“By the way, Charlus,” said Mme. Verdurip, who was beginning to grow familiar, “you don’t know of any ruined old nobleman in your Faubourg who would come to me as porter?” “Why, yes… why, yes,” replied M. de Charlus with a genial smile, “but I don’t advise it.” “Why not?” “I should be afraid for your sake, that your smart visitors would call at the lodge and go no farther.” This was the first skirmish between them. Mme. Verdurin barely noticed it. There were to be others, alas, in Paris. M. de Charlus remained glued to his chair. He could not, moreover, restrain a faint smile, seeing how his favourite maxims as to aristocratic prestige and middle-class cowardice were confirmed by the so easily won submission of Mme. Verdurin. The Mistress appeared not at all surprised by the Baron’s posture, and if she left him it was only because she had been perturbed by seeing me taken up by M. de Cambremer. But first of all, she wished to clear up the mystery of M. de Charlus’s relations with Comtesse Mole.
“You told me that you knew Mme. de Molê. Does that mean, you go there?” she asked, giving to the words ‘go there’ the sense of being received there, of having received authority from the lady to go and call upon her. M. de Charlus replied with an inflexion of disdain, an affectation of precision and in a sing-song tone: “Yes, sometimes.” This ‘sometimes’ inspired doubts in Mme. Verdurin, who asked: “Have you ever met the Duc de Guermantes there?”
“Ah! That I don’t remember.” “Oh!” said Mme. Verdurin, “you don’t know the Duc de Guermantes?” “And how should I not know him?” replied M. de Charlus, his lips curving in a smile. This smile was ironical; but as the Baron was afraid of letting a gold tooth be seen, he stopped it with a reverse movement of his lips, so that the resulting sinuosity was that of a good-natured smile. “Why do you say: ‘How should I not know him?’ “ “Because he is my brother,” said M. de Charlus carelessly, leaving Mme. Verdurin plunged in stupefaction and in the uncertainty whether her guest was making fun of her, was a natural son, or a son by another marriage. The idea that the brother of the Duc de Guermantes might be called Baron de Charlus never entered her head. She bore down upon me. “I heard M. de Cambremer invite you to dinner just now. It has nothing to do with me, you understand.
But for your own sake, I do hope you won’t go. For one thing, the place is infested with bores. Oh! If you like dining with provincial Counts and Marquises whom nobody knows, you will be supplied to your heart’s content.” “I think I shall be obliged to go there once or twice. I am not altogether free, however, for I have a young cousin whom I cannot leave by herself” (I felt that this fictitious kinship made it easier for me to take Albertine about). “But as for the Cambremers, as I have been introduced to them….” “You shall do just as you please. One thing I can tell you: it’s extremely unhealthy; when you have caught pneumonia, or a nice little chronic rheumatism, you’ll be a lot better off!” “But isn’t the place itself very pretty?” “Mmmmyess…. If you like. For my part, I confess frankly that I would a hundred times rather have the view from here over this valley. To begin with, if they’d paid us I wouldn’t have taken the other house because the sea air is fatal to M. Verdurin.
If your cousin suffers at all from nerves…. But you yourself have bad nerves, I think you have choking fits. Very well! You shall see. Go there once, you won’t sleep for a week after it; but it’s not my business.” And without thinking of the inconsistency with what she had just been saying: “If it would amuse you to see the house, which is not bad, pretty is too strong a word, still it is amusing with its old moat, and the old drawbridge, as I shall have to sacrifice myself and dine there once, very well, come that day, I shall try to bring all my little circle, then it will be quite nice. The day after to-morrow we are going to Harambouville in the carriage. It’s a magnificent drive, the cider is delicious. Come with us. You, Brichot, you shall come too. And you too, Ski. That will make a party which, as a matter of fact, my husband must have arranged already. I don’t know whom all he has invited, Monsieur de Charlus, are you one of them?” The Baron, who had not heard the whole speech, and did not know that she was talking of an excursion to Harambouville, gave a start. “A strange question,” he murmured in a mocking tone by which Mme. Verdurin felt hurt.
“Anyhow,” she said to me, “before you dine with the Cambremers, why not bring her here, your cousin? Does she like conversation, and clever people? Is she pleasant? Yes, very well then. Bring her with you. The Cambremers aren’t the only people in the world. I can understand their being glad to invite her, they must find it difficult to get anyone. Here she will have plenty of fresh air, and lots of clever men. In any case, I am counting on you not to fail me next Wednesday. I heard you were having a tea-party at Rivebelle with your cousin, and M. de Charlus, and I forget who’ else. You must arrange to bring the whole lot on here, it would be nice if you all came in a body. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get here, the roads are charming; if you like I can send down for you.
I can’t imagine what you find attractive in Rivebelle, it’s infested with mosquitoes. You are thinking perhaps of the reputation of the rock-cakes. My cook makes them far better. I can let you have them, here, Norman rock-cakes, the real article, and shortbread; I need say no more. Ah! If you like the filth they give you at Rivebelle, that I won’t give you, I don’t poison my guests, Sir, and even if I wished to, my cook would refuse to make such abominations and would leave my service. Those rock-cakes you get down there, you can’t tell what they are made of. I knew a poor girl who got peritonitis from them, which carried her off in three days. She was only seventeen. It was sad for her poor mother,” added Mme. Verdurin with a melancholy air beneath the spheres of her temples charged with experience and suffering. “However, go and have tea at Rivebelle, if you enjoy being fleeced and flinging money out of the window. But one thing I beg of you, it is a confidential mission I am charging you with, on the stroke of six, bring all your party here, don’t allow them to go straggling away by themselves. You can bring whom you please. I wouldn’t say that to everybody.
But I am sure that your friends are nice, I can see at once that we understand one another. Apart from the little nucleus, there are some very pleasant people coming on Wednesday. You don’t know little Madame de Longpont. She is charming, and so witty, not in the least a snob, you will find, you’ll like her immensely. And she’s going to bring a whole troop of friends too,” Mme. Verdurin added to shew me that this was the right thing to do and encourage me by the other’s example. “We shall see which has most influence and brings most people, Barbe de Longpont or you. And then I believe somebody’s going to bring Bergotte,” she added with a vague air, this meeting with a celebrity being rendered far from likely by a paragraph which had appeared in the papers that morning, to the effect that the great writer’s health was causing grave anxiety.
“Anyhow, you will see that it will be one of my most successful Wednesdays, I don’t want to have any boring women. You mustn’t judge by this evening, it has been a complete failure. Don’t try to be polite, you can’t have been more bored than I was, I thought myself it was deadly. It won’t always be like to-night, you know! I’m not thinking of the Cambremers, who are impossible, but I have known society people who were supposed to be pleasant, well, compared with my little nucleus, they didn’t exist. I heard you say that you thought Swann clever. I must say, to my mind, his cleverness was greatly exaggerated, but without speaking of the character of the man, which I have always found fundamentally antipathetic, sly, underhand, I have often had him to dinner on Wednesdays.
Well, you can ask the others, even compared with Brichot, who is far from being anything wonderful, a good assistant master, whom I got into the Institute, Swann was simply nowhere. He was so dull!” And, as I expressed a contrary opinion: “It’s the truth. I don’t want to say a word against him to you, since he was your friend, indeed he was very fond of you, he has spoken to me about you in
