In the case of this gathering, the impure elements that associated themselves with it struck me from another aspect; to be sure, I was as well able as anyone to dissociate them, having learned to know them separately, but anyhow it came to pass that some of them, those which concerned Mlle. Vinteuil and her friend, speaking to me of Combray, spoke to me also of Albertine, that is to say of Balbec, since it was because I had long ago seen Mlle. Vinteuil at Montjouvain and had learned of her friend’s intimacy with Albertine, that I was presently, when I returned home, to find, instead of solitude, Albertine awaiting me, and that the others, those which concerned Morel and M. de Charlus, speaking to me of Balbec, where I had seen, on the platform at Doncières, their intimacy begin, spoke to me of Combray and of its two ‘ways,’ for M. de Charlus was one of those Guermantes, Counts of Combray, inhabiting Combray without having any dwelling there, between earth and heaven, like Gilbert the Bad in his window: while, after all, Morel was the son of that old valet who had enabled me to know the lady in pink, and had permitted me, years after, to identify her with Mme. Swann.
M. de Charlus repeated, when, the music at an end, his guests came, to say good-bye to him, the same error that he had made when they arrived. He did not ask them to shake hands with their hostess, to include her and her husband in the gratitude that was being showered on himself. There was a long queue waiting, but a queue that led to the Baron alone, a fact of which he must have been conscious, for as he said to me a little later: “The form of the artistic celebration ended in a ‘few-words-in-the-vestry’ touch that was quite amusing.” The guests even prolonged their expressions of gratitude with indiscriminate remarks which enabled them to remain for a moment longer in the Baron’s presence, while those who had not yet congratulated him on the success of his party hung wearily in the rear. A stray husband or two may have announced his intention of going; but his wife, a snob as well as a Duchess, protested: “No, no, even if we are kept waiting an hour, we cannot go away without thanking Palamède, who has taken so much trouble. There is nobody else left now who can give entertainments like this.”
Nobody would have thought of asking to be introduced to Mme. Verdurin any more than to the attendant in a theatre to which some great lady has for one evening brought the whole aristocracy. “Were you at Eliane de Montmorency’s yesterday, cousin?” asked Mme. de Mortemart, seeking an excuse to prolong their conversation. “Good gracious, no; I like Eliane, but I never can understand her invitations. I must be very stupid, I’m afraid,” he went on, parting his lips in a broad smile, while Mme. de Mortemart realised that she was to be made the first recipient of ‘one of Palamède’s’ as she had often been of ‘one of Oriane’s.’”I did indeed receive a card a fortnight ago from the charming Eliane. Above the questionably authentic name of ‘Montmorency’ was the following kind invitation: ‘My dear cousin, will you please remember me next Friday at half-past nine.’ Beneath were written two less gratifying words: ‘Czech Quartet.’ These seemed to me incomprehensible, and in any case to have no more connexion with the sentence above than the words ‘My dear—–,’ which you find on the back of a letter, with nothing else after them, when the writer has already begun again on the other side, and has not taken a fresh sheet, either from carelessness or in order to save paper. I am fond of Eliane: and so I felt no annoyance, I merely ignored the strange and inappropriate allusion to a Czech Quartet, and, as I am a methodical man, I placed on my chimney-piece the invitation to remember Madame de Montmorency on Friday at half-past nine. Although renowned for my obedient, punctual and meek nature, as Buffon says of the camel”—at this, laughter seemed to radiate from M. de Charlus who knew that on the contrary he was regarded as the most impossible person to live with—“I was a few minutes late (it took me a few minutes to change my clothes), and without any undue remorse, thinking that half-past nine meant ten, at the stroke of ten in a comfortable dressing-gown, with warm slippers on my feet, I sat down in my chimney corner to remember Eliane as she had asked me and with a concentration which began to relax only at half-past ten. Tell her please that I complied strictly with her audacious request.
I am sure she will be gratified.” Mme. de Mortemart was helpless with laughter, in which M. de Charlus joined. “And to-morrow,” she went on, forgetting that she had already long exceeded the time that might be allotted to her, “are you going to our La Rochefoucauld cousins?” “Oh, that, now, is quite impossible, they have invited me, and you too, I see, to a thing it is utterly impossible to imagine, which is called, if I am to believe their card of invitation, a ‘dancing tea.’ I used to be considered pretty nimble when I was young, but I doubt whether I could ever decently have drunk a cup of tea while I was dancing. No, I have never cared for eating or drinking in unnatural positions. You will remind me that my dancing days are done. But even sitting down comfortably to drink my tea—of the quality of which I am suspicious since it is called ‘dancing’—I should be afraid lest other guests younger than myself, and less nimble possibly than I was at their age, might spill their cups over my clothes which would interfere with my pleasure in draining my own.” Nor indeed was M. de Charlus content with leaving Mme. Verdurin out of the conversation while he spoke of all manner of subjects which he seemed to be taking pleasure in developing and varying, that cruel pleasure which he had always enjoyed of keeping indefinitely on their feet the friends who were waiting with an excruciating patience for their turn to come; he even criticised all that part of the entertainment for which Mme. Verdurin was responsible.
“But, talking about cups, what in the world are those strange little bowls which remind me of the vessels in which, when I was a young man, people used to get sorbets from Poiré-Blanche. Somebody said to me just now that they were for ‘iced coffee.’ But if it comes to that, I have seen neither coffee nor ice. What curious little objects—so very ambiguous.” In saying this M. de Charlus had placed his white-gloved hands vertically over his lips and had modestly circumscribed his indicative stare as though he were afraid of being heard, or even seen by his host and hostess. But this was a mere feint, for in a few minutes he would be offering the same criticisms to the Mistress herself, and a little later would be insolently enjoining: “No more iced-coffee cups, remember! Give them to one of your friends whose house you wish to disfigure.
But warn her not to have them in the drawing-room, or people might think that they had come into the wrong room, the things are so exactly like chamberpots.” “But, cousin,” said the guest, lowering her own voice also, and casting a questioning glance at M. de Charlus, for she was afraid of offending not Mme. Verdurin but him, “perhaps she doesn’t quite know yet….” “She shall be taught.” “Oh!” laughed the guest, “she couldn’t have a better teacher! She is lucky! If you are in charge, one can be sure there won’t be a false note.” “There wasn’t one, if it comes to that, in the music.” “Oh! It was sublime. One of those pleasures which can never be forgotten. Talking of that marvellous violinist,” she went on, imagining in her innocence that M. de Charlus was interested in the violin ‘pure and simple,’”do you happen to know one whom I heard the other day playing too wonderfully a sonata by Fauré, his name is Frank….” “Oh, he’s a horror,” replied M. de Charlus, overlooking the rudeness of a contradiction which implied that his cousin was lacking in taste. “As far as violinists are concerned, I advise you to confine yourself to mine.” This paved the way to a fresh exchange of glances, at once furtive and scrutinous, between M. de Charlus and his cousin, for, blushing and seeking by her zeal to atone for her blunder, Mme. de Mortemart went on to suggest to M. de Charlus that she might give a party, to hear Morel play. Now, so far as she was concerned, this party had not the object of bringing an unknown talent into prominence, an object which she would, however, pretend to have in mind, and which was indeed that of M. de Charlus. She regarded it only as an opportunity for giving a particularly smart party and was calculating already whom she would invite and whom she would reject.
This business of selection, the chief preoccupation of people who give parties (even the people whom ‘society’ journalists are so impudent or so foolish as to call ‘the élite’), alters at once
