“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 385gave 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 386was 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.”

The footman returned with the Comtesse Molé’s card, or rather what she had left in place of a card. Alleging that she had none on her, she had taken from her pocket a letter addressed to herself, and keeping the contents had handed in the envelope which bore the inscription: “La Comtesse Molé.” As the envelope was rather large, following the fashion in notepaper which prevailed that year, this manuscript “card” was almost twice the size of an ordinary visiting card. “That is what people call Mme. Molé’s ‘simplicity’,” said the Duchess ironically. “She wants to make us think that she had no cards on her, and to shew her originality. But we know all about that, don’t we, my little Charles, we are quite old enough and quite original enough ourselves to see through the tricks of a little lady who has only been going about for four years. She is charming, but she doesn’t seem to me, all the same, to be quite ‘big’ enough to imagine that she can take the world by surprise with so little effort as merely leaving an envelope instead of a card and leaving it at ten o’clock in the morning. Her old mother mouse will shew her that she knows a thing or two about that.” 387Swann could not help smiling at the thought that the Duchess, who was, incidentally, a trifle jealous of Mme. de Molé’s success, would find it quite in accordance with the “Guermantes wit” to make some impertinent retort to her visitor. “So far as the title of Duc de Brabant is concerned, I’ve told you a hundred times, Oriane…” the Duke continued, but the Duchess, without listening, cut him short. “But, my little Charles, I’m longing to see your photograph.” “Ah! Extinctor draconis latrator Anubis,” said Swann. “Yes, it was so charming what you said about that when you were comparing the Saint George at Venice. But I don’t understand: why Anubis?” “What’s the one like who was an ancestor of Babal?” asked M. de Guermantes. “You want to see his bauble?” retorted his wife, dryly, to shew that she herself scorned the pun. “I want to see them all,” she added. “Listen, Charles, let us wait downstairs till the carriage comes,” said the Duke; “you can pay your call on us in the hall, because my wife won’t let us have any peace until she’s seen your photograph. I am less impatient, I must say,” he added with a satisfied air. “I am not easily moved myself, but she would see us all dead rather than miss it.” “I am entirely of your opinion, Basin,” said the Duchess, “let us go into the hall; we shall at least know why we have come down from your study, while we shall never know how we have come down from the Counts of Brabant.” “I’ve told you a hundred times how the title came into the House of Hesse,” said the Duke (while we were going downstairs to look at the photograph, and I thought of those that Swann used to bring me at Combray), “through the marriage of a Brabant in 1241 with the daughter of the last Landgrave 388of Thuringia and Hesse, so that really it is the title of Prince of Hesse that came to the House of Brabant rather than that of Duke of Brabant to the House of Hesse. You will remember that our battle-cry was that of the Dukes of Brabant: ‘Limbourg to her conqueror!’ until we exchanged the arms of Brabant for those of Guermantes, in which I think myself that we were wrong, and the example of the Gramonts will not make me change my opinion.” “But,” replied Mme. de Guermantes, “as it is the King of the Belgians who is the conqueror…. Besides the Belgian Crown Prince calls himself Duc de Brabant.” “But, my dear child, your argument will not hold water for a moment. You know as well as I do that there are titles of pretension which can perfectly well exist even if the territory is occupied by usurpers. For instance, the King of Spain describes himself equally as Duke of Brabant, claiming in virtue of a possession less ancient than ours, but more ancient than that of the King of the Belgians. He calls himself also Duke of Burgundy, King of the Indies Occidental and Oriental, and Duke of Milan. Well, he is no more in possession of Burgundy, the Indies or Brabant than I possess Brabant myself, or the Prince of Hesse either, for that matter. The King of Spain likewise proclaims himself King of Jerusalem, as does the Austrian Emperor, and Jerusalem belongs to neither one nor the other.” He stopped for a moment with an awkward feeling that the mention of Jerusalem might have embarrassed Swann, in view of “current events”, but only went on more rapidly: “What you said just now might be said of anyone. We were at one time Dukes of Aumale, a duchy that has passed as regularly to the House of France as Joinville and Chevreuse 389have to the House of Albert. We make no more claim to those titles than to that of Marquis de Noirmoutiers, which was at one time ours, and became perfectly regularly the appanage of the House of La Trémoïlle, but because certain cessions are valid, it does not follow that they all are. For instance,” he went on, turning to me,