The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

  “I understand, M’sieur, that you want to write somethin’ about Mme la Duchesse de Montmorency,” said Mme de Villeparisis to the historian of the Fronde in the gruff tone with which her genuine affability was furrowed by the shrivelled crotchiness, the physiological spleen of old age, as well as by the affectation of imitating the almost rustic speech of the old nobility. “I’ll show you 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 paint, 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 household, 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 exclusive chapters.” “The King’s daughters not admitted!” cried Bloch in amazement, “why ever not?” “Why, because the House of France had not enough quarterin’s after that misalliance.” Bloch’s bewilderment increased. “A misalliance? The House of France? When was that?” “Why, when they married into the Medicis,” replied Mme de Villeparisis in the most natural tone in the world. “It’s a fine picture, is it not, and in a perfect state of preservation,” she added.

  “My dear,” said the lady with the Marie-Antoinette hair-style, “surely you remember that when I brought Liszt to see you he said that it was this one that was the copy.”

  “I shall bow to any opinion of Liszt’s on music, but not on painting. Besides, he was already gaga, and I don’t remember his ever saying anything of the sort. But it wasn’t you who brought him here. I had met him any number of times at dinner at Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein’s.”

  Alix’s shot had misfired; she stood silent, erect and motionless. Plastered with layers of powder, her face had the appearance of stone. And, since the profile was noble, she seemed, on a triangular, moss-grown pedestal hidden by her cape, like a crumbling goddess in a park.

  “Ah, I see another fine portrait,” said the historian.

  The door opened and the Duchesse de Guermantes entered the room.

  “Oh, good evening,” Mme de Villeparisis greeted her without even a nod of the head, taking from her apron-pocket a hand which she held out to the newcomer; and ceasing at once to pay any further attention to her niece, turned back 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 inflamed as though they were still smarting from the recent 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, show him in. It’s a gentleman who was introduced to me,” she explained. “He told me he was very anxious to come to my house. I certainly never said he might. But he’s taken the trouble to call five times now, and it doesn’t do to hurt people’s feelings. Monsieur,” she added to me, “and you, Monsieur,” to the historian of the Fronde, “let me introduce my niece, the Duchesse de Guermantes.”

  The historian made a low bow, as I did too, 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 chilled by the demeanour 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 little 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 showing this gentleman a fine portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, the wife of the author of the Maxims; it’s a family heirloom.”

  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 today,” said the Marquise of the Quai Malaquais, with the satisfying reflexion that Mme de Villeparisis could never say the same.

  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 happier. My remark was prompted simply by a 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 of it. “Yes, I do lead a delightful existence,” Bloch assured me with a beatific smile. “I have three great friends—I do not wish for one more—and 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 congratulate himself and to make me envious. Perhaps, too, his optimism reflected a desire to be original. It was evident that he did not wish to reply with the usual banalities—“Oh, it was nothing, really,” and so forth—when, to my question: “Was it nice?” apropos of 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 someone else: “Why, yes, it was very nice, couldn’t have been more successful. In fact it was really enchanting.”

  “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 showed a marked resemblance to him in the agile sharpness of your turn of phrase, in a quality which I will describe by two contradictory terms, concise 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, congenial to the memory. You have never read Joubert? Oh! he would have admired you so! I will take the liberty this very evening of sending you his works: it will be a privilege to make you a present of his mind. He had not your force. But he had a similar gracefulness.”

  I had wanted to go and greet Legrandin at once, 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 preciosity of expression, he kept pouring out to Mme de Villeparisis whatever the subject.

  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 previously married to M. de Luynes.”

  “My dear, 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 Sylva13 in the author’s presence. It was too beautiful!”

  “What treachery!” thought Mme de Villeparisis. “Of course th
at was what she was whispering about the other day to Mme de Beaulaincourt and Mme de Chaponay.” . . . “I was free,” she replied, “but I would 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 Dante’s Inferno. 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 flaking. A faint, strange vegetation, green and pink, was invading her chin. Perhaps another winter would finally lay her low.

  “There, Monsieur, if you are fond of painting, look at the portrait of Mme de Montmorency,” Mme de Villeparisis said to Legrandin to interrupt the flow of compliments which was beginning again.

  Taking the opportunity of his back being 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 will mean any more to you than it does to me.”

  “What! Oh, but I know her very well!” exclaimed Mme de Guermantes, clapping her hand to her mouth. “Or rather 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 told me she had been to London, and gave me a complete catalogue of all the things in the British Museum. And just as you see me now, the moment I leave your house, I’m going to drop a card on the monster. And don’t think it’s as easy as all that, because on the pretext that she’s dying of some disease she’s always at home, no matter whether you arrive at seven at night or nine in the morning, she’s ready for you with a plate of strawberry tarts. No, but seriously, you know, she is a monstrosity,” Mme de Guermantes went on in reply to a questioning glance from her aunt. “She’s an impossible person, she talks about ‘scriveners’ and things like that.” “What does ‘scrivener’ 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 scrivener was, to give herself the satisfaction of showing that she was a scholar as well as a purist, and to make fun of her aunt after having made fun of Mme de Cambremer: “Why, of course,” she said, with a half-laugh which the last traces of her feigned ill-humour kept in check, “everybody knows what it means; a scrivener is a writer, a person who scribbles. But it’s a horror of a 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 can’t get used to the idea. But after all it’s not inconceivable. She has the same doormat humility and the same mass of information like a circulating library. She’s just as much of a toady 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 look at the pictures of your great-grandmothers, you know them as well as I do.”

  Presently Mme de Villeparisis sat down again at her desk and went on with her painting. The rest of the party gathered round her, and I took the opportunity to go up to Legrandin and, seeing no harm myself in his presence in Mme de Villeparisis’s drawing-room and never dreaming how much my words would at once hurt him and make him believe that I had deliberately intended to hurt him, say: “Well, Monsieur, I am almost excused for being in a salon when I find you here too.” M. Legrandin concluded from these words (at least this was the opinion which he expressed of me a few days later) that I was a thoroughly spiteful young wretch who delighted only in doing mischief.

  “You might at least have the civility to begin by saying how d’ye do to me,” he replied, without offering me his hand and in a coarse and angry voice which I had never suspected him of possessing, a voice which, having no rational connexion with what he ordinarily said, had another more immediate and striking connexion with something he was feeling. For the fact of the matter is that, since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary, elliptical and almost irresistible communication of one’s defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and outlandishly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty. I knew, of course, that idealism, even subjective idealism, did not prevent great philosophers from still having hearty appetites or from presenting themselves with untiring perseverance for election to the Academy. But really Legrandin had no need to remind people so often that he belonged to another planet when all his uncontrollable impulses of anger or affability were governed by the desire to occupy a good position on this one.

  “Naturally, when people pester me twenty times on end to go somewhere,” he went on in lower tones, “although I am perfectly free to do what I choose, still I can’t behave like an absolute boor.”

  Mme de Guermantes had sat down. Her name, accompanied as it was by her title, added to her physical person the duchy which cast its aura round about her and brought the shadowy, sun-splashed coolness of the woods of Guermantes into this drawing-room, to surround the pouf on which she was sitting. I was surprised only that the likeness of those woods was not more discernible on the face of the Duchess, about which there was nothing suggestive of vegetation, and on which the ruddiness of her cheeks—which ought, one felt, to have been emblazoned with the name Guermantes—was at most the effect, and not the reflexion, of long gallops in the open air. Later on, when I had become indifferent to her, I came to know many of the Duchess’s distinctive features, notably (to stick for the moment only to those of which I already at this time felt the charm though without yet being able to identify it) her eyes, which captured as in a picture the blue sky of a French country afternoon, broadly expansive, bathed in light even when no sun shone; and a voice which one would have thought, from its first hoarse sounds, to be almost plebeian, in which there lingered, as over the steps of the church at Combray or the pastry-cook’s in the square, the rich and lazy gold of a country sun. But on this first day I discerned nothing, my ardent attention volatilised at once the little that I might otherwise have been able to take in and from which I might have been able to grasp something of the name Guermantes. In any case, I told myself that it was indeed she who was designated for all the world by the title Duchesse de Guermantes: the inconceivable life which that name signified was indeed contained in this body; it had just introduced that life into the midst of a group of disparate people, in this room which enclosed it on every side and on which it produced so vivid a reaction that I felt I could see, where the extent of that mysterious life ceased, a fringe of effervescence outline its frontiers—in the circumference of the circle traced on the carpet by the balloon of her blue pekin skirt, and in the bright eyes of the Duchess at the point of intersection of the preoccupations, the memories, the incomprehensible, scornful, amused and curious thoughts which filled them from within and the outside images that were reflected on their surface. Perhaps I should have been not quite so deeply stirred had I met her at Mme de Villeparisis’s at an evening party, instead of seeing her thus at one of the Marquise’s “at homes,” at one of those tea-parties which are for women no more than a brief halt in the course of their afternoon’s outing, when, keeping on the hats in which they have been doing their shopping, they waft into a succession of salons the quality of the fresh air outside, and offer a better view of Paris in the late afternoon than do the tall open windows through which one can hear the rumble of victorias: Mme de Guermantes wore a straw hat trim
med with cornflowers, and what they recalled to me was not the sunlight of bygone years among the tilled fields round Combray where I had so often gathered them on the slope adjoining the Tansonville hedge, but the smell and the dust of twilight as they had been an hour ago when Mme de Guermantes had walked through them in the Rue de la Paix. With a smiling, disdainful, absent-minded air, and a pout on her pursed lips, she was tracing circles on the carpet with the point of her sunshade, as with the extreme tip of an antenna of her mysterious life; then, with that indifferent attention which begins by eliminating every point of contact between oneself and what one is considering, her gaze fastened upon each of us in turn, then inspected the settees and chairs, but softened now by that human sympathy which is aroused by the presence, however insignificant, of a thing one knows, a thing that is almost a person: these pieces of furniture were not like us, they belonged vaguely to her world, they were bound up with the life of her aunt; then from a Beauvais chair her gaze was carried back to the person sitting on it, and thereupon resumed the same air of perspicacity and that same disapproval which the respect that Mme de Guermantes felt for her aunt would have prevented her from expressing in words, but which she would have felt had she noticed on the chairs, instead of our presence, that of a spot of grease or a layer of dust.