The dot over the i of Gilberte had risen above the word to mark the end of the message. As for her capital G, it resembled a gothic A. Add that, apart from this, two or three words had been misread, dovetailed into one another (some of them as it happened had seemed to me incomprehensible), and this was quite enough to explain the details of my error and was not even necessary. How many letters are actually read into a word by a careless person who knows what to expect, who sets out with the idea that the message is from a certain person, how many words into the sentence? We guess as we read, we create; everything starts from an initial mistake; the mistakes that follow (and not only in the reading of letters and telegrams, not only in reading as a whole), extraordinary as they may appear to a person who has not begun at the same starting-point, are all quite natural. A large part of what we believe to be true (and this applies even to our final conclusions) with a persistence equalled only by our sincerity, springs from an original misconception of our premisses.
CHAPTER FOUR
A FRESH LIGHT UPON ROBERT DE SAINT-LOUP
“Oh, it is unheard-of,” said my mother. “Listen, at my age, one has ceased to be astonished at anything, but I assure you that there could be nothing more unexpected than what I find in this letter.” “Listen, first, to me,” I replied, “I don’t know what it is, but however astonishing it may be, it cannot be quite so astonishing as what I have found in my letter. It is a marriage. It is Robert de Saint-Loup who is marrying Gilberte Swann.” “Ah!” said my mother, “then that is no doubt what is in the other letter, which I have not yet opened, for I recognised your friend’s hand.”
And my mother smiled at me with that faint trace of emotion which, ever since she had lost her own mother, she felt at every event however insignificant, that concerned human creatures who were capable of grief, of memory, and who themselves also mourned their dead. And so my mother smiled at me and spoke to me in a gentle voice, as though she had been afraid, were she to treat this marriage lightly, of belittling the melancholy feelings that it might arouse in Swann’s widow and daughter, in Robert’s mother who had resigned herself to parting from her son, all of whom my mother, in her kindness of heart, in her gratitude for their kindness to me, endowed with her own faculty of filial, conjugal and maternal emotion. “Was I right in telling you that you would find nothing more astonishing?” I asked her. “On the contrary!” she replied in a gentle tone, “it is I who can impart the most extraordinary news, I shall not say the greatest, the smallest, for that quotation from Sévigné which everyone makes who knows nothing else that she ever wrote used to distress your grandmother as much as ‘what a charming thing it is to smoke.’ We scorn to pick up such stereotyped Sévigné.
This letter is to announce the marriage of the Cambremer boy.” “Oh!” I remarked with indifference, “to whom? But in any case the personality of the bridegroom robs this marriage of any sensational element.” “Unless the bride’s personality supplies it.” “And who is the bride in question?” “Ah, if I tell you straight away, that will spoil everything; see if you can guess,” said my mother who, seeing that we had not yet reached Turin, wished to keep something in reserve for me as meat and drink for the rest of the journey. “But how do you expect me to know? Is it anyone brilliant? If Legrandin and his sister are satisfied, we may be sure that it is a brilliant marriage.” “As for Legrandin, I cannot say, but the person who informs me of the marriage says that Mme. de Cambremer is delighted. I don’t know whether you will call it a brilliant marriage. To my mind, it suggests the days when kings used to marry shepherdesses, though in this case the shepherdess is even humbler than a shepherdess, charming as she is. It would have stupefied your grandmother, but would not have shocked her.” “But who in the world is this bride?” “It is Mlle. d’Oloron.” “That sounds to me tremendous and not in the least shepherdessy, but I don’t quite gather who she can be. It is a title that used to be in the Guermantes family.” “Precisely, and M. de Charlus conferred it, when he adopted her, upon Jupien’s niece.” “Jupien’s niece! It isn’t possible!” “It is the reward of virtue. It is a marriage from the last chapter of one of Mme. Sand’s novels,” said my mother. “It is the reward of vice, it is a marriage from the end of a Balzac novel,” thought I. “After all,” I said to my mother, “when you come to think of it, it is quite natural.
Here are the Cambremers established in that Guermantes clan among which they never hoped to pitch their tent; what is more, the girl, adopted by M. de Charlus, will have plenty of money, which was indispensable now that the Cambremers have lost theirs; and after all she is the adopted daughter, and, in the Cambremers’ eyes, probably the real daughter—the natural daughter—of a person whom they regard as a Prince of the Blood Royal. A bastard of a semi-royal house has always been regarded as a flattering alliance by the nobility of France and other countries. Indeed, without going so far back, only the other day, not more than six months ago, don’t you remember, the marriage of Robert’s friend and that girl, the only possible justification of which was that she was supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be the natural daughter of a sovereign prince.” My mother, without abandoning the caste system of Combray which meant that my grandmother would have been scandalised by such a marriage, being principally anxious to echo her mother’s judgment, added: “Anyhow, the girl is worth her weight in gold, and your dear grandmother would not have had to draw upon her immense goodness, her unbounded indulgence, to keep her from condemning young Cambremer’s choice. Do you remember how distinguished she thought the girl, years ago, one day when she went into the shop to have a stitch put in her skirt? She was only a child then. And now, even if she has rather run to seed, and become an old maid, she is a different woman, a thousand times more perfect. But your grandmother saw all that at a glance. She found the little niece of a jobbing tailor more ‘noble’ than the Duc de Guermantes.” But even more necessary than to extol my grandmother was it for my mother to decide that it was ‘better’ for her that she had not lived to see the day. This was the supreme triumph of her filial devotion, as though she were sparing my grandmother a final grief. “And yet, can you imagine for a moment,” my mother said to me, “what old father Swann—not that you ever knew him, of course—would have felt if he could have known that he would one day have a great-grandchild in whose veins the blood of mother Moser who used to say: ‘Ponchour Mezieurs’ would mingle with the blood of the Duc de Guise!” “But listen, Mamma, it is a great deal more surprising than that.
For the Swanns were very respectable people, and, given the position that their son occupied, his daughter, if he himself had made a decent marriage, might have married very well indeed. But all her chances were ruined by his marrying a courtesan.” “Oh, a courtesan, you know, people were perhaps rather hard on her, I never quite believed.” “Yes, a courtesan, indeed I can let you have some startling revelations one of these days.”
Lost in meditation, my mother said: “The daughter of a woman to whom your father would never allow me to bow marrying the nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis, upon whom your father wouldn’t allow me to call at first because he thought her too grand for me!” Then:
“The son of Mme. de Cambremer to whom Legrandin was so afraid of having to give us a letter of introduction because he didn’t think us smart enough, marrying the niece of a man who would never dare to come to our flat except by the service stairs!…
All the same your poor grandmother was right—you remember—when she said that the great nobility could do things that would shock
