On the other hand, the supposition that the n has been changed to m does not shock me, and requires less alteration than the perfectly correct Lyon, which also is derived from Dun (Lugdunum). But the fact is, the abbé is mistaken. Douville was never Donville, but Doville, Eudonis villa, the village of Eudes. Douville was formerly called Escalecliff, the steps up the cliff. About the year 1233, Eudes le Bouteiller, Lord of Escalecliff, set out for the Holy Land; on the eve of his departure he made over the church to the Abbey of Blanche-lande. By an exchange of courtesies, the village took his name, whence we have Douville to-day.
But I must add that toponymy, of which moreover I know little or nothing, is not an exact science; had we not this historical evidence, Douville might quite well come from Ouville, that is to say the Waters. The forms in ai (Aiguës-Mortes), from aqua, are constantly changed to eu or ou. Now there were, quite close to Douville, certain famous springs, Carquethuit. You might suppose that the curé was only too ready to detect there a Christian origin, especially as this district seems to have been pretty hard to convert, since successive attempts were made by Saint Ursal, Saint Gofroi, Saint Barsanore, Saint Laurent of Brèvedent, who finally handed over the task to the monks of Beaubec. But as regards thuit the writer is mistaken, he sees in it a form of toft, a building, as in Cricquetot, Ectot, Yvetot, whereas it is the thveit, the clearing, the reclaimed land, as in Braquetuit, le Thuit, Regnetuit, and so forth. Similarly, if he recognises in Clitourps the Norman thorp which means village, he insists that the first syllable of the word must come from clivus, a slope, whereas it comes from cliff, a precipice. But his biggest blunders are due not so much to his ignorance as to his prejudices.
However loyal a Frenchman one is, there is no need to fly in the face of the evidence and take Saint-Laurent en Bray to be the Roman priest, so famous at one time, when he is actually Saint Lawrence ‘Toot, Archbishop of Dublin. But even more than his patriotic sentiments, your friend’s religious bigotry leads him into strange errors. Thus you have not far from our hosts at la Raspelière two places called Montmartin, Montmartin-sur-Mer and Mont-martin-en-Graignes.
In the case of Craignes, the good curé has been quite right, he has seen that Craignes, in Latin Crania, in Greek Krene, means ponds, marshes; how many instances of Cresmays, Croen, Gremeville, Lengronne, might we not adduce? But, when he comes to Montmartin, your self-styled linguist positively insists that these must be parishes dedicated to Saint Martin.
He bases his opinion upon the fact that the Saint is their patron, but does not realise that he was only adopted subsequently; or rather he is blinded by his hatred of paganism; he refuses to see that we should say Mont-Saint-Martin as we say Mont-Saint-Michel, if it were a question of Saint Martin, whereas the name Montmartin refers in a far more pagan fashion to temples consecrated to the god Mars, temples of which, it is true, no other vestige remains, but which the undisputed existence in the neighbourhood of vast Roman camps would render highly probable even without the name Montmartin, which removes all doubt.
You see that the little pamphlet which you will find at la Raspelière is far from perfect.” I protested that at Combray the curé had often told us interesting etymologies. “He was probably better on his own ground, the move to Normandy must have made him lose his bearings.” “Nor did it do him any good,” I added, “for he came here with neurasthenia and went away again with rheumatism.” “Ah, his neurasthenia is to blame. He has lapsed from neurasthenia to philology, as my worthy master Pocquelin would have said.
Tell us, Cottard, do you suppose that neurasthenia can have a disturbing effect on philology, philology a soothing effect on neurasthenia and the relief from neurasthenia lead to rheumatism?” “Undoubtedly, rheumatism and neurasthenia are subordinate forms of neuro-arthritism. You may pass from one to the other by metastasis.” “The eminent Professor,” said Brichot, “expresses himself in a French as highly infused with Latin and Greek as M. Purgon himself, of Molièresque memory! My uncle, I refer to our national Sarcey….” But he was prevented from finishing his sentence.
The Professor had leaped from his seat with a wild shout: “The devil!” he exclaimed on regaining his power of articulate speech, “we have passed Maineville (d’you hear?) and Renneville too.” He had just noticed that the train was stopping at Saint-Mars-le-Vetu, where most of the passengers alighted. “They can’t have run through without stopping. We must have failed to notice it while we were talking about the Cambremers. Listen to me, Ski, pay attention, I am going to tell you ‘a good one,’” said Cottard, who had taken a fancy to this expression, in common use in certain medical circles. “The Princess must be on the train, she can’t have seen us, and will have got into another compartment. Come along and find her. Let’s hope this won’t land us in trouble!” And he led us all off in search of Princess Sherbatoff.
He found her in the corner of an empty compartment, reading the Revue des Deux Mondes. She had long ago, from fear of rebuffs, acquired the habit of keeping in her place, or remaining in her corner, in life as on the train, and of not offering her hand until the other person had greeted her. She went on reading as the faithful trooped into her carriage. I recognised her immediately; this woman who might have forfeited her position but was nevertheless of exalted birth, who in any event was the pearl of a salon such as the Verdurins’, was the lady whom, on the same train, I had put down, two days earlier, as possibly the keeper of a brothel.
Her social personality, which had been so vague, became clear to me as soon as I learned her name, just as when, after racking our brains over a puzzle, we at length hit upon the word which clears up all the obscurity, and which, in the case of a person, is his name. To discover two days later who the person is with whom one has travelled in the train is a far more amusing surprise than to read in the next number of a magazine the clue to the problem set in the previous number. Big restaurants, casinos, local trains, are the family portrait galleries of these social enigmas. “Princess, we must have missed you at Maineville!
May we come and sit in your compartment?” “Why, of course,” said the Princess who, upon hearing Cottard address her, but only then, raised from her magazine a pair of eyes which, like the eyes of M. de Charlus, although gentler, saw perfectly well the people of whose presence she pretended to be unaware. Cottard, coming to the conclusion that the fact of my having been invited to meet the Cambremers was a sufficient recommendation, decided, after a momentary hesitation, to intro-duce me to the Princess, who bowed with great courtesy but appeared to be hearing my name for the first time. “Cré nom!” cried the doctor, “my wife has forgotten to make them change the buttons on my white waist-coat.
Ah! Those women, they never remember anything. Don’t you ever marry, my boy,” he said to me. And as this was one of the pleasantries which he considered appropriate when he had nothing else to say, he peeped out of the corner of his eye at the Princess and the rest of the faithful, who, because he was a Professor and an Academician, smiled back, admiring his good temper and freedom from pride. The Princess informed us that the young violinist had been found. He had been confined to bed the evening before by a sick headache, but was coming that evening and bringing with him a friend of his father whom he had met at Doncières.
She had learned this from Mme. Verdurin with whom she had taken luncheon that morning, she told us in a rapid voice, rolling her _r_s, with her Russian accent, softly at the back of her throat, as though they were not _r_s but _l_s. “Ah! You had luncheon with her this morning,” Cottard said to the Princess; but turned his eyes to myself, the purport of this remark being to shew me on what intimate terms the Princess was with the Mistress. “You are indeed a faithful adherent!” “Yes, I love the little cirlcle, so intelligent, so agleeable, neverl spiteful, quite simple, not at all snobbish, and clevel to theirl fingle-tips.” “Nom d’une pipe!
I must have lost my ticket, I can’t find it anywhere,” cried Cottard, with an agitation that was, in the circumstances, quite unjustified. He knew that at Douville, where a couple of landaus would be awaiting us, the collector would let him pass without a ticket, and would only bare his head all the more humbly, so that the salute might furnish an explanation of his indulgence, to wit that he had of course recognised Cottard as one of the Verdurins’ regular guests. “They won’t shove me in the lock-up for that,” the doctor concluded. “You were
