The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

  “Nnnnno,” said Swann.

  “Well anyway, I know nothing about these things, it’s not for me to decide who daubed the canvas. But you’re a dilettante, a master of the subject, what would you say it was?”

  Swann hesitated for a moment in front of the picture, which obviously he thought atrocious.

  “A bad joke!” he replied with a smile at the Duke who could not restrain an impulse of rage. When this had subsided: “Be good fellows, both of you, wait a moment for Oriane, I must go and put on my swallow-tails and then I’ll be back. I shall send word to the missus that you’re both waiting for her.”

  I chatted for a minute or two with Swann about the Dreyfus case and asked him how it was that all the Guermantes were anti-Dreyfusards. “In the first place because at heart all these people are anti-semites,” replied Swann, who nevertheless knew very well from experience that certain of them were not, but, like everyone who holds a strong opinion, preferred to explain the fact that other people did not share it by imputing to them preconceptions and prejudices against which there was nothing to be done, rather than reasons which might permit of discussion. Besides, having come to the premature term of his life, like a weary animal that is being tormented, he cried out against these persecutions and was returning to the spiritual fold of his fathers.

  “Yes, it’s true I’ve been told that the Prince de Guermantes is anti-semitic.”

  “Oh, that fellow! I don’t even bother to consider him. He carries it to such a point that when he was in the army and had a frightful toothache he preferred to grin and bear it rather than go to the only dentist in the district, who happened to be a Jew, and later on he allowed a wing of his castle to be burned to the ground because he would have had to send for extinguishers to the place next door, which belongs to the Rothschilds.”

  “Are you going to be there this evening, by any chance?”

  “Yes,” Swann replied, “although I don’t really feel up to it. But he sent me a wire to tell me that he has something to say to me. I feel that I shall soon be too unwell to go there or to receive him at my house, it will be too agitating, so I prefer to get it over at once.”

  “But the Duc de Guermantes is not anti-semitic?”

  “You can see quite well that he is, since he’s an anti-Dreyfusard,” replied Swann, without noticing that he was begging the question. “All the same I’m sorry to have disappointed the fellow—His Grace I should say!—by not admiring his Mignard or whatever he calls it.”

  “But at any rate,” I went on, reverting to the Dreyfus case, “the Duchess, now, is intelligent.”

  “Yes, she is charming. To my mind, however, she was even more charming when she was still known as the Princesse des Laumes. Her mind has become somehow more angular—it was all much softer in the juvenile great lady. But after all, young or old, men or women, when all’s said and done these people belong to a different race, one can’t have a thousand years of feudalism in one’s blood with impunity. Naturally they imagine that it counts for nothing in their opinions.”

  “All the same, Robert de Saint-Loup is a Dreyfusard.”

  “Ah! So much the better, especially as his mother is extremely anti. I had heard that he was, but I wasn’t certain of it. That gives me a great deal of pleasure. It doesn’t surprise me, he’s highly intelligent. It’s a great thing, that is.”

  Swann’s Dreyfusism had brought out in him an extraordinary naïvety and imparted to his way of looking at things an impulsiveness, an inconsistency more noticeable even than had been the similar effects of his marriage to Odette; this new “declassing” would have been better described as a “reclassing” and was entirely to his credit, since it made him return to the paths which his forebears had trodden and from which he had been deflected by his aristocratic associations. But precisely at the moment when, with all his clear-sightedness, and thanks to the principles he had inherited from his ancestors, he was in a position to perceive a truth that was still hidden from people of fashion, Swann showed himself nevertheless quite comically blind. He subjected all his admirations and all his contempts to the test of a new criterion, Dreyfusism. That the anti-Dreyfusism of Mme Bontemps should make him think her a fool was no more astonishing than that, when he had got married, he should have thought her intelligent. It was not very serious, either, that the new wave should also affect his political judgments and make him lose all memory of having denounced Clemenceau—whom, he now declared, he had always regarded as a voice of conscience, a man of steel, like Cornély—as a man with a price, a British spy (this latter was an absurdity of the Guermantes set). “No, no, I never told you anything of the sort. You’re thinking of someone else.” But, sweeping past his political judgments, the wave overturned Swann’s literary judgments too, down to his way of expressing them. Barrès was now devoid of talent, and even his early books were feeble, could scarcely bear re-reading. “You try, you’ll find you can’t struggle to the end. What a difference from Clemenceau! Personally I’m not anti-clerical, but when you compare them together you must see that Barrès is invertebrate. He’s a very great man, is old Clemenceau. How he knows the language!” However, the anti-Dreyfusards were in no position to criticise these follies. They explained that one was only a Dreyfusard because one was of Jewish origin. If a practising Catholic like Saniette was also in favour of reconsideration, that was because he was cornered by Mme Verdurin, who behaved like a wild radical. She was first and foremost against the “frocks.” Saniette was more fool than knave, and had no idea of the harm that the Mistress was doing him. If you pointed out that Brichot was equally a friend of Mme Verdurin and was a member of the “Patrie Française,” that was because he was more intelligent.

  “You see him occasionally?” I asked Swann, referring to Saint-Loup.

  “No, never. He wrote to me the other day asking me to persuade the Duc de Mouchy and various other people to vote for him at the Jockey, where for that matter he got through like a letter through the post.”

  “In spite of the Affair!”

  “The question was never raised. However I must tell you that since all this business began I never set foot in the place.”

  M. de Guermantes returned and was presently joined by his wife, all ready now for the evening, tall and proud in a gown of red satin the skirt of which was bordered with sequins. She had in her hair a long ostrich feather dyed purple, and over her shoulders a tulle scarf of the same red as her dress. “How nice it is to have one’s hat lined in green,” said the Duchess, who missed nothing. “However, with you, Charles, everything is always charming, whether it’s what you wear or what you say, what you read or what you do.” Swann meanwhile, without apparently listening, was considering the Duchess as he would have studied the canvas of a master, and then sought her eyes, making a face which implied the exclamation “Gosh!” Mme de Guermantes rippled with laughter. “So my clothes please you? I’m delighted. But I must say they don’t please me much,” she went on with a sulky air. “God, what a bore it is to have to dress up and go out when one would ever so much rather stay at home!”

  “What magnificent rubies!”

  “Ah! my dear Charles, at least one can see that you know what you’re talking about, you’re not like that brute Monserfeuil who asked me if they were real. I must say I’ve never seen anything quite like them. They were a present from the Grand Duchess. They’re a little too big for my liking, a little too like claret glasses filled to the brim, but I’ve put them on because we shall be seeing the Grand Duchess this evening at Marie-Gilbert’s,” added Mme de Guermantes, never suspecting that this assertion destroyed the force of those previously made by the Duke.

  “What’s on at the Princess’s?” inquired Swann.

  “Practically nothing,” the Duke hastened to reply, the question having made him think that Swann was not invited.

  “What do you mean, Basin? The whole world has been invited. It will be a deathly crush. What will be pretty, though,” she went on, looking soul
fully at Swann, “if the storm I can feel in the air now doesn’t break, will be those marvellous gardens. You know them, of course. I was there a month ago, when the lilacs were in flower. You can’t imagine how lovely they were. And then the fountain—really, it’s Versailles in Paris.”

  “What sort of person is the Princess?” I asked.

  “Why, you know quite well, since you’ve seen her here, that she’s as beautiful as the day, and also a bit of a fool, but very nice, in spite of all her Germanic high-and-mightiness, full of good nature and gaffes.”

  Swann was too shrewd not to perceive that the Duchess was trying to show off the “Guermantes wit,” and at no great cost to herself, for she was only serving up in a less perfect form a few of her old quips. Nevertheless, to prove to the Duchess that he appreciated her intention to be funny, and as though she had really succeeded in being funny, he gave a somewhat forced smile, causing me by this particular form of insincerity the same embarrassment as I used to feel long ago when I heard my parents discussing with M. Vinteuil the corruption of certain sections of society (when they knew very well that a corruption far greater reigned at Montjouvain), or simply on hearing Legrandin embellishing his utterances for the benefit of fools, choosing delicate epithets which he knew perfectly well would not be understood by a rich or smart but illiterate audience.

  “Come now, Oriane, what on earth are you saying?” broke in M. de Guermantes. “Marie a fool? Why, she’s read everything, and she’s as musical as a fiddle.”

  “But, my poor little Basin, you’re as innocent as a new-born babe. As if one couldn’t be all that, and rather an idiot as well. Idiot is too strong a word; no, she’s in the clouds, she’s Hesse-Darmstadt, Holy Roman Empire, and wa-wa-wa. Even her pronunciation gets on my nerves. But I quite admit that she’s a charming loony. In the first place, the very idea of stepping down from her German throne to go and marry, in the most bourgeois way, a private individual. It’s true that she chose him! Ah, but of course,” she went on, turning to me, “you don’t know Gilbert. Let me give you an idea of him: he took to his bed once because I had left a card on Mme Carnot . . . But, my dear Charles” (the Duchess changed the subject when she saw that the story of the card left on the Carnots appeared to irritate M. de Guermantes), “you know, you’ve never sent me that photograph of our Knights of Rhodes, whom I’ve learned to love through you and with whom I’m so anxious to become acquainted.” The Duke meanwhile had not taken his eyes from his wife’s face: “Oriane, you might at least tell the story properly and not cut out half. I ought to explain,” he corrected, addressing Swann, “that the British Ambassadress at that time, who was a very worthy woman but lived rather in the moon and was in the habit of making up these odd combinations, conceived the distinctly quaint idea of inviting us with the President and his wife. Even Oriane was rather surprised, especially as the Ambassadress knew quite enough of the same sort of people as us not to invite us to such an ill-assorted gathering. There was a minister there who’s a swindler . . . however I’ll draw a veil over all that—the fact was that we hadn’t been warned, we were trapped, and to be honest I’m bound to admit that all these people behaved most civilly. Still, that was quite enough of a good thing. But Mme de Guermantes, who does not often do me the honour of consulting me, felt it incumbent upon her to leave a card in the course of the following week at the Elysée. Gilbert may perhaps have gone rather far in regarding it as a stain upon our name. But it must not be forgotten that, politics apart, M. Carnot, who incidentally filled his post quite respectably, was the grandson of a member of the revolutionary tribunal which slaughtered eleven of our people in a single day.”

  “In that case, Basin, why used you to go every week to dine at Chantilly? The Duc d’Aumale was just as much the grandson of a member of the revolutionary tribunal, with this difference, that Carnot was a decent man and Philippe-Egalité a frightful scoundrel.”

  “Excuse my interrupting you to explain that I did send the photograph,” said Swann. “I can’t understand how it hasn’t reached you.”

  “It doesn’t altogether surprise me,” said the Duchess, “my servants tell me only what they think fit. They probably don’t approve of the Order of St John.” And she rang the bell.

  “You know, Oriane, that when I used to go to Chantilly it was without much enthusiasm.”

  “Without much enthusiasm, but with a nightshirt in case the Prince asked you to stay the night, which in fact he very rarely did, being a perfect boor like all the Orléans lot . . . Do you know who else we’re dining with at Mme de Saint-Euverte’s?” Mme de Guermantes asked her husband.

  “Besides the people you know already, she’s asked King Theodosius’s brother at the last moment.”

  At these tidings the Duchess’s features exuded contentment and her speech boredom: “Oh, God, more princes!”

  “But that one is amiable and intelligent,” Swann remarked.

  “Not altogether, though,” replied the Duchess, apparently seeking for words that would give more novelty to her thought. “Have you ever noticed with princes that the nicest of them are never entirely nice? They must always have an opinion about everything. And as they have no opinions of their own, they spend the first half of their lives asking us ours and the second half serving them up to us again. They positively must be able to say that this has been well played and that not so well. When there’s no difference. Do you know, this little Theodosius junior (I forget his name) asked me once what an orchestral motif was called. I answered” (the Duchess’s eyes sparkled and a laugh exploded from her beautiful red lips) “‘It’s called an orchestral motif.’ I don’t think he was any too well pleased, really. Oh, my dear Charles,” she went on with a languishing air, “what a bore it can be, dining out. There are evenings when one would sooner die! It’s true that dying may be perhaps just as great a bore, because we don’t know what it’s like.”

  A servant appeared. It was the young lover who had had a quarrel with the concierge, until the Duchess, out of the kindness of her heart, had brought about an apparent peace between them.

  “Am I to go round this evening to inquire after M. le Marquis d’Osmond?” he asked.

  “Most certainly not, nothing before tomorrow morning. In fact I don’t want you to remain in the house tonight. His footman, whom you know, might very well come and bring you the latest report and send you out after us. Be off with you, go anywhere you like, have a spree, sleep out, but I don’t want to see you here before tomorrow morning.”

  The footman’s face glowed with happiness. At last he would be able to spend long hours with his betrothed, whom he had practically ceased to see ever since, after a final scene with the concierge, the Duchess had considerately explained to him that it would be better, to avoid further conflicts, if he did not go out at all. He floated, at the thought of having an evening free at last, on a tide of happiness which the Duchess saw and the reason for which she guessed. She felt a sort of pang and as it were an itching in all her limbs at the thought of this happiness being snatched behind her back, unbeknown to her, and it made her irritated and jealous.

  “No, Basin, he must stay here; he’s not to stir out of the house.”

  “But Oriane, that’s absurd, the house is crammed with servants, and you have the costumier’s people coming as well at twelve to dress us for our ball. There’s absolutely nothing for him to do, and he’s the only one who’s a friend of Mama’s footman; I’d much sooner get him right away from the house.”

  “Listen, Basin, let me do what I want. I shall have a message for him during the evening, as it happens—I’m not yet sure at what time. In any case you’re not to budge from here for a single instant, do you hear?” she said to the despairing footman.

  If there were continual quarrels, and if servants did not stay long with the Duchess, the person to whose charge this guerrilla warfare was to be laid was indeed irremovable, but it was not the concierge. No doubt for the heavy work, for the martyrdoms it was particularl
y tiring to inflict, for the quarrels which ended in blows, the Duchess entrusted the blunter instruments to him; but even then he played his role without the least suspicion that he had been cast for it. Like the household servants, he was impressed by the Duchess’s kindness, and the imperceptive footmen who came back, after leaving her service, to visit Françoise used to say that the Duke’s house would have been the finest “place” in Paris if it had not been for the porter’s lodge. The Duchess made use of the lodge in the same way as at different times clericalism, freemasonry, the Jewish peril and so on have been made use of. Another footman came into the room.

  “Why haven’t they brought up the package M. Swann sent here? And, by the way (you’ve heard, Charles, that Mama is seriously ill?), Jules went round to inquire for news of M. le Marquis d’Osmond: has he come back yet?”

  “He’s just arrived this instant, M. le Duc. They’re expecting M. le Marquis to pass away at any moment.”

  “Ah, he’s alive!” exclaimed the Duke with a sigh of relief. “They’re expecting, are they? Well, they can go on expecting. While there’s life there’s hope,” he added cheerfully for our benefit. “They’ve been talking to me about him as though he were dead and buried. In a week from now he’ll be fitter than I am.”

  “It’s the doctors who said that he wouldn’t last out the evening. One of them wanted to call again during the night. The head one said it was no use. M. le Marquis would be dead by then; they’ve only kept him alive by injecting him with camphorated oil.”

  “Hold your tongue, you damned fool,” cried the Duke in a paroxysm of rage. “Who the devil asked you for your opinion? You haven’t understood a word of what they told you.”