“It is impossible to understand what you say, what have you got in your mouth?” inquired M. Verdurin, growing more and more furious, and alluding to Saniette’s defective speech. “Poor Saniette, I won’t have him made unhappy,” said Mme. Verdurin in a tone of false pity, so as to leave no one in doubt as to her husband’s insolent intention. “I was at the Ch… Che..” “Che, che, try to speak distinctly,” said M. Verdurin, “I can’t understand a word you say.”
Almost without exception, the faithful burst out laughing and they suggested a band of cannibals in whom the sight of a wound on a white man’s skin has aroused the thirst for blood. For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike. And we all of us laugh at a person whom we see being made fun of, which does not prevent us from venerating him ten years later in a circle where he is admired. It is in like manner that the populace banishes or acclaims its kings. “Come, now, it is not his fault,” said Mme. Verdurin.
“It is not mine either, people ought not to dine out if they can’t speak properly.” “I was at the Chercheuse d’Esprit by Favart.” “What! It’s the Chercheuse d’Esprit that you call the Chercheuse? Why, that’s marvellous! I might have tried for a hundred years without guessing it,” cried M. Verdurin, who all the same would have decided immediately that you were not literary, were not artistic, were not ‘one of us,’ if he had heard you quote the full title of certain works.
For instance, one was expected to say the Malade, the Bourgeois; and whoso would have added imaginaire or gentilhomme would have shewn that he did not understand ‘shop,’ just as in a drawing-room a person proves that he is not in society by saying ‘M. de Montesquiou-Fézensac’ instead of ‘M. de Montesquieu.’ “But it is not so extraordinary,” said Saniette, breathless with emotion but smiling, albeit he was in no smiling mood. Mme. Verdurin could not contain herself.
“Yes, indeed!” she cried with a titter. “You may be quite sure that nobody would ever have guessed that you meant the Chercheuse d’Esprit.” M. Verdurin went on in a gentler tone, addressing both Saniette and Brichot: “It is quite a pretty piece, all the same, the Chercheuse d’Esprit.” Uttered in a serious tone, this simple phrase, in which one could detect no trace of malice, did Saniette as much good and aroused in him as much gratitude as a deliberate compliment.
He was unable to utter a single word and preserved a happy silence. Brichot was more loquacious. “It is true,” he replied to M. Verdurin, “and if it could be passed off as the work of some Sarmatian or Scandinavian author, we might put forward the Chercheuse d’Esprit as a candidate for the vacant post of masterpiece.
But, be it said without any disrespect to the shade of the gentle Favart, he had not the Ibsenian temperament.” (Immediately he blushed to the roots of his hair, remembering the Norwegian philosopher who appeared troubled because he was seeking in vain to discover what vegetable the buis might be that Brichot had cited a little earlier in connexion with the name Bussière.) “However, now that Porel’s satrapy is filled by a functionary who is a Tolstoist of rigorous observance, it may come to pass that we shall witness Anna Karenina or Resurrection beneath the Odéonian architrave.” “I know the portrait of Favart to which you allude,” said M. de Charlus.
“I have seen a very fine print of it at Comtesse Molé’s.” The name of Comtesse Molé made a great impression upon Mme. Verdurin. “Oh! So you go to Mme. de Molé’s!” she exclaimed. She supposed that people said Comtesse Molé, Madame Molé, simply as an abbreviation, as she heard people say ‘the Rohans’ or in contempt, as she herself said: ‘Madame la Trémoïlle.’ She had no doubt that Comtesse Molé, who knew the Queen of Greece and the Principessa di Caprarola, had as much right as anybody to the particle, and for once in a way had decided to bestow it upon so brilliant a personage, and one who had been extremely civil to herself.
And so, to make it clear that she had spoken thus on purpose and did not grudge the Comtesse her ‘de,’ she went on: “But I had no idea that you knew Madame de Molé!” as though it had been doubly extraordinary, both that M. de Charlus should know the lady, and that Mme. Verdurin should not know that he knew her. Now society, or at least the people to whom M. de Charlus gave that name, forms a relatively homogeneous and compact whole.
And so it is comprehensible that, in the incongruous vastness of the middle classes, a barrister may say to somebody who knows one of his school friends: “But how in the world do you come to know him?” whereas to be surprised at a Frenchman’s knowing the meaning of the word temple or forest would be hardly more extraordinary than to wonder at the hazards that might have brought together M. de Charlus and the Comtesse Molé. What is more, even if such an acquaintance had not been derived quite naturally from the laws that govern society, how could there be anything strange in the fact of Mme. Verdurin’s not knowing of it, since she was meeting M. de Charlus for the first time, and his relations with Mme. Molé were far from being the only thing that she did not know with regard to him, about whom, to tell the truth, she knew nothing.
“Who was it that played this Chercheuse d’Esprit, my good Saniette?” asked M. Verdurin. Albeit he felt that the storm had passed, the old antiquarian hesitated before answering. “There you go,” said Mme. Verdurin, “you frighten him, you make fun of everything that he says, and then you expect him to answer. Come along, tell us who played the part, and you shall have some galantine to take home,” said Mme. Verdurin, making a cruel allusion to the penury into which Saniette had plunged himself by trying to rescue the family of a friend. “I can remember only that it was Mme. Samary who played the Zerbine,” said Saniette. “The Zerbine?
What in the world is that,” M. Verdurin shouted, as though the house were on fire. “It is one of the parts in the old repertory, like Captain Fracasse, as who should say the Fire-eater, the Pedant.” “Ah, the pedant, that’s yourself. The Zerbine! No, really the man’s mad,” exclaimed M. Verdurin. Mme. Verdurin looked at her guests and laughed as though to apologise for Saniette. “The Zerbine, he imagines that everybody will know at once what it means. You are like M. de Longepierre, the stupidest man I know, who said to us quite calmly the other day ‘the Banat.’ Nobody had any idea what he meant. Finally we were informed that it was a province in Serbia.”
To put an end to Saniette’s torture, which hurt me ‘more than it hurt him, I asked Brichot if he knew what the word Balbec meant. “Balbec is probably a corruption of Dalbec,” he told me. “One would have to consult the charters of the Kings of England, Overlords of Normandy, for Balbec was held of the Barony of Dover, for which reason it was often styled Balbec d’Outre-Mer, Balbec-en-Terre.
But the Barony of Dover was itself held of the Bishopric of Bayeux, and, notwithstanding the rights that were temporarily enjoyed in the abbey by the Templars, from the time of Louis d’Harcourt, Patriarch of Jerusalem and Bishop of Bayeux; it was the Bishops of that diocese who collated to the benefice of Balbec. So it was explained to me by the incumbent of Douville, a bald person, eloquent, fantastic, and a devotee of the table, who lives by the Rule of Brillat-Savarin, and who expounded to me in slightly sibylline language a loose pedagogy, while he fed me upon some admirable fried potatoes.”
While Brichot smiled to shew how witty it was to combine matters so dissimilar and to employ an ironically lofty diction in treating of commonplace things, Saniette was trying to find a loophole for some clever remark which would raise him from the abyss into which he had fallen. The witty remark was what was known as a ‘comparison,’ but had changed its form, for there is an evolution in wit as in literary styles, an epidemic that disappears has its place taken by another, and so forth….
At one time the typical ‘comparison’ was the ‘height of….’ But this was out of date, no one used it any more, there was only Cottard left to say still, on occasion, in the middle of a game of piquet: “Do you know what is the height of absent-mindedness, it is to think that the Edict (l’edit) of Nantes was an Englishwoman.” These ‘heights’ had been replaced by nicknames. In reality it
