to pay a call on the Duchess, who was often at home before dinner, and not finding her there stayed for a short while with the Duke. The first of these ladies (the Princesse de Silistrie), simply attired, with a dry but friendly manner, carried a stick in her hand. I was afraid at first that she had injured herself, or was a cripple. She was on the contrary most alert. She spoke regretfully to the Duke of a first cousin of his own—not on the Guermantes side, but more illustrious still, were that possible—whose health, which had been in a grave condition for some time past, had grown suddenly worse. But it was evident that the Duke, while full of pity for his cousin’s lot, and repeating “Poor Mama! He’s such a good fellow!” had formed a favourable prognosis. The fact was that the dinner at which the Duke was to be present amused him, the big party at the Princesse de Guermantes’s did not bore him, but above all he was to go on at one o’clock in the morning with his wife to a great supper and costume ball, with a view to which a costume of Louis XI for himself, and one of Isabel of Bavaria for his wife were waiting in readiness. And the Duke was determined not to be disturbed amid all these gaieties by the sufferings of the worthy Amanien d’Osmond. Two other ladies carrying sticks, Mme. de Plassac and Mme. de Tresmes, both daughters of the Comte de Bréquigny, came in next to pay Basin a visit, and declared that cousin Mama’s state left no room now for hope. The Duke shrugged his shoulders, and to change the conversation asked whether they were going that evening to Marie-Gilbert’s. They replied that they were not, in view of the state of Amanien who was in his last agony, and indeed they had excused themselves from the dinner to which the Duke was going, the other guests at which they proceeded to enumerate: the brother of King Theodosius, the Infanta Maria Concepcion, and so forth. As the Marquis d’Osmond was less nearly related to them than he was to Basin, their “defection” appeared to the Duke to be a sort of indirect reproach aimed at his own conduct. And so, albeit they had come down from the heights of the Bréquigny mansion to see the Duchess (or rather to announce to her the alarming character, incompatible for his relatives with attendance at social gatherings, of their cousin’s illness) they did not stay long, and, each armed with her alpenstock, Walpurge and Dorothée (such were the names of the two sisters) retraced the craggy path to their citadel. I never thought of asking the Guermantes what was the meaning of these sticks, so common in a certain part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Possibly, looking upon the whole parish as their domain, and not caring to hire cabs, they were in the habit of taking long walks, for which some old fracture, due to immoderate indulgence in the chase, and to the falls from horseback which are often the fruit of that indulgence, or simply rheumatism caused by the dampness of the left bank and of old country houses made a stick necessary. Perhaps they had not set out upon any such long expedition through the quarter, but, having merely come down into their garden (which lay at no distance from that of the Duchess) to pick the fruit required for stewing, had looked in on their way home to bid good evening to Mme. de Guermantes, though without going so far as to bring a pair of shears or a watering-can into her house. The Duke appeared touched that I should have come to see them so soon after their return to Paris. But his face grew dark when I told him that I had come to ask his wife to find out whether her cousin really had invited me. I had touched upon one of those services which M. and Mme. de Guermantes were not fond of rendering. The Duke explained to me that it was too late, that if the Princess had not sent me an invitation it would make him appear to be asking her for one, that his cousins had refused him one once before, and he had no wish to appear either directly or indirectly to be interfering with their visiting list, be “meddling”; finally, he could not even be sure that he and his wife, who were dining out that evening, would not come straight home afterwards, that in that case their best excuse for not having gone to the Princess’s party would be to conceal from her the fact of their return to Paris, instead of hastening to inform her of it, as they must do if they sent her a note, or spoke to her over the telephone about me, and certainly too late to be of any use, since, in all probability, the Princess’s list of guests would be closed by now. “You’ve not fallen foul of her in any way?” he asked in a suspicious tone, the Guermantes living in a constant fear of not being informed of the latest society quarrels, and so of people’s trying to climb back into favour on their shoulders. Finally, as the Duke was in the habit of taking upon himself all decisions that might seem not very good-natured: “Listen, my boy,” he said to me suddenly, as though the idea had just come into his head, “I would really rather not mention at all to Oriane that you have been speaking to me about it. You know how kind-hearted she is; besides, she has an enormous regard for you, she would insist on sending to ask her cousin, in spite of anything I might say to the contrary, and if she is tired after dinner, there will be no getting out of it, she will be forced to go to the party. No, decidedly, I shall say nothing to her about it. Anyhow, you will see her yourself in a minute. But not a word about that matter, I beg of you. If you decide to go to the party, I have no need to tell you what a pleasure it will be to us to spend the evening there with you.” The motives actuating humanity are too sacred for him before whom they are invoked not to bow to them, whether he believes them to be sincere or not; I did not wish to appear to be weighing in the balance for a moment the relative importance of my invitation and the possible tiredness of Mme. de Guermantes, and I promised not to speak to her of the object of my visit, exactly as though I had been taken in by the little farce which M. de Guermantes had performed for my benefit. I asked him if he thought there was any chance of my seeing Mme. de Stermaria at the Princess’s. “Why, no,” he replied with the air of an expert; “I know the name you mention, from having seen it in lists of club members, it is not at all the type of person who goes to Gilbert’s. You will see nobody there who is not excessively proper and intensely boring, duchesses bearing titles which one thought were extinct years ago and which they have revived for the occasion, all the Ambassadors, heaps of Coburgs, foreign royalties, but you mustn’t hope for the ghost of a Stermaria. Gilbert would be taken ill at the mere thought of such a thing.

“Wait now, you’re fond of painting, I must shew you a superb picture I bought from my cousin, partly in exchange for the Elstirs, which frankly did not appeal to us. It was sold to me as a Philippe de Champaigne, but I believe myself that it’s by some one even greater. Would you like to know my idea? I believe it to be a Velazquez, and of the best period,” said the Duke, looking me boldly in the eyes, whether to learn my impression or in the hope of enhancing it. A footman came in. “Mme. la Duchesse has told me to ask M. le Duc if M. le Duc will be so good as to see M. Swann, as Mme. la Duchesse is not quite ready.” “Shew M. Swann in,” said the Duke, after looking at his watch and seeing that he had still a few minutes before he need go to dress. “Naturally my wife, who told him to come, is not ready. There’s no use saying anything before Swann about Marie-Gilbert’s party,” said the Duke. “I don’t know whether he’s been invited. Gilbert likes him immensely, because he believes him to be the natural grandson of the Duc de Berri, but that’s a long story. (Otherwise, you can imagine! My cousin, who falls in a fit if he sees a Jew a mile off.) But now, don’t you see, the Dreyfus case has made things more serious. Swann ought to have realised that he more than anyone must drop all connexion with those fellows, instead of which he says the most offensive things.” The Duke called back the footman to know whether the man who had been sent to inquire at cousin Osmond’s had returned. His plan was as follows: as he believed, and rightly, that his cousin was dying, he was anxious to obtain news of him before his death, that is to say before he was obliged to go into mourning. Once covered by the official certainty that Amanien was still alive, he could go without a thought to his dinner, to the Prince’s party, to the midnight revel at which he would appear as Louis XI, and had made the most exciting assignation with a new mistress, and would make no more inquiries until the following day, when his pleasures would be at an end. Then one would put on mourning if the cousin had passed away in the night. “No, M. le Duc, he is not back yet.” “What in the Name of God! Nothing is ever done in this house till the last minute,” cried the Duke, at the thought that Amanien might still be in time to “croak” for an evening paper, and so make him miss his revel. He sent for the _Temps_, in which there was nothing. I had not seen Swann for a long time, and asked myself at first whether in the old days he used to clip his moustache, or had not his hair brushed up vertically in front, for I found in him something altered; it was simply that he was indeed greatly “altered” because he was very ill, and illness produces in the face modifications as profound as are created by growing a beard or by changing the line of one’s parting. (Swann’s illness was the same that had killed his mother, who had been attacked by it at precisely the age which he had now reached. Our existences are in truth, owing to heredity, as full of cabalistic ciphers, of horoscopic castings as if there really were sorcerers in the world. And just as there is a certain duration of life for humanity in general, so there is one for families in particular, that is to say, in any one family, for the members of it who resemble one another.) Swann was dressed with an elegance which, like that of his wife, associated with what he now was what he once had been. Buttoned up in a pearl-grey frock-coat which emphasised the tallness of his figure, slender, his white gloves stitched in black, he carried a grey tall hat of a specially wide shape which Delion had ceased now to make except for him, the Prince de Sagan, the Marquis de Modène, M. Charles Haas and Comte Louis de Turenne. I was surprised at the charming smile and affectionate handclasp with which he replied to my greeting, for I had imagined that after so long an interval he would not recognise me at once; I told him of my astonishment; he received it with a shout of laughter, a trace of indignation and a further grip of my hand, as if it were throwing doubt on the soundness of his brain or the sincerity of his affection to suppose that he did not know me. And yet that was what had happened; he did not identify me, as I learned long afterwards, until several minutes later when he heard my name mentioned. But no change in his face, in his speech, in the things he said to me betrayed the discovery which a chance word from M. de Guermantes had enabled him to make, with such mastery, with such absolute sureness did he play the social game. He brought to it, moreover, that spontaneity in manners and personal initiative, even in his style of dress, which characterised the Guermantes type. Thus it was that the greeting which the old clubman, without recognising me, had given me was not the cold and stiff greeting of the man of the world who was a pure formalist, but a greeting full of a real friendliness, of a true charm, such as the Duchesse de Guermantes, for instance, possessed (carrying it so far as to smile at you first, before you had bowed to her, if she met you in the street), in contrast to the more mechanical greeting customary among the ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. In the same way, again, the hat which, in conformity with a custom that was beginning to disappear, he laid on the floor by his feet, was lined with green leather, a thing not usually done, because, according to him, this kept the hat much cleaner, in reality because it was highly becoming. “Now, Charles, you’re a great expert, come and see what I’ve got to shew you, after which, my boys, I’m going to ask your permission to leave you together for a moment while I go and change my clothes, besides, I expect Oriane won’t be long now.” And he shewed his “Velazquez” to Swann. “But it seems to me that I know this,” said Swann with the grimace of a sick man for whom the mere act of speaking requires an effort. “Yes,” said the Duke, turned serious by the time which the expert took in expressing his admiration. “You have probably seen it at Gilbert’s.” “Oh, yes, of course, I remember.” “What do you suppose it is?” “Oh, well, if it comes from Gilbert’s, it is probably one of your _ancestors_,” said Swann with a blend of irony and deference towards a form of greatness which he would have felt it impolite and absurd to despise, but to which for reasons of good taste he preferred to make only a playful reference.

“To be sure, it is,” said the Duke bluntly. “It’s Boson, the I forget how manieth de Guermantes. Not that I care a damn about that. You know I’m not as feudal as my cousin. I’ve heard the names mentioned of Rigaud, Mignard, Velazquez even!” he went on, fastening on Swann the gaze of an inquisitor and executioner in an attempt at once to read into his mind and to influence his response. “Well,” he concluded, for when he was led to provoke artificially an opinion which he desired to hear, he had the faculty, after a few moments, of believing that it had been spontaneously uttered; “come, now, none of your flattery, do you think it’s by one of those big masters I’ve mentioned?” “Nnnnno,” said Swann. “But after all, I know nothing about these things, it’s not for me to decide who daubed the canvas. But you’re a dilettante, a master of the subject, to whom do you attribute it? You’re enough of an expert to have some idea. What would you put it down as?” Swann hesitated for a moment before the picture, which obviously he thought atrocious. “A bad joke!” he replied, with a smile at the Duke who could not check an impulsive movement of rage. When this had subsided: “Be good fellows, both of you, wait a moment for Oriane, I must go and put on my swallow-tails and then I’ll join you. I shall send word to my good woman that you’re both waiting for her.” I talked for a minute or two with Swann about the Dreyfus case, and asked him how it was that all the Guermantes were anti-Dreyfusards. “In the first place because at heart all these people are anti-semites,” replied Swann, who, all the same, knew very well from experience that certain of them were not, but, like everyone who supports any cause with ardour, preferred, to explain the fact that other people did not share his opinion, to suppose in them a preconceived reason, a prejudice against which there was nothing to be done, rather than reasons which might permit of discussion. Besides, having come to the premature term of his life, like a weary animal that is goaded on, he cried out against these persecutions and was returning to the spiritual fold of his fathers. “Yes, the Prince de Guermantes,” I said, “it is true, I’ve heard that he was anti-semitic.” “Oh, that fellow! I wasn’t even thinking about him. He carries it to such a point that when he was in the army and had a frightful toothache he preferred to grin and bear it rather than go to the only dentist in the district, who happened to be a Jew, and later on he allowed a wing of his castle which had caught fire to be burned to the ground, because he would have had to send for extinguishers to the place next door, which belongs to the Rothschilds.” “Are you going to be there this evening, by any chance?” “Yes,” Swann replied, “although I am far too tired. But he sent me a wire to tell me that he has something to say to me. I feel that I shall be too unwell in the next few days to go there or to see him at home; it would upset me, so I prefer to get it over at once.” “But the Duc de Guermantes is not anti-semitic?” “You can see quite well that he is, since he’s an anti-Dreyfusard,” replied Swann, without noticing the logical fallacy. “That doesn’t prevent my being very sorry that I disappointed the man—what am I saying? The Duke, I mean—by not admiring his Mignard or whatever he calls it.” “But at any rate,” I went on, reverting to the Dreyfus case, “the Duchess, she, now, is intelligent.” “Yes, she is charming. To my mind, however, she was even more charming when she was still known as the Princesse des Laumes. Her mind has become somehow more angular, it was all much softer in the juvenile great lady, but after all, young or old, men or women, what can you expect, all these people belong to a different race, one can’t have a thousand years of feudalism in one’s blood with impunity. Naturally they imagine that it counts for nothing in their opinions.” “All the same, Robert de Saint-Loup is a Dreyfusard.” “Ah! So much the better, all the more as you know that his mother is extremely ‘anti’. I had heard that he was, but I wasn’t certain of it. That gives me a great deal of pleasure. It doesn’t surprise me, he’s highly intelligent. It’s a great thing, that is.”

Dreyfusism had brought to Swann an extraordinary simplicity of mind, and had imparted to his way of looking at things an impulsiveness, an inconsistency more noticeable even than had been the similar effects of his marriage to Odette; this new loss of caste would have been better described as a recasting, and was entirely to his credit, since it made him return to the ways in which his forebears had trodden and from which he had turned aside to mix with the aristocracy. But Swann, just at the very moment when with such lucidity it had been granted to him, thanks to the gifts he had inherited from his race, to perceive a truth that was still hidden from people of fashion, shewed himself nevertheless quite comically blind. He subjected afresh all his admirations and all his contempts to the test of a new criterion, Dreyfusism. That the anti-Dreyfusism of Mme. Bontemps should have made him think her a fool was no more astonishing than that, when he was first married, he should have thought her intelligent. It was not very serious either that the new wave reached also his political judgments and made him lose all memory of having treated as a man with a price, a British spy (this latter was an absurdity of the Guermantes set), Clemenceau, whom he declared now to have always stood up for conscience, to be a man of iron, like Cornély. “No, no, I never told you anything of the sort. You’re thinking of some one else.” But, sweeping past his political judgments, the wave overthrew in Swann his literary judgments also, and even affected his way of pronouncing them. Barrès had lost all his talent, and even the books of his early days were feeble, one could hardly read them again. “You try, you’ll find you can’t struggle to the end. What a difference from Clemenceau! Personally, I am not anti-clerical, but when you compare them together you must see that Barrès is invertebrate. He’s a very great fellow, is old Clemenceau. How he knows the language!” However, the anti-Dreyfusards were in no position to criticise these follies. They explained that one was a Dreyfusard by one’s being of Jewish origin. If a practising Catholic like Saniette stood out also for a fresh trial, that was because he was buttonholed by Mme. Verdurin, who behaved like a wild Radical. She was out above all things against the “frocks”. Saniette was more fool than knave, and had no idea of the harm that the Mistress was doing him. If you pointed out that Brichot was equally a friend of Mme. Verdurin and was a member of the Patrie Française, that was because he was more intelligent. “You see him occasionally?” I asked Swann, referring to Saint-Loup. “No, never. He wrote to me the other day hoping that I would ask the Duc de Mouchy and various other people to vote for him at the Jockey, where for that matter he got through like a letter through the post.” “In spite of the Case!” “The question was never raised. However I must tell you that since all this business began I never set foot in the place.”

M. de Guermantes returned, and was presently joined by his wife, all ready now for the evening, tall and proud in a gown of red satin the skirt of which was bordered with spangles. She had in her hair a long ostrich feather dyed purple, and over her shoulders a tulle scarf of the same red as her dress. “How nice it is to have one’s hat lined with leather,” said the Duchess, whom nothing escaped. “However, with you, Charles, everything is always charming, whether it’s what you wear or what you say, what you read or what you do.” Swann meanwhile, without apparently listening, was considering the Duchess as he would have studied the canvas of a master, and then sought her gaze, making with his lips the grimace which implies: “The devil!” Mme. de Guermantes rippled with laughter. “So my clothes please you? I’m delighted. But I must say that they don’t please me much,” she went on with a sulking air. “Good Lord, what a bore it is to have to dress up and go out when one would ever so much rather stay at home!” “What magnificent rubies!” “Ah! my dear Charles, at least one can see that you know what you’re talking about, you’re not like that brute Monserfeuil who asked me if they were real. I must say that I’ve never seen anything quite like them. They were a present from the Grand Duchess. They’re a little too large for my liking, a little too like claret glasses filled to the brim, but I’ve put them on because we shall be seeing the Grand Duchess this evening at Marie-Gilbert’s,” added Mme. de Guermantes, never suspecting that this assertion destroyed the force of those previously made by the Duke. “What’s on at the Princess’s?” inquired Swann. “Practically nothing,” the Duke hastened to reply, the question having made him think that Swann was not invited. “What’s that, Basin? When all the highways and hedgerows have been scoured? It will be a deathly crush. What will be pretty, though,” she went on, looking wistfully at Swann, “if the storm I can feel in the air now doesn’t break, will be those marvellous gardens. You know them, of course. I was there a month ago, at the time when the lilacs were in flower, you can’t have any idea how lovely they were. And then the fountain, really, it’s Versailles in Paris.” “What sort of person is the Princess?” I asked. “Why, you know quite well, you’ve seen her here, she’s as beautiful as the day, also rather an idiot. Very nice, in spite of all her Germanic high-and-mightiness, full of good nature and stupid mistakes.” Swann was too subtle not to perceive that the Duchess, in this speech, was trying to shew the “Guermantes wit”, and at no great cost to herself, for she was only serving up in a less perfect form an old saying of her own. Nevertheless, to prove to the Duchess that he appreciated her intention to be, and as though she had really succeeded in being funny, he smiled with a slightly forced air, causing me by this particular form of insincerity the same feeling of awkwardness that used to disturb me long ago when I heard my parents discussing with M. Vinteuil the corruption of certain sections of society (when they knew very well that a corruption far greater sat enthroned at Montjouvain), Legrandin colouring his utterances for the benefit of fools, choosing delicate epithets which he knew perfectly well would not be understood by a rich or smart but illiterate public. “Come now, Oriane, what on earth are you saying?” broke in M. de Guermantes. “Marie a fool? Why, she has read everything, she’s as musical as a fiddle.” “But, my poor little Basin, you’re as innocent as a new-born babe. As if one could not be all that, and rather an idiot as well. Idiot is too strong a word; no, she’s in the clouds, she’s Hesse-Darmstadt, Holy Roman Empire, and wa-wa-wa. Her pronunciation alone makes me tired. But I quite admit that she’s a charming looney. Simply the idea of stepping down from her German throne to go and marry, in the most middle-class way, a private citizen. It is true that she chose him! Yes, it’s quite true,” she went on, turning to me, “you don’t know Gilbert. Let me give you an idea of him, he took to his bed once because I had left a card on Mme. Carnot.... But, my little Charles,” said the Duchess, changing the conversation when she saw that the story of the card left on the Carnots appeared to irritate M. de Guermantes, “you know, you’ve never sent me that photograph of our Knights of Rhodes, whom I’ve learned to love through you, and I am so anxious to make their acquaintance.” The Duke meanwhile had not taken his eyes from his wife’s face. “Oriane, you might at least tell the story properly and not cut out half. I ought to explain,” he corrected, addressing Swann, “that the British Ambassadress at that time, who was a very worthy woman, but lived rather in the moon and was in the habit of making up these odd combinations, conceived the distinctly quaint idea of inviting us with the President and his wife. We were—Oriane herself was rather surprised, especially as the Ambassadress knew quite enough of the people we knew not to invite us, of all things, to so ill-assorted a gathering. There was a Minister there who is a swindler, however I pass over all that, we had not been warned in time, were caught in the trap, and, I’m bound to admit, all these people behaved most civilly to us. Only, once was enough. Mme. de Guermantes, who does not often do me the honour of consulting me, felt it incumbent upon her to leave a card in the course of the following week at the Elysée. Gilbert may perhaps have gone rather far in regarding it as a stain upon our name. But it must not be forgotten that, politics apart, M. Carnot, who for that matter filled his post quite adequately, was the grandson of a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal which caused the death of eleven of our people in a single day.” “In that case, Basin, why did you go every week to dine at Chantilly? The Duc d’Aumale was just as much the grandson of a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, with this difference, that Carnot was a brave man and Philippe Egalité a wretched scoundrel.” “Excuse my interrupting you to explain that I did send the photograph,” said Swann. “I can’t understand how it hasn’t reached you.” “It doesn’t altogether surprise me,” said the Duchess, “my servants tell me only what they think fit. They probably do not approve of the Order of Saint John.” And she rang the bell. “You know, Oriane, that when I used to go to Chantilly it was without enthusiasm.” “Without enthusiasm, but with a nightshirt in a bag, in case the Prince asked you to stay, which for that matter he very rarely did, being a perfect cad like all the Orléans lot. Do you know who else are to be dining at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s?” Mme. de Guermantes asked her husband. “Besides the people you know already, she’s asked at the last moment King Theodosius’s brother.” At these tidings the Duchess’s features breathed contentment and her speech boredom. “Oh, good heavens, more princes!” “But that one is well-mannered and intelligent,” Swann suggested. “Not altogether, though,” replied the Duchess, apparently seeking for words that would give more novelty to the thought expressed. “Have you ever noticed with princes that the best-mannered among them are not really well-mannered? They must always have an opinion about everything. Then, as they have none of their own, they spend the first half of their lives asking us ours and the other half serving it up to us second-hand. They positively must be able to say that one piece has been well played and the next not so well. When there is no difference. Listen, this little Theodosius junior (I forget his name) asked me what one called an orchestral motif. I replied,” said the Duchess, her eyes sparkling while a laugh broke from her beautiful red lips: “‘One calls it an orchestral motif.’ I don’t think he was any too well pleased, really. Oh, my dear Charles,” she went on, “what a bore it can be, dining out. There are evenings when one would sooner die! It is true that dying may be perhaps just as great a bore, because we don’t know what it’s like.” A servant appeared. It was the young lover who used to have trouble with the porter, until the Duchess, in her kindness of heart, brought about an apparent peace between them. “Am I to go up this evening to inquire for M. le Marquis d’Osmond?” he asked. “Most certainly not, nothing before to-morrow morning. In fact I don’t want you to remain in the house to-night. The only thing that will happen will be that his footman, who knows you, will come to you with the latest report and send you out after us. Get off, go anywhere you like, have a woman, sleep out, but I don’t want to see you here before to-morrow morning.” An immense joy overflowed from the footman’s face. He would at last be able to spend long hours with his lady-love, whom he had practically ceased to see ever since, after a final scene with the porter, the Duchess had considerately explained to him that it would be better, to avoid further conflicts, if he did not go out at all. He floated, at the thought of having an evening free at last, in a happiness which the Duchess saw and guessed its reason. She felt, so to speak, a tightening of the heart and an itching in all her limbs at the sight of this happiness which an amorous couple were snatching behind her back, concealing themselves from her, which left her irritated and jealous. “No, Basin, let him stay here; I say, he’s not to stir out of the house.” “But, Oriane, that’s absurd, the house is crammed with servants, and you have the costumier’s people coming as well at twelve to dress us for this show. There’s absolutely nothing for him to do, and he’s the only one who’s a friend of Mama’s footman; I would a thousand times rather get him right away from the house.” “Listen, Basin, let me do what I want, I shall have a message for him to take in the evening, as it happens, I can’t tell yet at what time. In any case you’re not to go out of the house for a single instant, do you hear?” she said to the despairing footman. If there were continual quarrels, and if servants did not stay long with the Duchess, the person to whose charge this guerrilla warfare was to be laid was indeed irremovable, but it was not the porter; no doubt for the rougher tasks, for the martyrdoms that it was more tiring to inflict, for the quarrels which ended in blows, the Duchess entrusted the heavier instruments to him; but even then he played his part without the least suspicion that he had been cast for it. Like the household servants, he admired the Duchess for her kindness of heart; and footmen of little discernment who came back, after leaving her service, to visit Françoise used to say that the Duke’s house would have been the finest “place” in Paris if it had not been for the porter’s lodge. The Duchess “played” the lodge on them, just as at different times clericalism, freemasonry, the Jewish peril have been played on the public. Another footman came into the room. “Why have not they brought up the package that M. Swann sent here? And, by the way (you’ve heard, Charles, that Mama is seriously ill?), Jules went up to inquire for news of M. le Marquis d’Osmond: has he come back yet?” “He’s just come this instant, M. le Duc. They’re waiting from one moment to the next for M. le Marquis to pass away.” “Ah! He’s alive!” exclaimed the Duke with a sigh of relief. “That’s all right, that’s all right: sold again, Satan! While there’s life there’s hope,” the Duke announced to us with a joyful air. “They’ve been talking about him as though he were dead and buried. In a week from now he’ll be fitter than I am.” “It’s the Doctors who said that he wouldn’t last out the evening. One of them wanted to call again during the night. The head one said it was no use. M. le Marquis would be dead by then; they’ve only kept him alive by injecting him with camphorated oil.” “Hold your tongue, you damned fool,” cried the Duke in a paroxysm of rage. “Who the devil asked you to say all that? You haven’t understood a word of what they told you.” “It wasn’t me they told, it was Jules.” “Will you hold your tongue!” roared the Duke, and, turning to Swann, “What a blessing he’s still alive! He will regain his strength gradually, don’t you know. Still alive, after being in such a critical state, that in itself is an excellent sign. One mustn’t expect everything at once. It can’t be at all unpleasant, a little injection of camphorated oil.” He rubbed his hands. “He’s alive; what more could anyone want? After going through all that he’s gone through, it’s a great step forward. Upon my word, I envy him having such a temperament. Ah! these invalids, you know, people do all sorts of little things for them that they don’t do for us. Now to-day there was a devil of a cook who sent me up a leg of mutton with _béarnaise_ sauce—it was done to a turn, I must admit, but just for that very reason I took so much of it that it’s still lying on my stomach. However, that doesn’t make people come to inquire for me as they do for dear Amanien. We do too much inquiring. It only tires him. We must let him have room to breathe. They’re killing the poor fellow by sending round to him all the time.” “Well,” said the Duchess to the footman as he was leaving the room, “I gave orders for the envelope containing a photograph which M. Swann sent me to be brought up here.” “Madame la Duchesse, it is so large that I didn’t know if I could get it through the door. We have left it in the hall. Does Madame la Duchesse wish me to bring it up?” “Oh, in that case, no; they ought to have told me, but if it’s so big I shall see it in a moment when I come downstairs.” “I forgot to tell Mme. la Duchesse that Mme. la Comtesse Molé left a card this morning for Mme. la Duchesse.” “What, this morning?” said the Duchess with an air of disapproval, feeling that so young a woman ought not to take the liberty of leaving cards in the morning. “About ten o’clock, Madame la Duchesse.” “Shew me the cards.” “In any case, Oriane, when you say that it was a funny idea on Marie’s part to marry Gilbert,” went on the Duke, reverting to the original topic of conversation, “it is you who have an odd way of writing history. If either of them was a fool, it was Gilbert, for having married of all people a woman so closely related to the King of the Belgians, who has usurped the name of Brabant which belongs to us. To put it briefly, we are of the same blood as the Hesses, and of the elder branch. It is always stupid to talk about oneself,” he apologised to me, “but after all, whenever we have been not only at Darmstadt, but even at Cassel and all over Electoral Hesse, the Landgraves have always, all of them, been most courteous in giving us precedence as being of the elder branch.” “But really, Basin, you don’t mean to tell me that a person who was a Major in every regiment in her country, who had been engaged to the King of Sweden.” “Oriane, that is too much; anyone would think that you didn’t know that the King of Sweden’s grandfather was tilling the soil at Pau when we had been ruling the roost for nine hundred years throughout the whole of Europe.” “That doesn’t alter the fact that if somebody were to say in the street: ‘Hallo, there’s the King of Sweden,’ everyone would at once rush to see him as far as the Place de la Concorde, and if he said: ‘There’s M. de Guermantes,’ nobody would know who M. de Guermantes was.” “What an argument!” “Besides, I never can understand how, once the title of Duke of Brabant has passed to the Belgian Royal Family, you can continue to claim it.”