And one gathered from these words that M. de Charlus regarded sexual inversion as a danger as menacing to young men as prostitution is to women, and that if he employed the epithet ‘respectable,’ of Morel it was in the sense that it has when applied to a young shop-girl. Then Brichot, to change the conversation, asked me whether I intended to remain much longer at Incarville. I had pointed out to him more than once, but in vain, that I was staying not at Incarville but at Balbec, he always repeated the mistake, for it was by the name of Incarville or Balbec-Incarville that he described this section of the coast. There are people like that, who speak of the same things as ourselves but call them by a slightly different name. A certain lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain used invariably to ask me, when she meant to refer to the Duchesse de Guermantes, whether I had seen Zénaïde lately, or Oriane-Zénaïde, the effect of which was that at first I did not understand her. Probably there had been a time when, some relative of Mme. de Guermantes being named Oriane, she herself, to avoid confusion, had been known as Oriane-Zénaïde.
Perhaps, too, there had originally been a station only at Incarville, from which one went in a carriage to Balbec. “Why, what have you been talking about?” said Albertine, astonished at the solemn, paternal tone which M. de Charlus had suddenly adopted. “About Balzac,” the Baron hastily replied, “and you are wearing this evening the very same clothes as the Princesse de Cadignan, not her first gown, which she wears at the dinnerparty, but the second.” This coincidence was due to the fact that, in choosing Albertine’s clothes, I sought inspiration in the taste that she had acquired thanks to Elstir, who greatly appreciated a sobriety which might have been called British, had it not been tempered with a gentler, more flowing grace that was purely French.
As a rule the garments that he chose offered to the eye a harmonious combination of grey tones like the dress of Diane de Cadignan. M. de Charlus was almost the only person capable of appreciating Albertine’s clothes at their true value; at a glance, his eye detected what constituted their rarity, justified their price; he would never have said the name of one stuff instead of another, and could always tell who had made them. Only he preferred—in women—a little more brightness and colour than Elstir would allow.
And so this evening she cast a glance at me half smiling, half troubled, wrinkling her little pink cat’s nose. Indeed, meeting over her skirt of grey crêpe de chine, her jacket of grey cheviot gave the impression that Albertine was dressed entirely in grey. But, making a sign to me to help her, because her puffed sleeves needed to be smoothed down or pulled up, for her to get into or out of her jacket, she took it off, and as her sleeves were of a Scottish plaid in soft colours, pink, pale blue, dull green, pigeon’s breast, the effect was as though in a grey sky there had suddenly appeared a rainbow. And she asked herself whether this would find favour with M. de Charlus.
“Ah!” he exclaimed in delight, “now we have a ray, a prism of colour. I offer you my sincerest compliments.” “But it is this gentleman who has earned them,” Albertine replied politely, pointing to myself, for she liked to shew what she had received from me. “It is only women who do not know how to dress that are afraid of colours,” went on M. de Charlus. “A dress may be brilliant without vulgarity and quiet without being dull.
Besides, you have not the same reasons as Mme. de Cadignan for wishing to appear detached from life, for that was the idea which she wished to instil into d’Arthez by her grey gown.” Albertine, who was interested in this mute language of clothes, questioned M. de Charlus about the Princesse de Cadignan. “Ohl It is a charming tale,” said the Baron in a dreamy tone. “I know the little garden in which Diane de Cadignan used to stroll with M. d’Espard.
It belongs to one of my cousins.” “All this talk about his cousin’s garden,” Brichot murmured to Cottard, “may, like his pedigree, be of some importance to this worthy Baron. But what interest can it have for us who are not privileged to walk in it, do not know the lady, and possess no titles of nobility?” For Brichot had no suspicion that one might be interested in a gown and in a garden as works of art, and that it was in the pages of Balzac that M, de Charlus saw, in his mind’s eye, the garden paths of Mme. de Cadignan.
The Baron went on:
“But you know her,” he said to me, speaking of this cousin, and, by way of flattering me, addressing himself to me as to a person who, exiled amid the little clan, was to M. de Charlus, if not a citizen of his world, at any rate a visitor to it. “Anyhow you must have seen her at Mme. de Villeparisis’s.” “Is that the Marquise de Villeparisis who owns the chateau at Baucreux?” asked Brichot with a captivated air.
“Yes, do you know her?” inquired M. de Charlus dryly. “No, not at all,” replied Brichot, “but our colleague Norpois spends part of his holidays every year at Baucreux. I have had occasion to write to him there.” I told Morel, thinking to interest him, that M. de Norpois was a friend of my father. But not a movement of his features shewed that he had heard me, so little did he think of my parents, so far short did they fall in his estimation of what my great-uncle had been, who had employed Morel’s father as his valet, and, as a matter of fact, being, unlike the rest of the family, fond of not giving trouble, had left a golden memory among his servants.
“It appears that Mme. de Villeparisis is a superior woman; but I have never been allowed to judge of that for myself, nor for that matter have any of my colleagues. For Norpois, who is the soul of courtesy and affability at the Institute, has never introduced any of us to the Marquise. I know of no one who has been received by her except our friend Thureau-Dangin, who had an old family connexion with her, and also Gaston Boissier, whom she was anxious to meet because of an essay which interested her especially. He dined with her once and came back quite enthralled by her charm. Mme. Boissier, however, was not invited.” At the sound of these names, Morel melted in a smile. “Ah!
Thureau-Dangin,” he said to me with an air of interest as great as had been his indifference when he heard me speak of the Marquis de Norpois and my father. “Thureau-Dangin; why, he and your uncle were as thick as thieves. Whenever a lady wanted a front seat for a reception at the Academy, your uncle would say: ‘I shall write to Thureau-Dangin.’ And of course he got the ticket at once, for you can understand that M. Thureau-Dangin would never have dared to refuse anything to your uncle, who would have been certain to pay him out for it afterwards if he had. I can’t help smiling, either, when I hear the name Boissier, for that was where your uncle ordered all the presents he used to give the ladies at the New Year.
I know all about it, because I knew the person he used to send for them.” He had not only known him, the person was his father. Some of these affectionate allusions by Morel to my uncle’s memory were prompted by the fact that we did not intend to remain permanently in the Hôtel de Guermantes, where we had taken an apartment only on account of my grandmother. Now and again there would be talk of a possible move. Now, to understand the advice that Charlie Morel gave me in this connexion, the reader must know that my great-uncle had lived, in his day, at 40_bis_ Boulevard Malesherbes.
The consequence was that, in the family, as we were in the habit of frequently visiting my uncle Adolphe until the fatal day when I made a breach between my parents and him by telling them the story of the lady in pink, instead of saying ‘at your uncle’s’ we used to say ‘at 40_bis_.’ If I were going to call upon some kinswoman, I would be warned to go first of all ‘to 40_bis_,’ in order that my uncle might not be offended by my not having begun my round with him. He was the owner of the house and was, I must say, very particular as to the choice of
