The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

  Thus it was that Prince von Faffenheim had been led to call upon Mme de Villeparisis. My profound disillusionment occurred when he spoke. It had never struck me that, whereas a period has features both particular and general which are stronger than those of a nationality, so that in an illustrated dictionary which goes so far as to include an authentic portrait of Minerva, Leibniz with his periwig and his neckerchief differs little from Marivaux or Samuel Bernard, a nationality has particular features stronger than those of a caste. In the present instance these found expression not in a discourse in which I had expected to hear the rustling of the elves and the dance of the kobolds, but by a transposition which certified no less plainly that poetic origin: the fact that as he bowed, short, red-faced and portly, over the hand of Mme de Villeparisis, the Rhinegrave said to her: “Goot-tay, Matame la Marquise,” in the accent of an Alsatian concierge.

  “Won’t you let me give you a cup of tea or a little of this tart, it’s so good?” Mme de Guermantes asked me, anxious to have shown herself as friendly as possible. “I do the honours in this house just as if it was mine,” she explained in an ironical tone which gave a slightly guttural sound to her voice, as though she were trying to stifle a hoarse laugh.

  “Monsieur,” said Mme de Villeparisis to M. de Norpois, “you won’t forget that you have something to say to the Prince about the Academy?”

  Mme de Guermantes lowered her eyes and gave a semicircular turn to her wrist to look at the time.

  “Gracious! It’s time I said good-bye to my aunt if I’m to get to Mme de Saint-Ferréol’s, and I’m dining with Mme Leroi.”

  And she rose without bidding me good-bye. She had just caught sight of Mme Swann, who appeared somewhat embarrassed at finding me in the room. Doubtless she remembered that she had been the first to assure me that she was convinced of Dreyfus’s innocence.

  “I don’t want my mother to introduce me to Mme Swann,” Saint-Loup said to me. “She’s an ex-whore. Her husband’s a Jew, and she comes here to pose as a Nationalist. Hallo, here’s my uncle Palamède.”

  The arrival of Mme Swann had a special interest for me, owing to an incident which had occurred a few days earlier and which it is necessary to relate because of the consequences which it was to have at a much later date and which the reader will follow in detail in due course. A few days before this visit to Mme de Villeparisis, I had myself received a visitor whom I little expected, namely Charles Morel, the son, whom I did not know, of my great-uncle’s old valet. This great-uncle (he in whose house I had met the lady in pink) had died the year before. His servant had more than once expressed his intention of coming to see me; I had no idea of the object of his visit, but should have been glad to see him, for I had learned from Françoise that he had a genuine veneration for my uncle’s memory and made a pilgrimage regularly to the cemetery in which he was buried. But, being obliged for reasons of health to retire to his home in the country, where he expected to remain for some time, he had delegated the duty to his son. I was surprised to see a handsome young man of eighteen come into my room, dressed expensively rather than with taste, but looking, all the same, like anything but the son of a valet. He made a point, moreover, from the start, of emphasising his aloofness from the domestic class from which he sprang, by informing me with a complacent smile that he had won a first prize at the Conservatoire. The object of his visit to me was as follows: his father on going through the effects of my uncle Adolphe, had set aside some which he felt it unseemly to send to my parents but which he considered to be of a nature to interest a young man of my age. These were photographs of the famous actresses, the notorious courtesans whom my uncle had known, the last fading pictures of that gay life of a man about town which he kept separated by a watertight compartment from his family life. While the young Morel was showing them to me, I noticed that he affected to speak to me as to an equal. He derived from saying “you” to me as often and “sir” as seldom as possible the pleasure of one whose father had never ventured, when addressing my parents, upon anything but the third person. Almost all the photographs bore an inscription such as: “To my best friend.” One actress, less grateful and more circumspect than the rest, had written: “To the best of friends,” which enabled her (so I have been assured) to say afterwards that my uncle was in no sense and had never been her best friend but was merely the friend who had done the most small services for her, the friend she made use of, a good, kind man, in other words an old fool. In vain might young Morel seek to divest himself of his lowly origin, one felt that the shade of my uncle Adolphe, venerable and gigantic in the eyes of the old servant, had never ceased to hover, almost a sacred vision, over the childhood and youth of the son. While I was turning over the photographs Charles Morel examined my room. And as I was looking for somewhere to put them, “How is it,” he asked me (in a tone in which the reproach had no need to be emphasised, so implicit was it in the words themselves), “that I don’t see a single photograph of your uncle in your room?” I felt the blood rise to my cheeks and stammered: “Why, I don’t believe I have one.” “What, you haven’t a single photograph of your uncle Adolphe, who was so fond of you! I’ll send you one of the governor’s—he’s got stacks of them—and I hope you’ll put it in the place of honour above that chest of drawers, which incidentally came to you from your uncle.” It is true that, as I had not even a photograph of my father or mother in my room, there was nothing so very shocking in there not being one of my uncle Adolphe. But it was easy enough to see that for old Morel, who had trained his son in the same way of thinking, my uncle was the important person in the family, from whom my parents derived only a dim reflected glory. I was in higher favour, because my uncle used constantly to say to his valet that I was going to turn out a sort of Racine, or Vaulabelle, and Morel regarded me almost as an adopted son, as a favourite child of my uncle. I soon discovered that Morel’s son was extremely “go-getting.” Thus at this first meeting he asked me, being something of a composer as well and capable of setting short poems to music, whether I knew any poet who had a good position in “aristo” society. I mentioned one. He did not know the work of this poet and had never heard his name, of which he made a note. And I was to discover that shortly afterwards he wrote to the poet telling him that, being a fanatical admirer of his work, he, Morel, had composed a musical setting for one of his sonnets and would be grateful if the author would arrange for its performance at the Comtesse So-and-so’s. This was going a little too fast and exposing his hand. The poet, taking offence, made no reply.

  For the rest, Charles Morel seemed to possess, besides ambition, a strong leaning towards more concrete realities. He had noticed, as he came through the courtyard, Jupien’s niece at work upon a waistcoat, and although he explained to me only that he happened to want a fancy waistcoat at that very moment, I felt that the girl had made a vivid impression on him. He had no hesitation in asking me to come downstairs and introduce him to her, “but not as a connexion of your family, you follow me, I rely on your discretion not to drag in my father, say just a distinguished artist of your acquaintance, you know how important it is to make a good impression on tradespeople.” Although he had suggested to me that, not knowing him well enough to call him, he quite realised, “dear friend,” I might address him, in front of the girl, in some such terms as “not dear master, of course . . . although . . . well, if you like, dear distinguished artist,” I avoided “qualifying” him, as Saint-Simon would have said, in the shop and contented myself with returning his “you’s.” He picked out from several patterns of velvet one of the brightest red imaginable, so loud that, for all his bad taste, he was never able to wear the waistcoat when it was made. The girl settled down to work again with her two “apprentices,” but it struck me that the impression had been mutual, and that Charles Morel, whom she regarded as of my “station” (only smarter and richer), had proved singularly attractive to her. As I had been greatly surprised to find among the photographs which his father had sent me one of
the portrait of Miss Sacripant (otherwise Odette) by Elstir, I said to Charles Morel as I accompanied him to the carriage gateway: “I don’t suppose you can tell me, but did my uncle know this lady well? I can’t think what stage of his life she fits into exactly; and it interests me, because of M. Swann . . .” “Why, if I wasn’t forgetting to tell you that my father asked me specially to draw your attention to that lady’s picture. As a matter of fact, she was lunching with your uncle the last time you saw him. My father was in two minds whether to let you in. It seems you made a great impression on the wench, and she hoped to see you again. But just at that time there was a row in the family, from what my father tells me, and you never set eyes on your uncle again.” He broke off to give Jupien’s niece a smile of farewell across the courtyard. She gazed after him, doubtless admiring his thin but regular features, his fair hair and sparkling eyes. For my part, as I shook hands with him I was thinking of Mme Swann and saying to myself with amazement, so far apart, so different were they in my memory, that I should have henceforth to identify her with the “Lady in pink.”

  M. de Charlus was soon seated by the side of Mme Swann. At every social gathering at which he appeared, contemptuous towards the men, courted by the women, he promptly attached himself to the most elegantly dressed of the latter, by whose garments he felt himself to be embellished. The Baron’s frock-coat or tails were reminiscent of a portrait by some great colourist of a man dressed in black but having by his side, thrown over a chair, the brilliant cloak which he is about to wear at some fancy-dress ball. These tête-à-têtes, generally with some royal lady, secured for M. de Charlus various privileges which he cherished. For instance, one consequence of them was that his hostesses, at theatricals or recitals, allowed the Baron alone to have a front seat in a row of ladies, while the rest of the men jostled one another at the back of the room. Furthermore, completely absorbed, it seemed, in telling amusing stories to the enraptured lady at the top of his voice, M. de Charlus was dispensed from the necessity of going to shake hands with any of the others, was set free from all social duties. Behind the scented barrier which the chosen beauty provided for him, he was isolated in the middle of a crowded drawing-room, as, in a crowded theatre, behind the rampart of a box; and when anyone came up to greet him, through, as it were, the beauty of his companion, it was permissible for him to reply quite curtly and without interrupting his conversation with a lady. True, Mme Swann was scarcely of the rank of the persons with whom he liked thus to flaunt himself. But he professed admiration for her and friendship for Swann, knew that she would be flattered by his attentions, and was himself flattered at being compromised by the prettiest woman in the room.

  Mme de Villeparisis meanwhile was not too well pleased to receive a visit from M. de Charlus. The latter, while admitting serious defects in his aunt’s character, was genuinely fond of her. But every now and then in a fit of anger or imaginary grievance, he would sit down and write to her, without making the slightest attempt to resist his impulse, letters full of the most violent abuse, in which he made the most of trifling incidents which until then he seemed not even to have noticed. Among other examples I may instance the following, which my stay at Balbec brought to my knowledge: Mme de Villeparisis, fearing that she had not brought enough money with her to Balbec to enable her to prolong her holiday there, and not caring, since she was of a thrifty disposition and shrank from superfluous expenditure, to have money sent to her from Paris, had borrowed three thousand francs from M. de Charlus. A month later, annoyed with his aunt for some trivial reason, he asked her to repay him this sum by telegraphic money order. He received two thousand nine hundred and ninety-odd francs. Meeting his aunt a few days later in Paris, in the course of a friendly conversation he drew her attention, very mildly, to the mistake that her bank had made when sending the money. “But there was no mistake,” replied Mme de Villeparisis, “the money order cost six francs seventy-five.” “Ah, well, if it was intentional, that’s fine,” said M. de Charlus. “I mentioned it only in case you didn’t know, because in that case, if the bank had done the same thing with anyone who didn’t know you as well as I do, it might have led to unpleasantness.” “No, no, there was no mistake.” “Actually you were quite right,” M. de Charlus concluded gaily, stooping to kiss his aunt’s hand. And in fact he bore her no ill will and was only amused at this little instance of her stinginess. But some time afterwards, imagining that, in a family matter, his aunt had been trying to cheat him and had “worked up a regular conspiracy” against him, as she rather foolishly took shelter behind the lawyers with whom he suspected her of having plotted to do him down, he had written her a letter boiling over with insolence and rage. “I shall not be satisfied with having my revenge,” he added as a postscript, “I shall make you a laughing-stock. Tomorrow I shall tell everyone the story of the money order and the six francs seventy-five you kept back from me out of the three thousand I lent you. I shall disgrace you publicly.” Instead of so doing, he had gone to his aunt the next day to apologise, having already regretted a letter in which he had used some really appalling language. In any case, to whom could he have told the story of the money order? Since he no longer sought vengeance but a sincere reconciliation, now would have been the time for him to keep silence. But he had already told the story everywhere, while still on the best of terms with his aunt, had told it without malice, as a joke, and because he was the soul of indiscretion. He had told the story, but without Mme de Villeparisis’s knowledge. With the result that, having learned from his letter that he intended to disgrace her by divulging a transaction in which he had assured her personally that she had acted rightly, she concluded that he had deceived her then and had lied when he pretended to be fond of her. All this had now died down, but neither of them knew precisely what the other thought of him or her. This sort of intermittent quarrel is of course somewhat exceptional. Of a different order again were those of M. de Charlus, as we shall presently see, with people wholly unlike Mme de Villeparisis. In spite of this we must bear in mind that the opinions which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and family, far from being static, save in appearance, are as eternally fluid as the sea itself. Whence all the rumours of divorce between couples who have always seemed so perfectly united and will soon afterwards speak of one another with affection; all the terrible things said by one friend of another from whom we supposed him to be inseparable and with whom we shall find him once more reconciled before we have had time to recover from our surprise; all the reversals of alliances between nations after the briefest of spells.

  “I say, things are hotting up between my uncle and Mme Swann,” remarked Saint-Loup. “And look at Mamma in the innocence of her heart going across to disturb them. To the pure all things are pure!”

  I studied M. de Charlus. The tuft of his grey hair, his twinkling eye, the brow of which was raised by his monocle, the red flowers in his buttonhole, formed as it were the three mobile apexes of a convulsive and striking triangle. I had not ventured to greet him, for he had given me no sign of recognition. And yet, though he was not facing in my direction, I was convinced that he had seen me; while he sat spinning some yarn to Mme Swann, whose sumptuous, pansy-coloured cloak floated over his knee, the Baron’s roving eye, like that of a street hawker who is watching all the time for the “law” to appear, had certainly explored every corner of the room and taken note of all the people who were in it. M. de Châtellerault came up to say good evening to him without there being the slightest hint on M. de Charlus’s face that he had seen the young Duke until he was actually standing in front of him. In this way, in fairly numerous gatherings such as this, M. de Charlus kept almost continuously on show a smile without determinate direction or particular object, which, thereby pre-existing the greetings of new arrivals, remained, when the latter entered its zone, devoid of any amiable implication towards them. Nevertheless, I felt obliged to go across and speak to Mme Swann. But as she was not certain whether I knew Mme de Marsantes and
M. de Charlus, she was distinctly cold, fearing no doubt that I might ask her to introduce me to them. I then turned to M. de Charlus, and at once regretted it, for though he could not have helped seeing me he showed no sign of having done so. As I stood before him and bowed I found, at some distance from his body which it prevented me from approaching by the full length of his outstretched arm, a finger bereft, one would have said, of an episcopal ring, of which he appeared to be offering the consecrated site for the kiss of the faithful, and I was made to appear to have penetrated, without leave from the Baron and by an act of trespass for which he left me the entire responsibility, the unalterable, anonymous and vacant dispersion of his smile. This coldness was hardly of a kind to encourage Mme Swann to depart from hers.

  “How tired and worried you look,” said Mme de Marsantes to her son who had come up to greet M. de Charlus.

  And indeed the expression in Robert’s eyes seemed now and then to reach a depth from which it rose at once like a diver who has touched bottom. This bottom which hurt Robert so much when he touched it that he left it at once, to return to it a moment later, was the thought that he had broken with his mistress.