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 saying, Sir,” I inquired of Brichot, “that there used to be some famous waters near here; how do we know that?” “The name of the next station is one of a multitude of proofs.
It is called Fervaches.” “I don’t undlestand what he’s talking about,” mumbled the Princess, as though she were saying to me out of politeness: “He’s rather a bore, ain’t he?” “Why, Princess, Fervaches means hot springs. Fervidae aquae. But to return to the young violinist,” Brichot went on, “I was quite forgetting, Cottard, to tell you the great news. Had you heard that our poor friend Dechambre, who used to be Mme. Verdurin’s favourite pianist, has just died?
It is terribly sad.” “He was quite young,” replied Cottard, “but he must have had some trouble with his liver, there must have been something sadly wrong in that quarter, he had been looking very queer indeed for a long time past.” “But he was not so young as all that,” said Brichot; “in the days when Elstir and Swann used to come to Mme. Verdurin’s, Dechambre had already made himself a reputation in Paris, and, what is remarkable, without having first received the baptism of success abroad.
Ah! He was no follower of the Gospel according to Saint Barnum, that fellow.” “You are mistaken, he could not have been going to Mme. Verdurin’s, at that time, he was still in the nursery.” “But, unless my old memory plays me false, I was under the impression that Dechambre used to play Vinteuil’s sonata for Swann, when that clubman, who had broken with the aristocracy, had still no idea that he was one day to become the embourgeoised Prince Consort of our national Odette.”
“It is impossible, Vinteuil’s sonata was played at Mme. Verdurin’s long after Swann ceased to come there,” said the doctor, who, like all people who work hard and think that they remember many things which they imagine to be of use to them, forget many others, a condition which enables them to go into ecstasies over the memories of people who have nothing else to do. “You are hopelessly muddled, though your brain is as sound as ever,” said the doctor with a smile. Brichot admitted that he was mistaken. The train stopped. We were at la Sogne. The name stirred my curiosity. “How I should like to know what all these names mean,” I said to Cottard. “You must ask M. Brichot, he may know, perhaps.” “Why, la Sogne is la Cicogne, Siconia,” replied Brichot, whom I was burning to interrogate about many other names.
Forgetting her attachment to her ‘corner,’ Mme. Sherbatoff kindly offered to change places with me, so that I might talk more easily with Brichot, whom I wanted to ask about other etymologies that interested me, and assured me that she did not mind in the least whether she travelled with her face or her back to the engine, standing, or seated, or anyhow. She remained on the defensive until she had discovered a newcomer’s intentions, but as soon as she had realised that these were friendly, she would do everything in her power to oblige.
At length the train stopped at the station of Douville-Féterne, which being more or less equidistant from the villages of Féterne and Douville, bore for this reason their hyphenated name. “Saperlipopette!” exclaimed Doctor Cottard, when we came to the barrier where the tickets were collected, and, pretending to have only just discovered his loss, “I can’t find my ticket, I must have lost it.” But the collector, taking off his cap, assured him that it did not matter and smiled respectfully. The Princess (giving instructions to the coachman, as though she were a sort of lady in waiting to Mme. Verdurin, who, because of the Cambremers, had not been able to come to the station, as, for that matter, she rarely did) took me, and also Brichot, with herself in one of the carriages. The doctor, Saniette and Ski got into the other.
The driver, although quite young, was the Verdurins’ first coachman, the only one who had any right to the title; he took them, in the daytime, on all their excursions, for he knew all the roads, and in the evening went down to meet the faithful and took them back to the station later on. He was accompanied by extra helpers (whom he selected if necessary). He was an excellent fellow, sober and capable, but with one of those melancholy faces on which a fixed stare indicates that the merest trifle will make the person fly into a passion, not to say nourish dark thoughts.
But at the moment he was quite happy, for he had managed to secure a place for his brother, another excellent type of fellow, with the Verdurins. We began by driving through Douville. Grassy knolls ran down from the village to the sea, in wide slopes to which their saturation in moisture and salt gave a richness, a softness, a vivacity of extreme tones. The islands and indentations of Rivebelle, far nearer now than at Balbec, gave this part of the coast the appearance, novel to me, of a relief map. We passed by some little bungalows, almost all of which were let to painters; turned into a track upon which some loose cattle, as frightened as were our horses, barred our way for ten minutes, and emerged upon the cliff road.
“But, by the immortal gods,” Brichot suddenly asked, “let us return to that poor Dechambre; do you suppose Mme. Verdurin knows? Has anyone told her?” Mme. Verdurin, like most people who move in society, simply because she needed the society of other people, never thought of them again for a single day, as soon as, being dead, they could no longer come to the Wednesdays, nor to the Saturdays, nor dine without dressing. And one could not say of the little clan, a type in this respect of all salons, that it was composed of more dead than living members, seeing that, as soon as one was dead, it was as though one had never existed.
лBut, to escape the nuisance of having to speak of the deceased, in other words to postpone one of the dinners—a thing impossible to the mistress—as a token of mourning, M. Verdurin used to pretend that the death of the faithful had such an effect on his wife that, in the interest of her health, it must never be mentioned to her. Moreover, and perhaps just because the death of other people seemed to him so conclusive, so vulgar an accident, the thought of his own death filled him with horror and he
