It will be better to leave that to Mme. Verdurin. Unless I find a loophole. Then you can rely on me to take the bull by the horns.” “What were you saying?” asked Saniette, as he rejoined us, pretending to have gone out to take the air. “I was quoting to this gentleman,” said Brichot, “a saying, which you will remember, of the man who, to my mind, is the first of the fins-de-siècle (of the eighteenth century, that is), by name Charles Maurice, Abbé de Perigord. He began by promising to be an excellent journalist. But he made a bad end, by which I mean that he became a Minister! Life has these tragedies. A far from serapulous politician to boot who, with the lofty contempt of a thoroughbred nobleman, did not hesitate to work in his time for the King of Prussia, there are no two ways about it, and died in the skin of a ‘Left Centre.’”
At Saint-Pierre-des-Ifs we were joined by a glorious girl who, unfortunately, was not one of the little group. I could not tear my eyes from her magnolia skin, her dark eyes, her bold and admirable outlines. A moment later she wanted to open a window, for it was hot in the compartment, and not wishing to ask leave of everybody, as I alone was without a greatcoat, she said to me in a quick, cool, jocular voice: “Do you mind a little fresh air, Sir?” I would have liked to say to her: “Come with us to the Verdurins’?” or “Give me your name and address.” I answered: “No, fresh air doesn’t bother me, Mademoiselle.” Whereupon, without stirring from her seat: “Do your friends object to smoke?” and she lit a cigarette. At the third station she sprang from the carriage. Next day, I inquired of Albertine, who could she be.
For, stupidly thinking that people could have but one sort of love, in my jealousy of Albertine’s attitude towards Robert, I was reassured so far as other women were concerned. Albertine told me, I believe quite sincerely, that she did not know. “I should so much like to see her again,” I exclaimed. “Don’t worry, one always sees people again,” replied Albertine. In this particular instance, she was wrong; I never saw again, nor did I ever identify, the pretty girl with the cigarette. We shall see, moreover, why, for a long time, I ceased to look for her. But I have not forgotten her.
I find myself at times, when I think of her, seized by a wild longing. But these recurrences of desire oblige us to reflect that if we wish to rediscover these girls with the same pleasure we must also return to the year which has since been followed by ten others in the course of which her bloom has faded. We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when we no longer seek for that girl, or for any other, when to find her would actually frighten us. For we no longer feel that we have sufficient attraction to appeal to her, or strength to love her.
Not, of course, that we are, in the strict sense of the word, impotent. And as for loving, we should love her more than ever. But we feel that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength that we have left. Eternal rest has already fixed intervals which we can neither cross nor make our voice be heard across them. To set our foot on the right step is an achievement like not missing the perilous leap. To be seen in such a state by a girl we love, even if we have kept the features and all the golden locks of our youth! We can no longer undertake the strain of keeping pace with youth. All the worse if our carnal desire increases instead of failing! We procure for it a woman whom we need make no effort to attract, who will share our couch for one night only and whom we shall never see again.
“Still no news, I suppose, of the violinist,” said Cottard. The event of the day in the little clan was, in fact, the failure of Mme. Verdurin’s favourite violinist. Employed on military service near Doncières, he came three times a week to dine at la Raspelière, having a midnight pass. But two days ago, for the first time, the faithful had been unable to discover him on the tram. It was supposed that he had missed it. But albeit Mme. Verdurin had sent to meet the next tram, and so on until the last had arrived, the carriage had returned empty. “He’s certain to have been shoved into the guard-room, there’s no other explanation of his desertion.
Gad! In soldiering, you know, with those fellows, it only needs a bad-tempered serjeant.” “It will be all the more mortifying for Mme. Verdurin,” said Brichot, “if he fails again this evening, because our kind hostess has invited to dinner for the first time the neighbours from whom she has taken la Raspelière, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer.” “This evening, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer!” exclaimed Cottard. “But I knew absolutely nothing about it.
Naturally, I knew like everybody else that they would be coming one day, but I had no idea that it was to be so soon. Sapristi!” he went on, turning to myself, “what did I tell you? The Princess Sherbatoff, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer.”
And, after repeating these names, lulling himself with their melody:
“You see that we move in good company,” he said to me. “However, as it’s your first appearance, you’ll be one of the crowd. It is going to be an exceptionally brilliant gathering.” And, turning to Brichot, he went on: “The Mistress will be furious.
It is time we appeared to lend her a hand.” Ever since Mme. Verdurin had been at la Raspelière she had pretended for the benefit of the faithful to be at once feeling and regretting the necessity of inviting her landlords for one evening. By so doing she would obtain better terms next year, she explained, and was inviting them for business reasons only. But she pretended to regard with such terror, to make such a bugbear of the idea of dining with people who did not belong to the little group that she kept putting off the evil day.
The prospect did for that matter alarm her slightly for the reasons which she professed, albeit exaggerating them, if at the same time it enchanted her for reasons of snobbishness which she preferred to keep to herself. She was therefore partly sincere, she believed the little clan to be something so matchless throughout the world, one of those perfect wholes which it takes centuries of time to produce, that she trembled at the thought of seeing introduced into its midst these provincials, people ignorant of the Ring and the Meistersinger, who would be unable to play their part in the concert of conversation and were capable, by coming to Mme. Verdurin’s, of ruining one of those famous Wednesdays, masterpieces of art incomparable and frail, like those Venetian glasses which one false note is enough to shatter.
“Besides, they are bound to be absolutely anti, and militarists,” M. Verdurin had said. “Oh, as for that, I don’t mind, we’ve heard quite enough about all that business,” had replied Mme. Verdurin, who, a sincere Dreyfusard, would nevertheless have been glad to discover a social counterpoise to the preponderant Dreyfusism of her salon. For Dreyfusism was triumphant politically, but not socially. Labori, Reinach, Picquart, Zola were still, to people in society, more or less traitors, who could only keep them aloof from the little nucleus. And so, after this incursion into politics, Mme. Verdurin was determined to return to the world of art.
Besides were not Indy, Debussy, on the ‘wrong’ side in the Case? “So far as the Case goes, we need only remember Brichot,” she said (the Don being the only one of the faithful who had sided with the General Staff, which had greatly lowered him in the esteem of Madame Verdurin). “There is no need to be eternally discussing the Dreyfus case. No, the fact of the matter is that the Cambremers bore me.”
As for the faithful, no less excited by their unconfessed desire to make the Cambremers’ acquaintance than dupes of the affected reluctance which Mme. Verdurin said she felt to invite them, they returned, day after day, in conversation with her, to the base arguments with which she herself supported the invitation, tried to make them irresistible. “Make up your mind to it once and for all,” Cottard repeated, “and you will have better terms for next year, they will pay the gardener, you will have the use of the meadow. That will be well worth a boring evening.
I am thinking only of yourselves,” he added, albeit his heart had leaped on one occasion, when, in
