“By the way, Charlus,” said Mme Verdurin, who was beginning to grow familiar, “you don’t know of any penniless old nobleman in your Faubourg who would come to me as porter?” “Why, yes . . . why, yes,” replied M. de Charlus with a genial smile, “but I don’t advise it.” “Why not?” “I should be afraid for your sake that the more elegant visitors would go no further than the lodge.” This was the first skirmish between them. Mme Verdurin barely noticed it. There were to be others, alas, in Paris. M. de Charlus remained glued to his chair. He could not, moreover, restrain a faint smile on seeing how his favourite maxims as to aristocratic prestige and bourgeois cowardice were confirmed by the so easily won submission of Mme Verdurin. The Mistress appeared not at all surprised by the Baron’s posture, and if she left him it was only because she had been perturbed by seeing me taken up by M. de Cambremer. But first of all, she wished to clear up the mystery of M. de Charlus’s relations with Comtesse Molé. “You told me that you knew Mme de Molé. Does that mean you go there?” she asked, giving to the words “go there” the sense of being received there, of having received permission from the lady to go and call on her. M. de Charlus replied with an inflexion of disdain, an affectation of precision and in a sing-song tone: “Yes, sometimes.” This “sometimes” inspired doubts in Mme Verdurin, who asked: “Have you ever met the Duc de Guermantes there?” “Ah! that I don’t remember.” “Oh!” said Mme Verdurin, “you don’t know the Duc de Guermantes?” “And how could I not know him?” replied M. de Charlus, his lips curving in a smile. This smile was ironical; but as the Baron was afraid of letting a gold tooth be seen, he checked it with a reverse movement of his lips, so that the resulting sinuosity was that of a smile of benevolence. “Why do you say: ‘How could I not know him?’ ” “Because he is my brother,” said M. de Charlus carelessly, leaving Mme Verdurin plunged in stupefaction and uncertain whether her guest was making fun of her, was a natural son, or a son by another marriage. The idea that the brother of the Duc de Guermantes might be called Baron de Charlus never entered her head. She bore down upon me. “I heard M. de Cambremer invite you to dinner just now. It has nothing to do with me, you understand. But for your own sake, I very much hope you won’t go. For one thing, the place is infested with bores. Oh, if you like dining with provincial counts and marquises whom nobody knows, you’ll have all you could wish.” “I think I shall be obliged to go there once or twice. I’m not altogether free, however, for I have a young cousin whom I can’t leave by herself” (I felt that this fictitious kinship made it easier for me to take Albertine about), “but in the case of the Cambremers, as I’ve already introduced her to them . . .” “You shall do just as you please. One thing I can tell you: it’s extremely unhealthy; when you’ve caught pneumonia, or a nice little chronic rheumatism, what good will that do you?” “But isn’t the place itself very pretty?” “Mmmmyesss . . . If you like. Frankly, I must confess that I’d far sooner have the view from here over this valley. In any case, I wouldn’t have taken the other house if they’d paid us because the sea air is fatal to M. Verdurin. If your cousin is at all delicate . . . But you yourself are delicate, I believe . . . you have fits of breathlessness. Very well! You shall see. Go there once, and you won’t sleep for a week after it; but it’s not my business.” And regardless of the inconsistency with what had gone before, she went on: “If it would amuse you to see the house, which is not bad, pretty is too strong a word, still it’s amusing with its old moat and its old drawbridge, as I shall have to sacrifice myself and dine there once, very well, come that day, I shall try to bring all my little circle, then it will be quite nice. The day after tomorrow we’re going to Harambouville in the carriage. It’s a magnificent drive, and the cider is delicious. Come with us. You, Brichot, you shall come too. And you too, Ski. It will make a party which, as a matter of fact, my husband must have arranged already. I don’t know whom all he has invited. Monsieur de Charlus, are you one of them?”
The Baron, who had not heard the whole speech and did not know that she was talking of an excursion to Harambouville, gave a start. “A strange question,” he murmured in a sardonic tone that nettled Mme Verdurin. “Anyhow,” she said to me, “before you dine with the Cambremers, why not bring your cousin here? Does she like conversation, and intelligent people? Is she agreeable? Yes, very well then. Bring her with you. The Cambremers aren’t the only people in the world. I can understand their being glad to invite her, they must find it difficult to get anyone. Here she will have plenty of fresh air, and lots of clever men. In any case, I’m counting on you not to fail me next Wednesday. I heard you were having a tea-party at Rivebelle with your cousin, and M. de Charlus, and I forget who else. You should arrange to bring the whole lot on here, it would be nice if you all came in a body. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get here, and the roads are charming; if you like I can send down for you. I can’t imagine what you find attractive in Rivebelle, it’s infested with mosquitoes. Perhaps you’re thinking of the reputation of the local pancakes. My cook makes them far better. I’ll give you some Norman pancakes, the real article, and shortbread; just let me show you. Ah! if you want the sort of filth they give you at Rivebelle, you won’t get it from me, I don’t poison my guests, Monsieur, and even if I wished to, my cook would refuse to make such unspeakable muck and would give in his notice. Those pancakes you get down there, you can’t tell what they’re made of. I knew a poor girl who got peritonitis from them, which carried her off in three days. She was only seventeen. It was sad for her poor mother,” added Mme Verdurin with a mournful air beneath the spheres of her temples charged with experience and suffering. “However, go and have tea at Rivebelle if you enjoy being fleeced and flinging money out of the window. But one thing I beg of you—it’s a confidential mission I’m entrusting you with—on the stroke of six bring all your party here, don’t allow them to go straggling away by themselves. You can bring whom you please. I wouldn’t say that to everybody. But I’m sure your friends are nice, I can see at once that we understand one another. Apart from the little nucleus, there are some very agreeable people coming next Wednesday, as it happens. You don’t know little Mme de Longpont? She’s charming, and so witty, not in the least snobbish, you’ll find you’ll like her immensely. And she’s going to bring a whole troupe of friends too,” Mme Verdurin added to show me that this was the right thing to do and encourage me by the other’s example. “We shall see which of you has most influence and brings most people, Barbe de Longpont or you. And then I believe somebody’s going to bring Bergotte,” she added vaguely, this attendance of a celebrity being rendered far from likely by a paragraph which had appeared in the papers that morning to the effect that the great writer’s health was causing grave anxiety. “Anyhow, you’ll see that it will be one of my most successful Wednesdays. I don’t want to have any boring women. You mustn’t judge by this evening, which has been a complete failure. Don’t try to be polite, you can’t have been more bored than I was, I myself thought it was deadly. It won’t always be like tonight, you know! I’m not thinking of the Cambremers, who are impossible, but I’ve known society people who were supposed to be agreeable, and compared with my little nucleus they didn’t exist. I heard you say that you thought Swann clever. I must say, to my mind it’s greatly exaggerated, but without even speaking of the character of the man, which I’ve always found fundamentally antipathetic, sly, underhand, I often had him to dinner on Wednesdays. Well, you can ask the others, even compared with Brichot, who is far from being a genius, who’s a good secondary schoolmaster whom I got into the Institute all the same, Swann was simply nowhere. He was so dull!” And as I expressed a contrary opinion: “It’s the truth. I don’t want to say a word against him since he was your friend, indeed he was very fond of you, he spoke to me about you in the most charming way, but ask the others here if he ever said anything interesting at our dinners. That, after all, is the test. Well, I don’t know why it was, but Swann, in my house, never seemed to come off, one got noth
ing out of him. And yet the little he had he picked up here.” I assured her that he was highly intelligent. “No, you only thought that because you didn’t know him as long as I did. Really, one got to the end of him very soon. I was always bored to death by him.” (Translation: “He went to the La Trémoïlles and the Guermantes and knew that I didn’t.”) “And I can put up with anything except being bored. That I cannot stand!” Her horror of boredom was now the reason upon which Mme Verdurin relied to explain the composition of the little group. She did not yet entertain duchesses because she was incapable of enduring boredom, just as she was incapable of going for a cruise because of sea-sickness. I thought to myself that what Mme Verdurin said was not entirely false, and, whereas the Guermantes would have declared Brichot to be the stupidest man they had ever met, I remained uncertain whether he was not in reality superior, if not to Swann himself, at least to the people endowed with the wit of the Guermantes who would have had the good taste to avoid and the delicacy to blush at his pedantic pleasantries; I asked myself the question as though the nature of intelligence might be to some extent clarified by the answer that I might give, and with the earnestness of a Christian influenced by Port-Royal when he considers the problem of Grace.
“You’ll see,” Mme Verdurin continued, “when one has society people together with people of real intelligence, people of our set, that’s where one has to see them—the wittiest society man in the kingdom of the blind is only one-eyed here. Besides, he paralyses the others, who don’t feel at home any longer. So much so that I’m inclined to wonder whether, instead of attempting mixtures that spoil everything, I shan’t start special evenings confined to the bores so as to have the full benefit of my little nucleus. However: you’re coming again with your cousin. That’s settled. Good. At any rate you’ll get something to eat here, the pair of you. Féterne is starvation corner. Oh, by the way, if you like rats, go there at once, you’ll get as many as you want. And they’ll keep you there as long as you’re prepared to stay. Why, you’ll die of hunger. When I go there, I shall dine before I start. To make it a bit gayer, you must come here first. We shall have a good high tea, and supper when we get back. Do you like apple-tarts? Yes, very well then, our chef makes the best in the world. You see I was quite right when I said you were made to live here. So come and stay. There’s far more room here than you’d think. I don’t mention it, so as not to let myself in for bores. You might bring your cousin to stay. She would get a change of air from Balbec. With the air here, I maintain that I can cure incurables. My word, I’ve cured some, and not only this time. For I’ve stayed near here before—a place I discovered and got for a mere song, and which had a lot more character than their Raspelière. I can show it to you if we go for a drive together. But I admit that even here the air is really invigorating. Still, I don’t want to say too much about it, or the whole of Paris would begin to take a fancy to my little corner. That’s always been my luck. Anyhow, give your cousin my message. We’ll put you in two nice rooms looking over the valley. You ought to see it in the morning, with the sun shining through the mist! By the way, who is this Robert de Saint-Loup you were speaking of?” she said anxiously, for she had heard that I was to pay him a visit at Doncières, and was afraid that he might make me defect. “Why not bring him here instead, if he’s not a bore. I’ve heard of him from Morel; I fancy he’s one of his greatest friends,” she added, lying in her teeth, for Saint-Loup and Morel were not even aware of one another’s existence. But having heard that Saint-Loup knew M. de Charlus, she supposed that it was through the violinist, and wished to appear in the know. “He’s not taking up medicine, by any chance, or literature? You know, if you want any help about examinations, Cottard can do anything, and I make what use of him I please. As for the Academy later on—for I suppose he’s not old enough yet—I have several votes in my pocket. Your friend would find himself on friendly soil here, and it might amuse him perhaps to see over the house. Doncières isn’t much fun. Anyhow, do just as you please, whatever suits you best,” she concluded, without insisting, so as not to appear to be trying to know people of noble birth, and because she always maintained that the system by which she governed the faithful, to wit despotism, was named liberty. “Why, what’s the matter with you,” she said, at the sight of M. Verdurin who, gesticulating impatiently, was making for the wooden terrace that ran along the side of the drawing-room above the valley, like a man who is bursting with rage and needs fresh air. “Has Saniette been irritating you again? But since you know what an idiot he is, you must resign yourself and not work yourself up into such a state . . . I hate it when he gets like this,” she said to me, “because it’s bad for him, it sends the blood to his head. But I must say that one would need the patience of an angel at times to put up with Saniette, and one must always remember that it’s an act of charity to have him in the house. For my part I must admit that he’s so gloriously silly that I can’t help enjoying him. I dare say you heard what he said after dinner: ‘I can’t play whist, but I can play the piano.’ Isn’t it superb? It’s positively colossal, and incidentally quite untrue, for he’s incapable of doing either. But my husband, beneath his rough exterior, is very sensitive, very kind-hearted, and Saniette’s self-centred way of always thinking about the effect he’s going to make drives him crazy . . . Come, dear, calm down, you know Cottard told you that it was bad for your liver. And I’m the one who’ll have to bear the brunt of it all. Tomorrow Saniette will come back and have his little fit of hysterics. Poor man, he’s very ill. But still, that’s no reason why he should kill other people. And then, even at moments when he’s really suffering, when one would like to comfort him, his silliness hardens one’s heart. He’s really too stupid. You ought to tell him quite politely that these scenes make you both ill, and he’d better not come back, and since that’s what he’s most afraid of, it will have a calming effect on his nerves,” Mme Verdurin concluded.
The sea was only just discernible from the windows on the right. But those on the other side revealed the valley, now shrouded in a snowy cloak of moonlight. From time to time one heard the voices of Morel and Cottard. “Have you any trumps?” “Yes.” “From what I saw, ’pon my soul . . .” said M. de Cambremer to Morel, in answer to his question, for he had seen that the Doctor’s hand was full of trumps. “Here comes the lady of diamonds,” said the Doctor. “Zat iss trump, you know? My trick. But there isn’t a Sorbonne any longer,” said the Doctor to M. de Cambremer, “there’s only the University of Paris.” M. de Cambremer confessed that he did not see the point of this remark. “I thought you were talking about the Sorbonne,” continued the Doctor. “I understood you to say: Sorbonne my soul,” he added, with a wink, to show that this was a pun. “Just wait a moment,” he said, pointing to his opponent, “I have a Trafalgar in store for him.” And the prospect must have been excellent for the Doctor, for in his joy his shoulders began to shake voluptuously with laughter, a motion which in his family, in the “genus” Cottard, was an almost zoological sign of satisfaction. In the previous generation the movement used to be accompanied by that of rubbing the hands together as though one were soaping them. Cottard himself had originally employed both forms of mimicry simultaneously, but one fine day, nobody ever knew by whose intervention, wifely or perhaps professional, the rubbing of the hands had disappeared. The Doctor, even at dominoes, when he forced his opponent into a corner and made him take the double six, which was to him the keenest of pleasures, contented himself with the shoulder-shake. And when—which was as seldom as possible—he went down to his native village for a few days and met his first cousin who was still at the hand-rubbing stage, he would say to Mme Cottard on his return: “I thought poor René very common.” “Have you any little dears?” he said, turning to Morel. “No? Then I play this old David.” “Then you have five, you’ve won!” “A splendid victory, Doctor,” said the Marquis. “A Pyrrhic victory,” said Cottard, turning to face the Marquis and looking at him over his glasses to judge the effect of
his remark. “If there’s still time,” he said to Morel, “I give you your revenge. It’s my deal. Ah! no, here come the carriages, it will have to be Friday, and I shall show you a trick you don’t see every day.”
M. and Mme Verdurin accompanied us to the door. The Mistress was particularly affectionate to Saniette so as to make certain of his returning next time. “But you don’t look to me as if you were properly wrapped up, my boy,” said M. Verdurin, whose age allowed him to address me in this paternal tone. “It looks as though the weather has changed.” These words filled me with joy, as though the dormant life, the resurgence of different combinations which they implied in nature, heralded other changes, occurring in my own life, and created fresh possibilities in it. Merely by opening the door on to the garden, before leaving, one felt that a different weather had, at that moment, taken possession of the scene; cooling breezes, one of the joys of summer, were rising in the fir plantation (where long ago Mme de Cambremer had dreamed of Chopin) and almost imperceptibly, in caressing coils, in fitful eddies, were beginning their gentle nocturnes. I declined the rug which, on subsequent evenings, I was to accept when Albertine was with me, more to preserve the secrecy of pleasure than to avoid the risk of cold. A vain search was made for the Norwegian philosopher. Had he been seized by a colic? Had he been afraid of missing the train? Had an aeroplane come to fetch him? Had he been carried aloft in an Assumption? In any case he had vanished without anyone’s noticing his departure, like a god. “You are unwise,” M. de Cambremer said to me, “it’s as cold as charity.” “Why charity?” the Doctor inquired. “Beware of your spasms,” the Marquis went on. “My sister never goes out at night. However, she is in a pretty bad state at present. In any case you oughtn’t to stand about bare-headed, put your tile on at once.” “They are not a frigore spasms,” said Cottard sententiously. “Ah, well,” M. de Cambremer bowed, “of course, if that’s your view . . .” “View halloo,” said the Doctor, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses. M. de Cambremer laughed, but, convinced that he was in the right, insisted: “All the same,” he said, “whenever my sister goes out after dark, she has an attack.” “It’s no use quibbling,” replied the Doctor, oblivious of his own discourtesy. “However, I don’t practise medicine by the seaside, unless I’m called in for a consultation. I’m here on holiday.” He was perhaps even more on holiday than he would have liked. M. de Cambremer having said to him as they got into the carriage together: “We’re fortunate in having quite close to us (not on your side of the bay, on the opposite side, but it’s quite narrow at that point) another medical celebrity, Dr du Boulbon,” Cottard, who as a rule, from “deontology,” abstained from criticising his colleagues, could not help exclaiming, as he had exclaimed to me on the fatal day when we had visited the little casino: “But he isn’t a doctor. He practises a sort of literary medicine, whimsical therapy, pure charlatanism. All the same, we’re on quite good terms. I’d take the boat and go over and pay him a visit if I didn’t have to go away.” But, from the air which Cottard assumed in speaking of du Boulbon to M. de Cambremer, I felt that the boat which he would gladly have taken to call upon him would have greatly resembled that vessel which, in order to go and spoil the waters discovered by another literary doctor, Virgil (who took all their patients from them as well), the doctors of Salerno had chartered, but which sank with them during the crossing. “Good-bye, my dear Saniette. Don’t forget to come tomorrow, you know how fond of you my husband is. He enjoys your wit and intelligence; yes indeed, you know quite well he does. He likes putting on a show of brusqueness, but he can’t do without you. It’s always the first thing he asks me: ‘Is Saniette coming? I do so enjoy seeing him.’ ” “I never said anything of the sort,” said M. Verdurin to Saniette with a feigned frankness which seemed perfectly to reconcile what the Mistress had just said with the manner in which he treated Saniette. Then, looking at his watch, doubtless so as not to prolong the leave-taking in the damp night air, he warned the coachmen not to lose any time, but to be careful when going down the hill, and assured us that we should be in plenty of time for our train. The latter was to set down the faithful, one at one station, another at a second, and so on, ending with myself, for no one else was going as far as Balbec, and beginning with the Cambremers, who, in order not to bring their horses all the way up to La Raspelière at night took the train with us at Douville-Féterne. For the station nearest to them was not this one, which, being already at some distance from the village, was further still from the château, but La Sogne. On arriving at the station of Douville-Féterne, M. de Cambremer made a point of “crossing the palm,” as Françoise used to say, of the Verdurins’ coachman (the nice, sensitive coachman, with the melancholy thoughts), for M. de Cambremer was generous, in that respect “taking after his mamma.” But, possibly because his “papa’s side” intervened at this point, in the process of giving he had qualms about the possibility of an error—either on his part, if, for instance, in the dark, he were to give a sou instead of a franc, or on the part of the recipient who might not notice the size of the present that was being given him. And so he drew attention to it: “It is a franc I’m giving you, isn’t it?” he said to the coachman, turning the coin until it gleamed in the lamplight, and so that the faithful might report his action to Mme Verdurin. “Isn’t it? Twenty sous is right, as it’s only a short drive.” He and Mme de Cambremer left us at La Sogne. “I shall tell my sister,” he repeated to me once more, “about your spasms. I’m sure she’ll be interested.” I understood that he meant: “will be pleased.” As for his wife, she employed, in saying good-bye to me, two abbreviations which even in writing, used to shock me at that time in a letter, although one has grown accustomed to them since, but which, when spoken, seem to me still, even today, insufferably pedantic in their deliberate carelessness, in their studied familiarity: “Delighted to have met you,” she said; “greetings to Saint-Loup, if you see him.” In making this speech, Mme de Cambremer pronounced the name “Saint-Loupe.” I never discovered who had pronounced it thus in her hearing, or what had led her to suppose that it ought to be so pronounced. However that may be, for some weeks afterwards she continued to say “Saint-Loupe,” and a man who had a great admiration for her and echoed her in every way did the same. If other people said “Saint-Lou,” they would insist, would say emphatically “Saint-Loupe,” either to teach the others a lesson indirectly, or to distinguish themselves from them. But no doubt women of greater social prestige than Mme de Cambremer told her, or gave her indirectly to understand, that this was not the correct pronunciation, and that what she regarded as a sign of originality was a solecism which would make people think her little conversant with the usages of society, for shortly afterwards Mme de Cambremet was again saying “Saint-Lou,” and her admirer similarly ceased to hold out, either because she had admonished him, or because he had noticed that she no longer sounded the final consonant and had said to himself that if a woman of such distinction, energy and ambition had yielded, it must have been on good grounds. The worst of her admirers was her husband, Mme de Cambremer loved to tease other people in a way that was often highly impertinent. As soon as she began to attack me, or anyone else, in this fashion, M. de Cambremer would start watching her victim with a laugh. As the Marquis had a squint—a blemish which gives an impression of intended wit to the mirth even of imbeciles—the effect of this laughter was to bring a segment of pupil into the otherwise complete whiteness of his eye. Thus does a sudden rift bring a patch of blue into an otherwise clouded sky. His monocle moreover protected, like the glass over a valuable picture, this delicate operation. As for the actual intention of his laughter, it was hard to say whether it was friendly: “Ah! you rascal, you’re a lucky man and no mistake! You’ve won the favour of a woman with a very pretty wit.” Or vicious: “Well then, I hope you’ll learn your lesson when you’ve swallowed all those insults.” Or obliging: “I’m here, you know. I take it with a laugh because it’s all pure fun, but I shan’t let you be ill-treated.”
Or cruelly conniving: “I don’t need to add my little pinch of salt, but you can see I’m enjoying all the snubs she’s handing out to you. I’m laughing myself silly, because I approve, and I’m her husband. So if you should take it into your head to answer back, you’d have me to deal with, young fellow. First of all I’d fetch you a couple of monumental clouts, and then we should go and cross swords in the forest of Chantepie.”
In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV Page 46