The footman returned with the Comtesse Molé’s card, or rather what she had left in place of a card. Alleging that she had none on her, she had taken from her pocket a letter addressed to herself, and keeping the contents had handed in the envelope which bore the inscription: “La Comtesse Molé.” As the envelope was rather large, following the fashion in notepaper which prevailed that year, this manuscript “card” was almost twice the size of an ordinary visiting card. “That is what people call Mme. Molé’s ‘simplicity’,” said the Duchess ironically. “She wants to make us think that she had no cards on her, and to shew her originality. But we know all about that, don’t we, my little Charles, we are quite old enough and quite original enough ourselves to see through the tricks of a little lady who has only been going about for four years. She is charming, but she doesn’t seem to me, all the same, to be quite ‘big’ enough to imagine that she can take the world by surprise with so little effort as merely leaving an envelope instead of a card and leaving it at ten o’clock in the morning. Her old mother mouse will shew her that she knows a thing or two about that.” 387Swann could not help smiling at the thought that the Duchess, who was, incidentally, a trifle jealous of Mme. de Molé’s success, would find it quite in accordance with the “Guermantes wit” to make some impertinent retort to her visitor. “So far as the title of Duc de Brabant is concerned, I’ve told you a hundred times, Oriane…” the Duke continued, but the Duchess, without listening, cut him short. “But, my little Charles, I’m longing to see your photograph.” “Ah! Extinctor draconis latrator Anubis,” said Swann. “Yes, it was so charming what you said about that when you were comparing the Saint George at Venice. But I don’t understand: why Anubis?” “What’s the one like who was an ancestor of Babal?” asked M. de Guermantes. “You want to see his bauble?” retorted his wife, dryly, to shew that she herself scorned the pun. “I want to see them all,” she added. “Listen, Charles, let us wait downstairs till the carriage comes,” said the Duke; “you can pay your call on us in the hall, because my wife won’t let us have any peace until she’s seen your photograph. I am less impatient, I must say,” he added with a satisfied air. “I am not easily moved myself, but she would see us all dead rather than miss it.” “I am entirely of your opinion, Basin,” said the Duchess, “let us go into the hall; we shall at least know why we have come down from your study, while we shall never know how we have come down from the Counts of Brabant.” “I’ve told you a hundred times how the title came into the House of Hesse,” said the Duke (while we were going downstairs to look at the photograph, and I thought of those that Swann used to bring me at Combray), “through the marriage of a Brabant in 1241 with the daughter of the last Landgrave 388of Thuringia and Hesse, so that really it is the title of Prince of Hesse that came to the House of Brabant rather than that of Duke of Brabant to the House of Hesse. You will remember that our battle-cry was that of the Dukes of Brabant: ‘Limbourg to her conqueror!’ until we exchanged the arms of Brabant for those of Guermantes, in which I think myself that we were wrong, and the example of the Gramonts will not make me change my opinion.” “But,” replied Mme. de Guermantes, “as it is the King of the Belgians who is the conqueror…. Besides the Belgian Crown Prince calls himself Duc de Brabant.” “But, my dear child, your argument will not hold water for a moment. You know as well as I do that there are titles of pretension which can perfectly well exist even if the territory is occupied by usurpers. For instance, the King of Spain describes himself equally as Duke of Brabant, claiming in virtue of a possession less ancient than ours, but more ancient than that of the King of the Belgians. He calls himself also Duke of Burgundy, King of the Indies Occidental and Oriental, and Duke of Milan. Well, he is no more in possession of Burgundy, the Indies or Brabant than I possess Brabant myself, or the Prince of Hesse either, for that matter. The King of Spain likewise proclaims himself King of Jerusalem, as does the Austrian Emperor, and Jerusalem belongs to neither one nor the other.” He stopped for a moment with an awkward feeling that the mention of Jerusalem might have embarrassed Swann, in view of “current events”, but only went on more rapidly: “What you said just now might be said of anyone. We were at one time Dukes of Aumale, a duchy that has passed as regularly to the House of France as Joinville and Chevreuse 389have to the House of Albert. We make no more claim to those titles than to that of Marquis de Noirmoutiers, which was at one time ours, and became perfectly regularly the appanage of the House of La Trémoïlle, but because certain cessions are valid, it does not follow that they all are. For instance,” he went on, turning to me, “my sister-in-law’s son bears the title of Prince d’Agrigente, which comes to us from Joan the Mad, as that of Prince de Tarente comes to the La Trémoïlles. Well, Napoleon went and gave this title of Tarente to a soldier, who may have been admirable in the ranks, but in doing so the Emperor was disposing of what belonged to him even less than Napoleon III when he created a Duc de Montmorency, since Périgord had at least a mother who was a Montmorency, while the Tarente of Napoléon I had no more Tarente about him than Napoleon’s wish that he should become so. That did not prevent Chaix d’Est-Ange, alluding to our uncle Condé, from asking the Procureur Impérial if he had picked up the title of Duc de Montmorency in the moat of Vincennes.”
“Listen, Basin, I ask for nothing better than to follow you to the ditches of Vincennes, or even to Taranto. And that reminds me, Charles, of what I was going to say to you when you were telling me about your Saint George at Venice. We have an idea, Basin and I, of spending next spring in Italy and Sicily. If you were to come with us, just think what a difference it would make! I’m not thinking only of the pleasure of seeing you, but imagine, after all you’ve told me so often about the remains of the Norman Conquest and of ancient history, imagine what a trip like that would become if you came with us! I mean to say that even Basin—what am I saying, Gilbert—would 390benefit by it, because I feel that even his claims to the throne of Naples and all that sort of thing would interest me if they were explained by you in old romanesque churches in little villages perched on hills like primitive paintings. But now we’re going to look at your photograph. Open the envelope,” said the Duchess to a footman. “Please, Oriane, not this evening; you can look at it to-morrow,” implored the Duke, who had already been making signs of alarm to me on seeing the huge size of the photograph. “But I like to look at it with Charles,” said the Duchess, with a smile at once artificially concupiscent and psychologically subtle, for in her desire to be friendly to Swann she spoke of the pleasure which she would have in looking at the photograph as though it were the pleasure an invalid feels he would find in eating an orange, or as though she had managed to combine an escapade with her friends with giving information to a biographer as to some of her favourite pursuits. “All right, he will come again to see you, on purpose,” declared the Duke, to whom his wife was obliged to yield. “You can spend three hours in front of it, if that amuses you,” he added ironically. “But where are you going to stick a toy of those dimensions?” “Why, in my room, of course.
