great and genuine kindness, a tone due to the shrivelling crossness, the sense of grievance that is a physiological accompaniment of age, as well as to the affectation of imitating the almost rustic speech of the old nobility: “I’m goin’ to let you see her portrait, the original of the copy they have in the Louvre.”
She rose, laying down her brushes beside the flowers, and the little apron which then came into sight at her waist, and which she wore so as not to stain her dress with paints, added still further to the impression of an old peasant given by her bonnet and her big spectacles, and offered a sharp contrast to the luxury of her appointments, the butler who had brought in the tea and cakes, the liveried footman for whom she now rang to light up the portrait of the Duchesse de Montmorency, Abbess of one of the most famous Chapters in the East of France. Everyone had risen. “What is rather amusin’,” said our hostess, “is that in these Chapters where our great-aunts were so often made Abbesses, the daughters of the King of France would not have been admitted. They were very close corporations.” “Not admit the King’s daughters,” cried Bloch in amazement, “why ever not?” “Why, because the House of France had not enough quartering after that low marriage.” Bloch’s bewilderment increased. “A low marriage? The House of France? When was that?” “Why, when they married into the Medicis,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis in the most natural manner. “It’s a fine picture, ain’t it, and in a perfect state of preservation,” she added.
‘My dear,” put in the Marie-Antoinette lady, “surely you remember that when I brought Liszt to see you he said that it was this one that was the copy.”
“I should bow to any opinion of Liszt on music, but not on painthe Besides, he was quite off his head then, and I don’t remember his ever saying anything of the sort. But it wasn’t you that brought him here. I had met him any number of times at dinner at Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein’s.”
Alix’s shot had missed fire; she stood silent, erect and motionless. Plastered with layers of powder, her face had the appearance of a face of stone. And, as the profile was noble, she seemed, on a triangular and moss-grown pedestal hidden by her cape, the time-worn stucco goddess of a park.
“Ah, I see another fine portrait,” began the historian.
The door opened and the Duchesse de Guermantes entered the room.
“Well, how are you?” Mme. de Villeparisis greeted her without moving her head, taking from her apron-pocket a hand which she held out to the newcomer; and then ceasing at once to take any notice of her niece, in order to return to the historian: “That is the portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld….”
A young servant with a bold manner and a charming face (but so finely chiselled, to ensure its perfection, that the nose was a little red and the rest of the skin slightly flushed as though they were still smarting from the recent and sculptural incision) came in bearing a card on a salver.
“It is that gentleman who has been several times to see Mme. la Marquise.”
“Did you tell him I was at home?”
“He heard the voices.”
“Oh, very well then, shew him in. It’s a man who was introduced to me,” she explained. “He told me he was very anxious to come to the house. I certainly never said he might. But here he’s taken the trouble to call five times now; it doesn’t do to hurt people’s feelings. Sir,” she went on to me, “and you, Sir,” to the historian of the Fronde, “let me introduce my niece, the Duchesse de Guermantes.”
The historian made a low bow, as I did also, and since he seemed to suppose that some friendly remark ought to follow this salute, his eyes brightened and he was preparing to open his mouth when he was once more frozen by the sight of Mme. de Guermantes who had taken advantage of the independence of her torso to throw it forward with an exaggerated politeness and bring it neatly back to a position of rest without letting face or eyes appear to have noticed that anyone was standing before them; after breathing a gentle sigh she contented herself with manifesting the nullity of the impression that had been made on her by the sight of the historian and myself by performing certain movements of her nostrils with a precision that testified to the absolute inertia of her unoccupied attention.
The importunate visitor entered the room, making straight for Mme. de Villeparisis with an ingenuous, fervent air: it was Legrandin.
“Thank you so very much for letting me come and see you,” he began, laying stress on the word ‘very.’ “It is a pleasure of a quality altogether rare and subtle that you confer on an old solitary; I assure you that its repercussion…” He stopped short on catching sight of me.
“I was just shewing this gentleman a fine portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, the wife of the author of the Maxims; it’s a family picture.”
Mme. de Guermantes meanwhile had greeted Alix, with apologies for not having been able, that year as in every previous year, to go and see her. “I hear all about you from Madeleine,” she added.
“She was at luncheon with me to-day,” said the Marquise of the Quai Malaquais, with the satisfying reflexion that Mme. de Villeparisis could never say that.
Meanwhile I had been talking to Bloch, and fearing, from what I had been told of his father’s change of attitude towards him, that he might be envying my life, I said to him that his must be the happier of the two. My remark was prompted solely by my desire to be friendly. But such friendliness readily convinces those who cherish a high opinion of themselves of their own good fortune, or gives them a desire to convince other people. “Yes, I do lead a delightful existence,” Bloch assured me with a beatified smile. “I have three great friends; I do not wish for one more; an adorable mistress; I am infinitely happy. Rare is the mortal to whom Father Zeus accords so much felicity.” I fancy that he was anxious principally to extol himself and to make me envious. Perhaps too there was some desire to shew originality in his optimism. It was evident that he did not wish to reply in the commonplace phraseology that everybody uses: “Oh, it was nothing, really,” and so forth, when, to my question: “Was it a good show?” put with regard to an afternoon dance at his house to which I had been prevented from going, he replied in a level, careless tone, as if the dance had been given by some one else: “Why, yes, it was quite a good show, couldn’t have been better. It was really charming!”
“What you have just told us interests me enormously,” said Legrandin to Mme. de Villeparisis, “for I was saying to myself only the other day that you shewed a marked likeness to him in the clear-cut turn of your speech, in a quality which I will venture to describe by two contradictory terms, monumental rapidity and immortal instantaneousness. I should have liked this afternoon to take down all the things you say; but I shall remember them. They are, in a phrase which comes, I think, from Joubert, friends of the memery. You have never read Joubert? Oh! he would have admired you so! I will take the liberty this evening of sending you a set of him, it is a privilege to make you a present of his mind. He had not your strength. But he had a great deal of charm all the same.”
I would have gone up to Legrandin at once and spoken to him, but he kept as far away from me as he could, no doubt in the hope that I might not overhear the stream of flattery which, with a remarkable felicity of expression, he kept pouring out, whatever the topic, to Mme. de Villeparisis.
She shrugged her shoulders, smiling, as though he had been trying to make fun of her, and turned to the historian.
“And this is the famous Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse, who was married first of all to M. de Luynes.”
“My dear, speaking of Mme. de Luynes reminds me of Yolande; she came to me yesterday evening, and if I had known that you weren’t engaged I’d have sent round to ask you to come. Mme. Ristori turned up quite by chance, and recited some poems by Queen Carmen Sylva in the author’s presence. It was too beautiful!”
“What treachery!” thought Mme. de Villeparisis. “Of course that was what she was whispering about the other day to Mme. de Beaulaincourt and Mme. de Chaponay. I had no engagement,” she replied, “but I should not have come. I heard Ristori in her great days, she’s a mere wreck now. Besides I detest Carmen Sylva’s poetry. Ristori came here once, the Duchess of Aosta brought her, to recite a canto of the Inferno, by Dante. In that sort of thing she’s incomparable.”
Alix bore the blow without flinching. She remained marble. Her gaze was piercing and blank, her nose proudly arched. But the surface of one cheek was scaling. A faint, strange vegetation, green and pink, was invading her chin. Perhaps another winter would level her with the dust.
“Now, sir, if you are fond of painting, look at the portrait of Mme, de Montmorency,” Mme. de Villeparisis said