protested. “It was a great surprise, I admit, because she’s just a well-meaning idiot, but she was never silly, and she was at one time good looking.”
“Oh, oh!” muttered Mme. de Villeparisis.
“You never thought so? Surely, she had some charming points, very fine eyes, good hair, she used to dress, and does still dress, wonderfully. Nowadays, I quite agree, she’s horrible, but she has been a lovely woman in her time. Not that that made me any less sorry when Charles married her, because it was so unnecessary.” The Duchess had not intended to say anything out of the common, but as M. d’Argencourt began to laugh she repeated these last words — either because she thought them amusing or because she thought it nice of him to laugh — and looked up at him with a coaxing smile, to add the enchantment of her femininity to that of her wit. She went on: “Yes, really, it wasn’t worth the trouble, was it; still, after all, she did have some charm and I can quite understand anybody’s falling in love with her, but if you saw Robert’s girl, I assure you, you’d simply die of laughter. Oh, I know somebody’s going to quote Augier at me: ‘What matters the bottle so long as one gets drunk?’ Well, Robert may have got drunk, all right, but he certaintly hasn’t shewn much taste in his choice of a bottle! First of all, would you believe that she actually expected me to fit up a staircase right in the middle of my drawing-room. Oh, a mere nothing — what? — and she announced that she was going to lie flat on her stomach on the steps. And then, if you’d heard the things she recited, I only remember one scene, but I’m sure nobody could imagine anything like it; it was called the Seven Princesses.”
“Seven Princesses! Dear, dear, what a snob she must be!” cried M. d’Argencourt. “But, wait a minute, why, I know the whole play. The author sent a copy to the King, who couldn’t understand a word of it and called on me to explain it to him.”
“It isn’t by any chance, from the Sar Peladan?” asked the historian of the Fronde, meaning to make a subtle and topical allusion, but in so low a tone that his question passed unnoticed.
“So you know the Seven Princesses, do you?” replied the Duchess, “I congratulate you! I only know one, but she’s quite enough; I have no wish to make the acquaintance of the other six. If they are all like the one I’ve seen!”
“What a goose!” I thought to myself. Irritated by the coldness of her greeting, I found a sort of bitter satisfaction in this proof of her complete inability to understand Maeterlinck. “To think that’s the woman I walk miles every morning to see. Really, I’m too kind. Well, it’s my turn now not to want to see her.” Thus I reasoned with myself; but my words ran counter to my thoughts; they were purely conversational words such as we say to ourselves at those moments when, too much excited to remain quietly alone, we feel the need, for want of another listener, to talk to ourselves, without meaning what we say, as we talk to a stranger.
“I can’t tell you what it was like,” the Duchess went on; “you simply couldn’t help laughing. Not that anyone tried; rather the other way, I’m sorry to say, for the young person was not at all pleased and Robert has never really forgiven me. Though I can’t say I’m sorry, actually, because if it had been a success the lady would perhaps have come again, and I don’t quite see Marie-Aynard approving of that.”
This was the name given in the family to Robert’s mother, Mme. de Marsantes, the widow of Aynard de Saint-Loup, to distinguish her from her cousin, the Princesse de Guermantes-Bavière, also a Marie, to whose Christian name her nephews and cousins and brothers-in-law added, to avoid confusion, either that of her husband or another of her own, making her Marie-Gilbert or Marie-Hedwige.
“To begin with, there was a sort of rehearsal the night before, which was a wonderful affair!” went on Mme. de Guermantes in ironical pursuit of her theme. “Just imagine, she uttered a sentence, no, not so much, not a quarter of a sentence, and then she stopped; she didn’t open her mouth — I’m not exaggerating — for a good five minutes.”
“Oh, I say,” cried M. d’Argencourt.
“With the utmost politeness I took the liberty of hinting to her that this might seem a little unusual. And she said — I give you her actual words— ‘One ought always to repeat a thing as though one were just composing it oneself.’ When you think of it, that really is monumental.”
“But I understood she wasn’t at all bad at reciting poetry,” said one of the two young men.
“She hasn’t the ghost of a notion what poetry is,” replied Mme. de Guermantes. “However, I didn’t need to listen to her to tell that. It was quite enough to see her come in with her lilies. I knew at once that she couldn’t have any talent when I saw those lilies!”
Everybody laughed.
“I hope, my dear aunt, you aren’t angry with me, over my little joke the other day about the Queen of Sweden. I’ve come to ask your forgiveness.’
“Oh, no, I’m not at all angry, I even give you leave to eat at my table, if you’re hungry. — Come along, M. Valmère, you’re the daughter of the house,” Mme. de Villeparisis went on to the librarian, repeating a time-honoured pleasantry.
M de Guermantes sat upright in the armchair in which he had come to anchor his hat on the carpet by his side, and examined with a satisfied smile the plate of little cakes that was being held out to him.
“This gentleman makes you an admirable daughter,” commented M. d’Argencourt, whom the spirit of imitation prompted to keep Mme. de Villeparisis’s little joke in circulation.
The librarian handed the plate of cakes to the historian of the Fronde.
“You perform your functions admirably,” said the latter, startled into speech, and hoping also to win the sympathy of the crowd. At the same time he cast a covert glance of connivance at those who had anticipated him.
“Tell me, my dear aunt,” M. de Guermantes inquired of Mme. de Villeparisis, “who was that rather good-looking man who was going out just now as I came in? I must know him, because he gave me a sweeping bow, but I couldn’t place him at all; you know I never can remember names, it’s such a nuisance,” he added, in a tone of satisfaction.
“M. Legrandin.”
“Oh, but Oriane has a cousin whose mother, if I’m not mistaken, was a Grandin. Yes, I remember quite well, she was a Grandin de l’Epervier.”
“No,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis, “no relation at all. These are plain Grandins. Grandins of nothing at all. But they’d be only too glad to be Grandins of anything you chose to name. This one has a sister called Mme. de Cambremer.”
“Why, Basin, you know quite well who’ my aunt means,” cried the Duchess indignantly. “He’s the brother of that great graminivorous creature you had the weird idea of sending to call on me the other day. She stayed a solid hour; I thought I should go mad. But I began by thinking it was she who was mad when I saw a person I didn’t know come browsing into the room looking exactly like a cow.”
“Listen, Oriane; she asked me what afternoon you were at home; I couldn’t very well be rude to her; and besides, you do exaggerate so, she’s not in the least like a cow,” he added in a plaintive tone, though not without a quick smiling glance at the audience.
He knew that his wife’s lively wit needed the stimulus of contradiction, the contradiction of common sense which protests that one cannot (for instance) mistake a woman seriously for a cow; by this process Mme. de Guermantes, enlarging upon her original idea, had been inspired to produce many of her most brilliant sayings. And the Duke in his innocent fashion helped her, without seeming to do so, to bring off her effects like, in a railway carriage, the unacknowledged partner of the three-card player.
“I admit she doesn’t look like a cow, she looks like a dozen,” exclaimed Mme. de Guermantes. “I assure you, I didn’t know what to do when I saw a herd of cattle come marching into my drawing-room in a hat and heard them ask me how I was. I had half a mind to say: ‘Please, herd of cattle, you must be making a mistake, you can’t possibly know me, because you’re a herd of cattle,’ but after racking my brains over her I came to the conclusion that your Cambremer woman must be the Infanta Dorothea who had said she was coming to see me one day, and is rather bovine also, so that I was just on the point of saying: ‘Your Royal Highness’ and using the third person to a herd of cattle. The cut of her dewlap reminded me rather, too, of the Queen of Sweden. But this massed attack had been prepared for by long range artillery fire, according to all the rules of war. For I don’t know how long before, I was bombarded with her cards; I used to find them lying about all over the house, on all the tables and chairs like prospectuses. I couldn’t think what they were supposed