You were so wise not to come to dinner there yesterday, there was a brill cooked in carbolic! I assure you, it wasn’t a dinner-table, it was far more like an operating-table. Really, Norpois carries loyalty to the pitch of heroism. He actually asked for more!” “I believe I saw you at dinner there the time she made that attack on M. Bloch” (M. de Guermantes, perhaps to give to an Israelite name a more foreign sound, pronounced the ‘ch’ in Bloch not like a ‘k’ but as in the German “hoch”) “when he said about some poit” (poet) “or 270other that he was sublime. Châtellerault did his best to break M. Bloch’s shins, the fellow didn’t understand in the least and thought my nephew’s kick was aimed at a young woman sitting opposite him.” (At this point, M. de Guermantes coloured slightly.) “He did not realise that he was annoying our aunt by his ‘sublimes’ chucked about all over the place like that. In short, aunt Madeleine, who doesn’t keep her tongue in her pocket, turned on him with: ‘Indeed, sir, and what epithet do you keep for M. de Bossuet?’” (M. de Guermantes thought that, when one mentioned a famous name, the use of “Monsieur” and a particle was eminently “old school”.) “That put him in his place, all right.” “And what answer did this M. Bloch make?” came in a careless tone from Mme. de Guermantes, who, running short for the moment of original ideas, felt that she must copy her husband’s teutonic pronunciation. “Ah! I can assure, M. Bloch did not wait for any more, he’s still running.” “Yes, I remember quite well seeing you there that evening,” said Mme. de Guermantes with emphasis as though, coming from her, there must be something in this reminiscence highly flattering to myself. “It is always so interesting at my aunt’s. At the last party she gave, which was, of course, when I met you, I meant to ask you whether that old gentleman who went past where we were sitting wasn’t François Coppée. You must know who everyone is,” she went on, sincerely envious of my relations with poets and poetry, and also out of “consideration” for myself, the wish to establish in a better position in the eyes of her other guests a young man so well versed in literature. I assured the Duchess that I had not observed any celebrities at Mme. de Villeparisis’s party. “What!” she replied 271with a bewilderment which revealed that her respect for men of letters and her contempt for society were more superficial than she said, perhaps even than she thought, “What! There were no famous authors there! You astonish me! Why, I saw all sorts of quite impossible people!” I remembered the evening in question distinctly owing to an entirely trivial incident that had occurred at the party. Mme. de Villeparisis had introduced Bloch to Mme. Alphonse de Rothschild, but my friend had not caught the name and, thinking he was talking to an old English lady who was a trifle mad, had replied only in monosyllables to the garrulous conversation of the historic beauty, when Mme. de Villeparisis in making her known to some one else uttered, quite distinctly this time: “The Baronne Alphonse de Rothschild.” Thereupon there had coursed suddenly and simultaneously through Bloch’s arteries so many ideas of millions and of social importance, which it would have been more prudent to subdivide and separate, that he had undergone, so to speak, a momentary failure of heart and brain alike, and cried aloud in the dear old lady’s presence: “If I’d only known!” an exclamation the silliness of which kept him from sleeping for at least a week afterwards. His remark was of no great interest, but I remembered it as a proof that sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what is in their minds. “I fancy Mme. de Villeparisis is not absolutely … moral,” said the Princesse de Parme, who knew that the best people did not visit the Duchess’s aunt, and from what the Duchess herself had just been saying that one might speak freely about her. But, Mme. de Guermantes not seeming to approve of this criticism, she hastened to add: 272“Though, of course, intellect carried to that degree excuses everything.” “But you take the same view of my aunt that everyone else does,” replied the Duchess, “which is, really, quite mistaken. It’s just what Mémé was saying to me only yesterday.” She blushed; a reminiscence unknown to me filmed her eyes. I formed the supposition that M. de Charlus had asked her to cancel my invitation, as he had sent Robert to ask me not to go to her house. I had the impression that the blush—equally incomprehensible to me—which had tinged the Duke’s cheek when he made some reference to his brother could not be attributed to the same cause. “My poor aunt—she will always have the reputation of being a lady of the old school, of sparkling wit and uncontrolled passions. And really there’s no more middle-class, serious, commonplace mind in Paris. She will go down as a patron of the arts, which means to say that she was once the mistress of a great painter, though he was never able to make her understand what a picture was; and as for her private life, so far from being a depraved woman, she was so much made for marriage, so conjugal from her cradle that, not having succeeded in keeping a husband, who incidentally was a cad, she has never had a love-affair which she hasn’t taken just as seriously as if it were holy matrimony, with the same susceptibilities, the same quarrels, the same fidelity. By which token, those relations are often the most sincere; you’ll find, in fact, more inconsolable lovers than husbands.” “Yet, Oriane, if you take the case of your brother-in-law Palamède you were speaking about just now; no mistress in the world could ever dream of being mourned as that poor Mme. de Charlus has been.” “Ah!” replied the 273Duchess, “Your Highness must permit me to be not altogether of her opinion. People don’t all like to be mourned in the same way, each of us has his preferences.” “Still, he did make a regular cult of her after her death. It is true that people sometimes do for the dead what they would not have done for the living.” “For one thing,” retorted Mme. de Guermantes in a dreamy tone which belied her teasing purpose, “we go to their funerals, which we never do for the living!” M. de Guermantes gave a sly glance at M. de Bréauté as though to provoke him into laughter at the Duchess’s wit. “At the same time I frankly admit,” went on Mme. de Guermantes, “that the manner in which I should like to be mourned by a man I loved would not be that adopted by my brother-in-law.” The Duke’s face darkened. He did not like to hear his wife utter rash judgments, especially about M. de Charlus. “You are very particular. His grief set an example to everyone,” he reproved her stiffly. But the Duchess had in dealing with her husband that sort of boldness which animal tamers shew, or people who live with a madman and are not afraid of making him angry: “Oh, very well, just as you like—he does set an example, I never said he didn’t, he goes every day to the cemetery to tell her how many people he has had to luncheon, he misses her enormously, but—as he’ld mourn for a cousin, a grandmother, a sister. It is not the grief of a husband. It is true that they were a pair of saints, which makes it all rather exceptional.” M. de Guermantes, infuriated by his wife’s chatter, fixed on her with a terrible immobility a pair of eyes already loaded. “I don’t wish to say anything against poor Mémé, who, by the way, could not come this evening,” went on 274the Duchess, “I quite admit there’s no one like him, he’s delightful; he has a delicacy, a warmth of heart that you don’t as a rule find in men. He has a woman’s heart, Mémé has!” “What you say is absurd,” M. de Guermantes broke in sharply. “There’s nothing effeminate about Mémé, I know nobody so manly as he is.” “But I am not suggesting that he’s the least bit in the world effeminate. Do at least take the trouble to understand what I say,” retorted the Duchess. “He’s always like that the moment anyone mentions his brother,” she added, turning to the Princesse de Parme. “It’s very charming, it’s a pleasure to hear him. There’s nothing so nice as two brothers who are fond of each other,” replied the Princess, as many a humbler person might have replied, for it is possible to belong to a princely race by birth and at the same time to be mentally affiliated to a race that is thoroughly plebeian.

“As we’re discussing your family, Oriane,” said the Princess, “I saw your nephew Saint-Loup yesterday; I believe he wants to ask you to do something for him.” The Duc de Guermantes bent his Olympian brow. When he did not himself care to do a service, he preferred his wife not to assume the responsibility for it, knowing that it would come to the same thing in the end and that the people to whom the Duchess would be obliged to apply would put this concession down to