“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 272to 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, 273from 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 274Joubert, friends of the memory. 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’ld 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.”
275Alix 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 to Legrandin, to stop the flow of compliments which was beginning again.
Seizing her opportunity, while his back was turned, Mme. de Guermantes pointed to him, with an ironical, questioning look at her aunt.
“It’s M. Legrandin,” murmured Mme. de Villeparisis, “he has a sister called Mme. de Cambremer, not that that conveys any more to you than it does to me.”
“What! Oh, but I know her quite well!” exclaimed Mme. de Guermantes, and put her hand over her lips. “That is to say, I don’t know her, but for some reason or other Basin, who meets the husband heaven knows where, took it into his head to tell the wretched woman she might call on me. And she did. I can’t tell you what it was like. She informed me that she had been to London, and gave me a complete catalogue of all the things in the British Museum. And this very day, the moment I leave your house, I’m going, just as you see me now, to drop a card on the monster. And don’t for a moment suppose that it’s an easy thing to do. On the pretence that she’s dying of some disease she’s always at home, it doesn’t matter whether you arrive at seven at night or nine in the morning, she’s ready for you with a dish of strawberry tarts.
276“No, but seriously, you know, she is a monstrosity,” Mme. de Guermantes replied to a questioning glance from her aunt. “She’s an impossible person, she talks about ‘plumitives’ and things like that.” “What does ‘plumitive’ mean?” asked Mme. de Villeparisis. “I haven’t the slightest idea!” cried the Duchess in mock indignation. “I don’t want to know. I don’t speak that sort of language.” And seeing that her aunt really did not know what a plumitive was, to give herself the satisfaction of shewing that she was a scholar as well as a purist, and to make fun of her aunt, now, after making fun of Mme. de Cambremer: “Why, of course,” she said, with a half-laugh which the last traces of her pretended ill humour kept in check, “everybody knows what it means; a plumitive is a writer, a person who holds a pen. But it’s a dreadful word. It’s enough to make your wisdom teeth drop out. Nothing will ever make me use words like that.
“And so that’s the brother, is it? I hadn’t realized that yet. But after all it’s not inconceivable. She has the same doormat docility and the same mass of information like a circulating library. She’s just as much of a flatterer as he is, and just as boring. Yes, I’m beginning to see the family likeness now quite plainly.”
“Sit down, we’re just going to take a dish of tea,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to her niece. “Help yourself; you don’t want to
