The life which I supposed them to lead there flowed from a source so different from anything in my experience, and must, I felt, be so out of the ordinary, that I could not have imagined the presence at the Duchess’s parties of people in whose company I myself had already been, of people who really existed. For, not being able suddenly to change their nature, they would have carried on conversations there of the sort that I knew; their partners would perhaps have stooped to reply to them in the same human speech; and, in the course of an evening spent in the leading house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, there would have been moments identical with moments that I had already lived. Which was impossible. It is true that my mind was perplexed by certain difficulties, and the presence of the body of Jesus Christ in the host seemed to me no more obscure a mystery than this leading house in the Faubourg being situated on the right bank of the river and so near that from my bedroom in the morning I could hear its carpets being beaten. But the line of demarcation that separated me from the Faubourg Saint-Germain seemed to me all the more real because it was purely ideal; I sensed that it was already part of the Faubourg when I saw, spread out on the other side of that Equator, the Guermantes doormat of which my mother had ventured to say, having like myself caught a glimpse of it one day when their door stood open, that it was in a shocking state. Besides, how could their dining-room, their dim gallery upholstered in red plush, into which I could see sometimes from our kitchen window, have failed to possess in my eyes the mysterious charm of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to form an essential part of it, to be geographically situated within it, since to have been entertained to dinner in that dining-room was to have gone into the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to have breathed its atmosphere, since the people who, before going to table, sat down beside Mme de Guermantes on the leather-covered sofa in that gallery were all of the Faubourg Saint-Germain? No doubt elsewhere than in the Faubourg, at certain parties, one might see now and then, majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd of fashion, one of those men who are no more than names and who alternately assume, when one tries to picture them to oneself, the aspect of a tourney or of a royal forest. But here, in the leading salon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in the dim gallery, there was no one but them. They were the columns, wrought of precious materials, that upheld the temple. Even for small and intimate gatherings it was from among them only that Mme de Guermantes could choose her guests, and in the dinners for twelve, assembled around the dazzling napery and plate, they were like the golden statues of the apostles in the Sainte-Chapelle, symbolic, dedicative pillars before the Lord’s Table. As for the tiny strip of garden that stretched between high walls at the back of the house, where in summer Mme de Guermantes had liqueurs and orangeade brought out after dinner, how could I not have felt that to sit there of an evening, between nine and eleven, on its iron chairs—endowed with a magic as potent as the leather sofa—without inhaling at the same time the breezes peculiar to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, was as impossible as to take a siesta in the oasis of Figuig without thereby being necessarily in Africa? Only imagination and belief can differentiate from the rest certain objects, certain people, and create an atmosphere. Alas, those picturesque sites, those natural features, those local curiosities, those works of art of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, doubtless I should never be permitted to set my feet among them. And I must content myself with a shiver of excitement as I sighted from the open sea (and without the least hope of ever landing there), like a prominent minaret, like the first palm, like the first signs of some exotic industry or vegetation, the well-trodden doormat of its shore.
But if the Hôtel de Guermantes began for me at its hall-door, its dependencies must be regarded as extending a long way further, in the estimation of the Duke, who, looking on all the tenants as peasants, yokels, appropriators of national assets, whose opinion was of no account, shaved himself every morning in his nightshirt at the window, came down into the courtyard, according to the warmth or coldness of the day, in his shirt-sleeves, in pyjamas, in a plaid jacket of startling colours with a shaggy nap, in little light-coloured topcoats shorter than his jacket, and made one of his grooms lead past him at a trot some horse that he had just bought. More than once, indeed, the horse damaged Jupien’s shop-front, whereupon Jupien, to the Duke’s indignation, demanded compensation. “If it were only in consideration of all the good that Madame la Duchesse does in the house here and in the parish,” said M. de Guermantes, “it’s an outrage on this fellow’s part to claim a sou from us.” But Jupien had stuck to his guns, apparently not having the faintest idea what “good” the Duchess had ever done. And yet she did do good, but—since one cannot do good to everybody at once—the memory of the benefits that we have heaped on one person is a valid reason for our abstaining from helping another, whose discontent we thereby arouse the more. From other points of view than that of philanthropy, the quarter appeared to the Duke—and this over a considerable area—to be merely an extension of his courtyard, a longer track for his horses. After seeing how a new acquisition trotted by itself he would have it harnessed and taken through all the neighbouring streets, the groom running beside the carriage holding the reins, making it pass to and fro before the Duke who stood on the pavement, erect, gigantic, enormous in his vivid clothes, a cigar between his teeth, his head in the air, his eyeglass quizzical, until the moment when he sprang on to the box, drove the horse up and down for a little to try it, then set off with his new turn-out to pick up his mistress in the Champs-Elysées. M. de Guermantes would bid good day in the courtyard to two couples who belonged more or less to his world: the first, some cousins of his who, like working-class parents, were never at home to look after their children, since every morning the wife went off to the Schola Cantorum to study counterpoint and fugue, and the husband to his studio to carve wood and tool leather; and then the Baron and Baronne de Norpois, always dressed in black, she like a pew-opener and he like an undertaker, who emerged several times daily on their way to church. They were the nephew and niece of the old Ambassador whom we knew, and whom my father had in fact met at the foot of the staircase without realising where he was coming from; for my father supposed that so considerable a personage, one who had come in contact with the most eminent men in Europe and was probably quite indifferent to the empty distinctions of social rank, was hardly likely to frequent the society of these obscure, clerical and narrow-minded nobles. They had not been long in the place; Jupien, who had come out into the courtyard to say a word to the husband just as he was greeting M. de Guermantes, called him “M. Norpois,” not being certain of his name.
“Monsieur Norpois, indeed! Oh, that really is good! Just wait a little! This individual will be calling you Citizen Norpois next?” exclaimed M. de Guermantes, turning to the Baron. He was at last able to vent his spleen against Jupien who addressed him as “Monsieur” instead of “Monsieur le Duc.”
One day when M. de Guermantes required some information upon a matter of which my father had professional knowledge, he had introduced himself to him with great courtesy. After that, he had often some neighbourly service to ask of my father and, as soon as he saw him coming downstairs, his mind occupied with his work and anxious to avoid any interruption, the Duke, leaving his stable-boys, would come up to him in the courtyard, straighten the collar of his greatcoat with the obliging deftness inherited from a line of royal body-servants, take him by the hand, and, holding it in his own, stroking it even, to prove to him, with the shamelessness of a courtesan, that he did not begrudge him the privilege of contact with the ducal flesh, would steer him, extremely irked and thinking only how he might escape, through the carriage entrance out into the street. He had given us a sweeping bow one day when he had passed us as he was setting out in the carriage with his wife; he was bound to have told her my name, but what likelihood was there of her remembering it, or my face either? And besides, what a feeble recommendation to be pointed out simply as being one of her tenants! Another, more valuable, would have been to meet the Duc
hess at the house of Mme de Villeparisis, who, as it happened, had sent word by my grandmother that I was to go and see her, and, remembering that I had been intending to go in for literature, had added that I should meet several authors there. But my father felt that I was still a little young to go into society, and as the state of my health continued to cause him disquiet he was reluctant to allow me unnecessary occasions for renewed outings.
As one of Mme de Guermantes’s footmen was in the habit of gossiping with Françoise, I picked up the names of several of the houses which she frequented, but formed no impression of any of them: the moment they were a part of her life, of that life which I saw only through the veil of her name, were they not inconceivable?
“Tonight there’s a big party with a shadow-theatre show at the Princesse de Parme’s,” said the footman, “but we shan’t be going, because at five o’clock Madame is taking the train to Chantilly, to spend a few days with the Duc d’Aumale; but it’ll be the lady’s-maid and valet that go with her. I’m to stay here. She won’t be at all pleased, the Princesse de Parme won’t, that’s four times already she’s written to Madame la Duchesse.”
“Then you won’t be going down to Guermantes Castle this year?”
“It’s the first time we shan’t be going there: it’s because of Monsieur le Duc’s rheumatics, the doctor says he’s not to go there till the radiators are in, but we’ve been there every year till now, right on to January. If the radiators aren’t ready, perhaps Madame will go for a few days to Cannes to the Duchesse de Guise, but nothing’s settled yet.”
“And do you ever go to the theatre?”
“We go now and then to the Opéra, usually on the evenings when the Princesse de Parme has her box, that’s once a week. It seems it’s a fine show they give there, plays, operas, everything. Madame refused to rent a box herself, but we go all the same to the boxes Madame’s friends take, now one, now another, often the Princesse de Guermantes, the Duke’s cousin’s lady. She’s sister to the Duke of Bavaria . . . And so you’ve got to run upstairs again now, have you?” went on the footman, who, though identified with the Guermantes, looked upon “masters” in general as a political estate, a view which allowed him to treat Françoise with as much respect as if she too were in service with a duchess. “You enjoy good health, ma’am.”
“Oh, if it wasn’t for these cursed legs of mine! On the plain I can still get along” (“on the plain” meant in the courtyard or in the streets, where Françoise was not averse from walking, in other words on flat ground), “but it’s these confounded stairs. Good day to you. Perhaps we’ll meet again this evening.”
She was all the more anxious to continue her conversations with the footman after learning from him that the sons of dukes often bore a princely title which they retained until their fathers were dead. Evidently the cult of the nobility, blended with and accommodating itself to a certain spirit of revolt against it, must, springing hereditarily from the soil of France, be very strongly implanted still in her people. For Françoise, to whom you might speak of the genius of Napoleon or of wireless telegraphy without succeeding in attracting her attention, and without her pausing for a moment in the job she was doing, whether clearing the grate or laying the table, if she learnt of these peculiarities and that the younger son of the Duc de Guermantes was generally called the Prince d’Oléron, would exclaim: “Now isn’t that nice!” and stand there bemused, as though in front of a stained-glass window.
Françoise learned also from the Prince d’Agrigente’s valet, who had become friends with her by often calling round with notes for the Duchess, that he had been hearing a great deal of talk in society about the marriage of the Marquis de Saint-Loup to Mlle d’Ambresac, and that it was practically settled.
That villa, that opera-box, into which Mme de Guermantes transfused the current of her life, must, it seemed to me, be places no less magical than her home. The names of Guise, of Parme, of Guermantes-Bavière, differentiated from all possible others the holiday places to which the Duchess resorted, the daily festivities which the track of her carriage wheels linked to her mansion. If they told me that the life of Mme de Guermantes consisted of a succession of such holidays and such festivities, they brought no further light to bear on it. Each of them gave to the life of the Duchess a different determination, but merely brought it a change of mystery without allowing any of its own mystery to evaporate, so that it simply floated, protected by a watertight covering, enclosed in a bell, amid the waves of others’ lives. The Duchess might have lunch on the shore of the Mediterranean at Carnival time, but in the villa of Mme de Guise, where the queen of Parisian society was no more, in her white piqué dress, among numberless princesses, than a guest like any other, and on that account more moving still to me, more herself by being thus made new, like a star of the ballet who in the intricacies of a dance figure takes the place of each of her humbler sisters in succession; she might look at shadow-theatre shows, but at a party given by the Princesse de Parme; listen to tragedy or opera, but from the Princesse de Guermantes’s box.
Since we localise in the body of a person all the potentialities of his or her life, the memory of the people he or she knows and has just left or is on the way to join, if, having learned from Françoise that Mme de Guermantes was going on foot to luncheon with the Princesse de Parme, I saw her emerge from the house about midday in a gown of flesh-coloured satin above which her face was of the same shade, like a cloud at sunset, it was all the pleasures of the Faubourg Saint-Germain that I saw before me, contained in that small compass, as though between the glossy pearl-pink valves of a shell.
My father had a friend at the Ministry, one A. J. Moreau, who, to distinguish himself from the other Moreaus, took care always to prefix his name with these two initials, with the result that people called him “A.J.” for short. For some reason or other, this A.J. found himself in possession of a stall for a gala night at the Opéra. He sent the ticket to my father, and since Berma, whom I had not seen again since my first disappointment, was to give an act of Phèdre, my grandmother persuaded my father to pass it on to me.
Truth to tell, I set little store by this opportunity of seeing and hearing Berma which, a few years earlier, had plunged me into such a state of agitation. And it was not without a sense of melancholy that I registered to myself my indifference to what at one time I had put before health, comfort, everything. It was not that there had been any diminution in my desire to be able to contemplate at first hand the precious particles of reality which my imagination envisioned. But it no longer located them in the diction of a great actress; since my visits to Elstir, it was on to certain tapestries, certain modern paintings that I had transferred the inner faith I had once had in the acting, the tragic art of Berma; my faith and my desire no longer coming forward to pay incessant worship to the diction and the presence of Berma, the “double” that I possessed of them in my heart had gradually shrivelled, like those other “doubles” of the dead in ancient Egypt which had to be fed continually in order to maintain their originals in eternal life. That art had become a poor and pitiable thing. It was no longer inhabited by a deep-rooted soul.
That evening, as, armed with the ticket my father had received from his friend, I was climbing the grand staircase of the Opéra, I saw in front of me a man whom I took at first for M. de Charlus, whose bearing he had; when he turned his head to ask some question of an attendant I saw that I had been mistaken, but I nevertheless had no hesitation in placing the stranger in the same class of society, from the way not only in which he was dressed but in which he spoke to the man who took the tickets and to the box-openers who were keeping him waiting. For, apart from individual characteristics, there was still at this period a very marked difference between any rich and well-dressed man of that section of the aristocracy and any rich and well-dressed man of the world of finance or “big business.” Where one of the latter would have thought he was giving proof of his exclusiveness by adopting a sharp and haughty tone in s
peaking to an inferior, the nobleman, affable and mild, gave the impression of considering, of practising an affectation of humility and patience, a pretence of being just an ordinary member of the audience, as a prerogative of his good breeding. It is probable that on seeing him thus dissemble behind a smile overflowing with good nature the inaccessible threshold of the little world apart which he carried in his person, more than one wealthy banker’s son, entering the theatre at that moment, would have taken this nobleman for a person of humble condition if he had not remarked in him an astonishing resemblance to the portrait that had recently appeared in the illustrated papers of a nephew of the Austrian Emperor, the Prince of Saxony, who happened to be in Paris at the time. I knew him to be a great friend of the Guermantes. As I myself reached the ticket attendant I heard the Prince of Saxony (or his double) say with a smile: “I don’t know the number. My cousin told me I had only to ask for her box.”
The Guermantes Way Page 4