The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle

by Marcel Proust

  I could not at once explain to the Duke why I had come. The fact was that several relatives or friends, including Mme de Silistrie and the Duchesse de Montrose, came to call on the Duchess, who was often at home before dinner, and not finding her, stayed for a short while with the Duke. The first of these ladies (the Princesse de Silistrie), simply attired, with a curt but friendly manner, was carrying a stick. I was afraid at first that she had injured herself, or was a cripple. She was on the contrary most alert. She spoke sadly to the Duke, of a first cousin of his—not on the Guermantes side, but more illustrious still, were that possible—whose health, which had been in a grave condition for some time past, had grown suddenly worse. But it was evident that the Duke, while sympathising with his cousin and repeating “Poor Mama!” (the cousin’s nickname in the family) “He’s such a good fellow,” had formed a favourable prognosis. The fact was that the Duke was looking forward to the dinner-party he was to attend, and far from bored at the prospect of the big reception at the Princesse de Guermantes’s, but above all he was to go on at one o’clock in the morning with his wife to a great supper and fancy dress ball, with a view to which a costume as Louis XI for himself, and one as Isabella of Bavaria for the Duchess, were waiting in readiness. And the Duke was determined not to be disturbed amid all these gaieties by the sufferings of the worthy Amanien d’Osmond. Two other ladies carrying sticks, Mme de Plassac and Mme de Tresmes, both daughters of the Comte de Bréquigny, came in next to pay Basin a visit, and declared that cousin Mama’s state was now beyond hope. The Duke shrugged his shoulders, and to change the subject asked whether they were going that evening to Marie-Gilbert’s. They replied that they were not, in view of the state of Amanien who was in extremis, and indeed they had excused themselves from the dinner to which the Duke was going, the other guests at which they proceeded to enumerate to him: the brother of King Theodosius, the Infanta Maria-Concepción, and so forth. As the Marquis d’Osmond was less closely related to them than he was to Basin, their “defection” appeared to the Duke to be a sort of indirect reproach for his own conduct, and he was rather curt with them. And so, although they had come down from the heights of the Hôtel de Bréquigny to see the Duchess (or rather to announce to her the alarming character, incompatible for his relatives with attendance at social gatherings, of their cousin’s illness), they did not stay long: each armed with her alpenstock, Walpurge and Dorothée (such were the names of the two sisters) retraced the craggy path to their citadel. I never thought to ask the Guermantes what was the meaning of these sticks, so common in a certain part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Possibly, looking upon the whole parish as their domain, and not caring to hire cabs, they were in the habit of taking long walks, for which some old fracture, due to immoderate indulgence in the chase and to the falls from horseback which are often the fruit of that indulgence, or simply rheumatism caused by the dampness of the left bank and of old country houses, made a stick necessary. Perhaps they had not set out upon any such long expedition through the neighbourhood, but, having merely come down into their garden (which lay at no great distance from that of the Duchess) to pick the fruit required for their compotes, had looked in on their way home to bid good evening to Mme de Guermantes, though without going so far as to bring a pair of secateurs or a watering-can into her house.

  The Duke appeared touched that I should have come to see them on the very day of their return to Paris. But his face clouded over when I told him I had come to ask his wife to find out whether her cousin really had invited me. I had touched upon one of those services which M. and Mme de Guermantes were not fond of rendering. The Duke explained to me that it was too late, that if the Princess had not sent me an invitation it would make him appear to be asking her for one, that his cousins had refused him one once before, and he had no wish to appear either directly or indirectly to be interfering with their visiting list, to be “meddling,” that anyhow he could not even be sure that he and his wife, who were dining out that evening, would not come straight home afterwards, that in that case their best excuse for not having gone to the Princess’s party would be to conceal from her the fact of their return to Paris, instead of hastening to inform her of it, as they must do if they sent her a note or spoke to her over the telephone about me, and certainly too late to be of any use, since, in all probability, the Princess’s list of guests would be closed by now. “You’ve not fallen foul of her in any way?” he asked in a suspicious tone, the Guermantes living in constant fear of not being informed of the latest society quarrels, and of people’s trying to climb back into favour on their shoulders. Finally, as the Duke was in the habit of taking upon himself all decisions that might seem ungracious, “Listen, my boy,” he said to me suddenly, as though the idea had just come into his head, “I’d really rather not mention at all to Oriane that you’ve spoken to me about this. You know how kindhearted she is, and besides, she’s enormously fond of you—she’d insist on sending to ask her cousin, in spite of anything I might say to the contrary, and if she’s tired after dinner, there’ll be no getting out of it, she’ll be forced to go to the party. No, decidedly, I shall say nothing to her about it. Anyhow, you’ll see her yourself in a minute. But not a word about this matter, I beg of you. If you decide to go to the party, I’ve no need to tell you what a pleasure it will be for us to spend the evening there with you.”

  Humane motives are too sacred for the person before whom they are invoked not to bow to them, whether he believes them to be sincere or not; I did not wish to appear to be weighing in the balance for a moment the relative importance of my invitation and the possible tiredness of Mme de Guermantes, and I promised not to speak to her of the object of my visit, exactly as though I had been taken in by the little farce which M. de Guermantes had performed for my benefit. I asked him if he thought there was any chance of my seeing Mme de Stermaria at the Princess’s.

  “Why, no,” he replied with the air of a connoisseur. “I know the name you mention, from having seen it in club directories—it isn’t at all the type of person who goes to Gilbert’s. You’ll see nobody there who is not excessively well-bred and intensely boring, duchesses bearing titles which one thought were extinct years ago and which have been trotted out for the occasion, all the ambassadors, heaps of Coburgs, foreign royalties, but you mustn’t expect even the ghost of a Stermaria. Gilbert would be taken ill at the mere thought of such a thing. Wait now, you’re fond of painting, I must show you a superb picture I bought from my cousin, partly in exchange for the Elstirs, which frankly didn’t appeal to us. It was sold to me as a Philippe de Champaigne, but I believe myself that it’s by someone even greater. Would you like to know what I think? I think it’s a Velázquez, and of the best period,” said the Duke, looking me boldly in the eyes, either to ascertain my impression or in the hope of enhancing it. A footman came in.

  “Mme la Duchesse wishes to know if M. le Duc will be so good as to see M. Swann, as Mme la Duchesse is not quite ready.”

  “Show M. Swann in,” said the Duke, after looking at his watch and seeing that he himself still had a few minutes before he need go to dress. “Naturally my wife, who told him to come, isn’t ready. No point in saying anything in front of Swann about Marie-Gilbert’s party,” said the Duke. “I don’t know whether he’s been invited. Gilbert likes him immensely, because he believes him to be the natural grandson of the Duc de Berry, but that’s a long story. (Otherwise you can imagine!—my cousin, who has a fit if he sees a Jew a mile off.) But now of course the Dreyfus case has made things more serious. Swann ought to have realised that he more than anyone must drop all connexion with those fellows, instead of which he says the most regrettable things.”

  The Duke called back the footman to know whether the man who had been sent to inquire at cousin Osmond’s had returned. His plan was as follows: since he rightly believed that his cousin was dying, he was anxious to obtain news of him before his death, that is to say before he was obliged to go into mourning. Once covered by the offi
cial certainty that Amanien was still alive, he would sneak off to his dinner, to the Prince’s reception, to the midnight revel where he was to appear as Louis XI and where he had a most tantalising assignation with a new mistress, and would make no more inquiries until the following day, when his pleasures would be over. Then he would put on mourning if the cousin had passed away in the night. “No, M. le Duc, he is not back yet.” “Hell and damnation! Nothing is ever done in this house till the last minute,” cried the Duke, at the thought that Amanien might still be in time to “croak” for an evening paper, and to make him miss his revel. He sent for Le Temps, in which there was nothing.

  I had not seen Swann for a long time, and found myself wondering momentarily whether in the old days he used to clip his moustache, or whether his hair had not been en brosse, for I found him somehow changed. It was simply that he was indeed greatly “changed” because he was very ill, and illness produces in the face modifications as profound as are created by growing a beard or by changing one’s parting. (Swann’s illness was the same that had killed his mother, who had been struck down by it at precisely the age which he had now reached. Our lives are in truth, owing to heredity, as full of cabalistic ciphers, of horoscopic castings as if sorcerers really existed. And just as there is a certain duration of life for humanity in general, so there is one for families in particular, that is to say, in any one family, for the members of it who resemble one another.) Swann was dressed with an elegance which, like that of his wife, associated with what he now was what he once had been. Buttoned up in a pearl-grey frock-coat which emphasised his tall, slim figure, his white gloves stitched in black, he had a grey topper of a flared shape which Delion no longer made except for him, the Prince de Sagan, M. de Charlus, the Marquis de Modène, M. Charles Haas and Comte Louis de Turenne. I was surprised at the charming smile and affectionate handclasp with which he replied to my greeting for I had imagined that after so long an interval he would not recognise me at once; I told him of my astonishment; he received it with a shout of laughter, a trace of indignation and a further squeeze of my hand, as if it were to throw doubt on the soundness of his brain or the sincerity of his affection to suppose that he did not recognise me. And yet that was in fact the case; he did not identify me, as I learned long afterwards, until several minutes later when he heard my name mentioned. But no change in his face, in his speech, in the things he said to me betrayed the discovery which a chance word from M. de Guermantes had enabled him to make, with such mastery, with such absolute sureness did he play the social game. He brought to it, moreover, that spontaneity in manners and that personal enterprise, even in matters of dress, which characterised the Guermantes style. Thus it was that the greeting which the old clubman had given me without recognising me was not the cold, stiff greeting of the purely formalist man of the world, but a greeting full of real friendliness, genuine charm, such as the Duchesse de Guermantes, for instance, possessed (carrying it so far as to smile at you first, before you had bowed to her, if she met you in the street), in contrast to the more mechanical greeting customary among the ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. In the same way, the hat which, in conformity with a custom that was beginning to disappear, he laid on the floor by his feet, was lined with green leather, a thing not usually done, because (he said) it showed the dirt far less, in reality because (but this he did not say) it was highly becoming.

  “Now, Charles, you’re a great expert, come and see what I’ve got to show you, after which, my boys, I’m going to ask your permission to leave you together for a moment while I go and change my clothes. Besides, I expect Oriane won’t be long now.” And he showed his “Velázquez” to Swann. “But it seems to me that I know this,” said Swann with the grimace of a sick man for whom the mere act of speaking requires an effort.

  “Yes,” said the Duke, perturbed by the time which the expert was taking to express his admiration. “You’ve probably seen it at Gilbert’s.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, I remember.”

  “What do you suppose it is?”

  “Oh, well, if it comes from Gilbert’s house it’s probably one of your ancestors,” said Swann with a blend of irony and deference towards a grandeur which he would have felt it impolite and absurd to belittle, but to which for reasons of good taste he preferred to make only a playful reference.

  “Of course it is,” said the Duke bluntly. “It’s Boson, the I forget how manyeth de Guermantes. Not that I care a damn about that. You know I’m not as feudal as my cousin. I’ve heard the names of Rigaud, Mignard, even Veláquez mentioned,” he went on, fastening on Swann the look of both an inquisitor and a torturer in an attempt at once to read into his mind and to influence his response. “Well,” he concluded (for when he was led to provoke artificially an opinion which he desired to hear, he had the faculty, after a few moments, of believing that it had been spontaneously uttered), “come, now, none of your flattery. Do you think it’s by one of those big guns I’ve mentioned?”

  “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 fo
r 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.