“That’s what people call Mme Molé’s ‘simplicity,’ ” said the Duchess sarcastically. “She wants to make us think that she had no cards on her to show her originality. But we know all about that, don’t we, my little Charles, we’re quite old enough and quite original enough ourselves to see through the tricks of a little lady who has only been going about for four years. She is charming, but she doesn’t seem to me, all the same, to have the weight to imagine that she can stun the world with so little effort as merely by leaving an envelope instead of a card and leaving it at ten o’clock in the morning. Her old mother mouse will show her that she knows a thing or two about that.”
Swann could not help smiling at the thought that the Duchess, who was, as it happened, a trifle jealous of Mme Molé’s success, would find it quite in accordance with the “Guermantes wit” to make some insolent retort to her visitor.
“So far as the title of Duc de Brabant is concerned, I’ve told you a hundred times, Oriane …” the Duke continued, but the Duchess, without listening, cut him short.
“But, my dear Charles, I’m longing to see your photograph.”
“Ah! Extinctor draconis latrator Anubis,” said Swann.
“Yes, it was so charming what you said about that apropos of San Giorgio at Venice. But I don’t understand why Anubis?”
“What’s the one like who was an ancestor of Babal?” asked M. de Guermantes.
“You want to see his bauble,” said his wife drily, to show that she herself despised the pun. “I want to see them all,” she added.
“I’ll tell you what, Charles, let’s go downstairs till the carriage comes,” said the Duke. “You can pay your call on us in the hall, because my wife won’t let us have any peace until she’s seen your photograph. I’m less impatient, I must say,” he added complacently. “I’m not easily stirred myself, but she would see us all dead rather than miss it.”
“I entirely agree with you, Basin,” said the Duchess, “let’s go into the hall; we shall at least know why we have come down from your study, whereas we shall never know how we have come down from the Counts of Brabant.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times how the title came into the House of Hesse,” said the Duke (while we were going downstairs to look at the photograph, and I thought of those that Swann used to bring me at Combray), “through the marriage of a Brabant in 1241 with the daughter of the last Landgrave of Thuringia and Hesse, so that really it’s the title of Prince of Hesse that came to the House of Brabant rather than that of Duke of Brabant to the House of Hesse. You will remember that our battle-cry was that of the Dukes of Brabant: ‘Limbourg to her conqueror!’ until we exchanged the arms of Brabant for those of Guermantes, in which I think myself that we were wrong, and the example of the Gramonts will not make me change my opinion.”
“But,” replied Mme de Guermantes, “as it’s the King of the Belgians who is the conqueror … Besides, the Belgian Crown Prince calls himself Duc de Brabant.”
“But, my dear child, your argument will not hold water for a moment. You know as well as I do that there are titles of pretension which can perfectly well survive even if the territory is occupied by usurpers. For instance, the King of Spain describes himself equally as Duke of Brabant, claiming in virtue of a possession less ancient than ours, but more ancient than that of the King of the Belgians. He also calls himself Duke of Burgundy, King of the West and East Indies, and Duke of Milan. Well, he’s no more in possession of Burgundy, the Indies or Brabant than I possess Brabant myself, or the Prince of Hesse either, for that matter. The King of Spain likewise proclaims himself King of Jerusalem, as does the Austrian Emperor, and Jerusalem belongs to neither one nor the other.”
He stopped for a moment, perturbed by the thought that the mention of Jerusalem might have embarrassed Swann, in view of “current events,” but only went on more rapidly: “What you said just now might be said of anyone. We were at one time Dukes of Aumale, a duchy that has passed as regularly to the House of France as Joinville and Chevreuse have to the House of Albert. We make no more claim to those titles than to that of Marquis de Noirmoutiers, which was at one time ours, and became perfectly regularly the appanage of the House of La Trémoïlle, but because certain cessions are valid, it does not follow that they all are. For instance,” he went on, turning to me, “my sister-in-law’s son bears the title of Prince d’Agrigente, which comes to us from Joan the Mad, as that of Prince de Tarente comes to the La Trémoïlles. Well, Napoleon went and gave this title of Tarente to a soldier, who may have been an excellent campaigner, but in doing so the Emperor was disposing of what belonged to him even less than Napoleon III when he created a Duc de Montmorency, since Périgord had at least a mother who was a Montmorency, while the Tarente of Napoleon I had no more Tarente about him than Napoleon’s wish that he should become so. That didn’t prevent Chaix d’Est-Ange, alluding to our uncle Condé, from asking the Imperial Attorney if he had picked up the title of Duc de Montmorency in the moat at Vincennes.”
“Look, Basin, I ask for nothing better than to follow you to the moat of Vincennes, or even to Taranto. And that reminds me, Charles, of what I was going to say to you when you were telling me about your San Giorgio of Venice. We have a plan, Basin and I, to spend next spring in Italy and Sicily. If you were to come with us, just think what a difference it would make! I’m not thinking only of the pleasure of seeing you, but imagine, after all you’ve told me about the remains of the Norman Conquest and of antiquity, imagine what a trip like that would become if you were with us! I mean to say that even Basin—what am I saying, Gilbert!—would benefit by it, because I feel that even his claims to the throne of Naples and all that sort of thing would interest me if they were explained by you in old Romanesque churches in little villages perched on hills as in primitive paintings. But now we’re going to look at your photograph. Open the envelope,” she said to a footman.
“Please, Oriane, not this evening; you can look at it tomorrow,” implored the Duke, who had already been making signs of alarm to me on seeing the enormous size of the photograph.
“But I want to look at it with Charles,” said the Duchess, with a smile at once spuriously concupiscent and subtly psychological, for in her desire to be amiable to Swann she spoke of the pleasure which she would derive from looking at the photograph as of the kind an invalid feels he would derive from eating an orange, or as though she had simultaneously contrived an escapade with some friends and informed a biographer of tastes flattering to herself.
“Well, he’ll come and see you specially,” declared the Duke, to whom his wife was obliged to yield. “You can spend three hours in front of it, if that amuses you,” he added sarcastically. “But where are you going to stick a toy that size?”
“In my room, of course. I want to have it before my eyes.”
“Oh, just as you please; if it’s in your room, there’s a chance I shall never see it,” said the Duke, oblivious of the revelation he was thus blindly making of the negative character of his conjugal relations.
“Make sure you undo it with the greatest care,” Mme de Guermantes told the servant, underlining her instructions out of deference to Swann. “And don’t crumple the envelope, either.”
“Even the envelope has to be respected!” the Duke murmured to me, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “But, Swann,” he added, “what amazes me, a poor prosaic husband, is how you managed to find an envelope that size. Where on earth did you dig it up?”
“Oh, at the photographer’s; they’re always sending out things like that. But the man is an oaf, for I see he’s written on it ‘La Duchesse de Guermantes,’ without putting ‘Madame.’ ”
“I forgive him,” said the Duchess carelessly; then, seeming to be struck by a sudden idea which amused her, repressed a faint smile; but at once returning to Swann: “Well, you don’t say whether you’re coming to Italy with us?”
“Madame, I’m very much afraid that it won’t be possible.”
“Indeed
! Mme de Montmorency is more fortunate. You went with her to Venice and Vicenza. She told me that with you one saw things one would never see otherwise, things no one had ever thought of mentioning before, that you showed her things she’d never dreamed of, and that even in the well-known things she was able to appreciate details which without you she might have passed by a dozen times without ever noticing. She’s certainly been more highly favoured than we are to be … You will take the big envelope which contained M. Swann’s photograph,” she said to the servant, “and you will hand it in, from me, the corner turned down, this evening at half past ten at Mme la Comtesse Molé’s.”
Swann burst out laughing.
“I should like to know, all the same,” Mme de Guermantes asked him, “how you can tell ten months in advance that a thing will be impossible.”
“My dear Duchess, I’ll tell you if you insist, but, first of all, you can see that I’m very ill.”
“Yes, my little Charles, I don’t think you look at all well. I’m not pleased with your colour. But I’m not asking you to come with us next week, I’m asking you to come in ten months’ time. In ten months one has time to get oneself cured, you know.”
At this point a footman came in to say that the carriage was at the door. “Come, Oriane, to horse,” said the Duke, already pawing the ground with impatience as though he were himself one of the horses that stood waiting outside.
“Very well, give me in one word the reason why you can’t come to Italy,” the Duchess put it to Swann as she rose to say good-bye to us.
“But, my dear lady, it’s because I shall then have been dead for several months. According to the doctors I’ve consulted, by the end of the year the thing I’ve got—which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment—won’t in any case leave me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate,” replied Swann with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out.
“What’s that you say?” cried the Duchess, stopping for a moment on her way to the carriage and raising her beautiful, melancholy blue eyes, now clouded by uncertainty. Placed for the first time in her life between two duties as incompatible as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing compassion for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the right line to follow; not knowing which to choose, she felt obliged to pretend not to believe that the latter alternative need be seriously considered, in order to comply with the first, which at the moment demanded less effort, and thought that the best way of settling the conflict would be to deny that any existed. “You’re joking,” she said to Swann.
“It would be a joke in charming taste,” he replied ironically. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’ve never said a word to you about my illness before. But since you asked me, and since now I may die at any moment … But whatever I do I mustn’t make you late; you’re dining out, remember,” he added, because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took precedence over the death of a friend, and he put himself in their place thanks to his instinctive politeness. But that of the Duchess enabled her also to perceive in a vague way that the dinner-party to which she was going must count for less to Swann than his own death. And so, while continuing on her way towards the carriage, she let her shoulders droop, saying: “Don’t worry about our dinner. It’s not of any importance!” But this put the Duke in a bad humour and he exclaimed: “Come, Oriane, don’t stop there chattering like that and exchanging your jeremiads with Swann; you know very well that Mme de Saint-Euverte insists on sitting down to table at eight o’clock sharp. We must know what you propose to do; the horses have been waiting for a good five minutes. Forgive me, Charles,” he went on, turning to Swann, “but it’s ten minutes to eight already. Oriane is always late, and it will take us more than five minutes to get to old Saint-Euverte’s.”
Mme de Guermantes advanced resolutely towards the carriage and uttered a last farewell to Swann. “You know, we’ll talk about that another time; I don’t believe a word you’ve been saying, but we must discuss it quietly. I expect they’ve frightened you quite unnecessarily. Come to luncheon, any day you like” (with Mme de Guermantes things always resolved themselves into luncheons), “just let me know the day and the time,” and, lifting her red skirt, she set her foot on the step. She was just getting into the carriage when, seeing this foot exposed, the Duke cried out in a terrifying voice: “Oriane, what have you been thinking of, you wretch? You’ve kept on your black shoes! With a red dress! Go upstairs quick and put on red shoes, or rather,” he said to the footman, “tell Mme la Duchesse’s lady’s-maid at once to bring down a pair of red shoes.”
“But, my dear,” replied the Duchess gently, embarrassed to see that Swann, who was leaving the house with me but had stood back to allow the carriage to pass out in front of us, had heard, “seeing that we’re late …”
“No, no, we have plenty of time. It’s only ten to; it won’t take us ten minutes to get to the Parc Monceau. And after all, what does it matter? Even if we turn up at half past eight they’ll wait for us, but you can’t possibly go there in a red dress and black shoes. Besides, we shan’t be the last, I can tell you; the Sassenages are coming, and you know they never arrive before twenty to nine.”
The Duchess went up to her room.
“Well,” said M. de Guermantes to Swann and myself, “people laugh at us poor downtrodden husbands, but we have our uses. But for me, Oriane would have gone out to dinner in black shoes.”
“It’s not unbecoming,” said Swann, “I noticed the black shoes and they didn’t offend me in the least.”
“I don’t say you’re wrong,” replied the Duke, “but it looks better to have them to match the dress. Besides, you needn’t worry, no sooner had she got there than she’d have noticed them, and I should have been obliged to come home and fetch the others. I should have had my dinner at nine o’clock. Good-bye, my boys,” he said, thrusting us gently from the door, “off you go before Oriane comes down again. It’s not that she doesn’t like seeing you both. On the contrary, she’s too fond of your company. If she finds you still here she’ll start talking again. She’s already very tired, and she’ll reach the dinner-table quite dead. Besides, I tell you frankly, I’m dying of hunger. I had a wretched luncheon this morning when I came from the train. There was the devil of a béarnaise sauce, I admit, but in spite of that I shan’t be sorry, not at all sorry to sit down to dinner. Five minutes to eight! Ah, women! She’ll give us both indigestion before tomorrow. She’s not nearly as strong as people think.”
The Duke felt no compunction in speaking thus of his wife’s ailments and his own to a dying man, for the former interested him more and therefore appeared to him more important. And so, after gently showing us out, it was simply from breeding and jollity that in a stentorian voice, as if addressing someone off-stage, he shouted from the gate to Swann, who was already in the courtyard: “You, now, don’t let yourself be alarmed by the nonsense of those damned doctors. They’re fools. You’re as sound as a bell. You’ll bury us all!”
Addenda
This passage continues as follows in Proust’s manuscript:
And the legendary scenes depicted in this landscape gave it the curious grandeur of having become contemporaneous with them. The myth dated the landscape; it swept the sky, the sun, the mountains which were its witnesses back with it to a past in the depths of which they already appeared to me to be identical to what they are today. It pushed back through endless time the unfurling of the waves which I had seen at Balbec. I said to myself: that sunset, that ocean which I can contemplate once again, whenever I wish, from the hotel or from the cliff, those identical waves, constitute a setting analogous, especially in the summer when the light orientalises it, to that in which Hercules killed the Hydra of Lerna, in which Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes. Already, in those immemorial days of kings whose palaces are unearthed by archaeol
ogists and of whom mythology has made its demi-gods, the sea at evening washed against the shore with that plaint which so often aroused in me a similar vague disquiet. And when I walked along the esplanade at the close of day, the sea which formed such a large part of the picture before my eyes, made up of so many contemporary images such as the band-stand and the casino, was the sea that the Argonauts saw, the sea of pre-history, and it was only by the alien elements I introduced into it that it was of today, it was only because I adjusted it to the hour of my quotidian vision that I found a familiar echo in the melancholy murmur which Theseus heard.
The following development appears in the original manuscript:
“That is why life is so horrible, since nobody can understand anybody else,” Mme de Guermantes concluded with a self-consciously pessimistic air, but also with the animation induced by the pleasure of shining before the Princesse de Parme. And when I saw this woman who was so difficult to please, who had claimed to be bored to death by M. and Mme Ribot [changed to: with an extremely impressive minister-academician], going to so much trouble for this uninspiring princess, I understood how a man of such refinement as Swann could have enjoyed the company of M. Bontemps [changed to: Mme Bontemps]. Indeed if she had had reasons for adopting the latter, the Duchess might have preferred him to the celebrated statesman, for, outside the ranks of the princely families, only charm and distinction, either proved or imaginary but in the latter case its existence having been decreed in the same way as a monarch ennobles people, counted in the Guermantes circle. Political or professional hierarchies meant nothing. And if Cottard, a professor and an academician, who was not received there, had been called in as a consultant, he might have found there a complete unknown, Dr Percepied, whom for purely self-interested motives it was convenient for the Duchess to have to lunch now and then and whom she declared to be rather distinguished because she received him.
The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle Page 196