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

by Marcel Proust

  “Absolutely: rheumatism and neurasthenia are vicarious forms of neuro-arthritism. You may pass from one to the other by metastasis.”

  “The eminent professor,” said Brichot, “expresses himself, God forgive me, in a French as highly infused with Latin and Greek as M. Purgon himself, of Molièresque memory! Help me, uncle, I mean our sainted Sarcey …”12

  But he was prevented from finishing his sentence for Cottard had leapt from his seat with a wild shout: “The devil!” he exclaimed on regaining his power of articulate speech, “we’ve passed Maineville (d’you hear?) and Renneville too.” He had just noticed that the train was stopping at Saint-Mars-le-Vieux, where most of the passengers alighted. “They can’t have run through without stopping. We must have failed to notice while we were talking about the Cambremers. Listen to me, Ski, wait a moment, I’m going to tell you something good” (Cottard had taken a fancy to this expression, in common use in certain medical circles). “The Princess must be on the train, she can’t have seen us, and will have got into another compartment. Come along and find her. Let’s hope this won’t land us in the soup?

  And he led us all off in search of Princess Sherbatoff. He found her in the corner of an empty compartment, reading the Revue des Deux Mondes. She had long ago, from fear of rebuffs, acquired the habit of keeping her place, or remaining in her corner, in life as in trains, and of not offering her hand until the other person had greeted her. She went on reading as the faithful trooped into her carriage. I recognised her immediately; this woman who might have forfeited her social position but was nevertheless of exalted birth, who in any event was the pearl of a salon such as the Verdurins’, was the lady whom, on the same train, I had put down two days earlier as possibly the keeper of a brothel. Her social personality, which had been so doubtful, became clear to me as soon as I learned her name, just as when, after racking our brains over a puzzle, we at length hit upon the word which clears up all the obscurity, and which, in the case of a person, is his name. To discover two days later who the person is with whom one has travelled in a train is a far more amusing surprise than to read in the next number of a magazine the clue to the problem set in the previous number. Big restaurants, casinos, local trains, are the family portrait galleries of these social enigmas.

  “Princess, we must have missed you at Maineville! May we come and sit in your compartment?”

  “Why, of course,” said the Princess who, upon hearing Cottard address her, but only then, raised from her magazine a pair of eyes which, like the eyes of M. de Charlus, although gentler, saw perfectly well the people of whose presence she pretended to be unaware. Cottard, reflecting that the fact of my having been invited to meet the Cambremers was a sufficient recommendation, decided, after a momentary hesitation, to introduce me to the Princess, who bowed with great courtesy but appeared to be hearing my name for the first time.

  “Confound it!” cried the Doctor, “my wife has forgotten to have the buttons on my white waistcoat changed. Ah, women! They never remember anything. Don’t you ever marry, my boy,” he said to me. And as this was one of the pleasantries which he considered appropriate when he had nothing else to say, he peeped out of the corner of his eye at the Princess and the rest of the faithful, who, because he was a professor and an Academician, smiled back at him, admiring his good humour and lack of arrogance.

  The Princess informed us that the young violinist had been found. He had been confined to bed the day before by a sick headache, but was coming that evening and bringing with him a friend of his father whom he had met at Doncières. She had learned this from Mme Verdurin with whom she had lunched that morning, she told us in a rapid voice, rolling her rs, with her Russian accent, softly at the back of her throat, as though they were not rs but ls. “Ah! you lunched with her this morning,” Cottard said to the Princess, but his eyes were on me, for the object of this remark was to show me on what intimate terms the Princess was with the Mistress. “You really are one of the faithful!”

  “Yes, I love this little gloup, so intelligent, so agleeable, so simple, not snobbish or spiteful, and clevel to their fingel-tips.”

  “Devil take it! I must have lost my ticket, I can’t find it anywhere,” cried Cottard, without being unduly alarmed. He knew that at Douville, where a couple of landaus would be awaiting us, the collector would let him pass without a ticket, and would only touch his cap the more deferentially in order to provide an explanation for his leniency, which was that he had of course recognised Cottard as one of the Verdurins’ regular guests. “They won’t shove me in the lock-up for that,” the Doctor concluded.

  “You were saying, Monsieur,” I inquired of Brichot, “that there used to be some famous waters near here. How do we know that?”

  “The name of the next station is one of a multitude of proofs. It is called Fervaches.”

  “I don’t undelstand what he’s talking about,” mumbled the Princess, as though she were saying to me out of kindness: “He’s rather a bore, isn’t he?”

  “Why, Princess, Fervaches means hot springs. Fervidae aquae. But to return to the young violinist,” Brichot went on, “I was quite forgetting, Cottard, to tell you the great news. Had you heard that our poor friend Dechambre, who used to be Mme Verdurin’s favourite pianist, has just died? It’s dreadful.”

  “He was still quite young,” replied Cottard, “but he must have had some trouble with his liver, there must have been something sadly wrong in that quarter, he’d been looking very queer indeed for a long time past.”

  “But he wasn’t as young as all that,” said Brichot. “In the days when Elstir and Swann used to come to Mme Verdurin’s, Dechambre had already made himself a reputation in Paris, and, what is remarkable, without having first received the baptism of success abroad. Ah! he was no follower of the Gospel according to St Barnum, that fellow.”

  “You must be mistaken, he couldn’t have been going to Mme Verdurin’s at that time, he was still in the nursery.”

  “But, unless my old memory plays me false, I was under the impression that Dechambre used to play Vinteuil’s sonata for Swann when that clubman, being at odds with the aristocracy, had still no idea that he was one day to become the embourgeoised prince consort of our sainted Odette.”

  “That’s impossible. Vinteuil’s sonata wasn’t played at Mme Verdurin’s until long after Swann ceased to come there,” said the Doctor, for he was one of those people who work very hard and think they remember a great many things which they imagine to be useful, but forget many others, a condition which enables them to go into ecstasies over the memories of people who have nothing else to do. “You’re not doing justice to your learning, and yet you aren’t suffering from softening of the brain,” he added with a smile. Brichot agreed that he was mistaken.

  The train stopped. We were at La Sogne. The name stirred my curiosity. “How I should like to know what all these names mean,” I said to Cottard.

  “Ask M. Brichot, he may know, perhaps.”

  “Why, La Sogne is la Cicogne, Siconia,” replied Brichot, whom I was longing to interrogate about many other names.

  Forgetting her attachment to her “corner,” Mme Sherbatoff kindly offered to change places with me so that I might talk more easily with Brichot, whom I wanted to ask about other etymologies that interested me, and assured me that she did not mind in the least whether she travelled with her face to the engine, or her back to it, or standing, or anyhow. She remained on the defensive until she had discovered a newcomer’s intentions, but as soon as she had realised that these were friendly, she would do everything in her power to oblige. At length the train stopped at the station of Douville-Féterne, which being more or less equidistant from the villages of Féterne and Douville, bore for this reason both their names. “Good grief!” exclaimed Dr Cottard when we came to the barrier where the tickets were collected, pretending to have only just discovered his loss, “I can’t find my ticket, I must have lost it.” But the collector, taking off his cap, assured him
that it did not matter and smiled respectfully. The Princess (giving instructions to the coachman, as though she were a sort of lady-in-waiting to Mme Verdurin, who, because of the Cambremers, had not been able to come to the station, as, for that matter, she rarely did) took me, and also Brichot, with herself in one of the carriages. The Doctor, Saniette and Ski got into the other.

  The driver, although quite young, was the Verdurins’ head coachman, the only one who was strictly qualified for the post. He took them, in the day-time, on all their excursions, for he knew all the roads, and in the evening went down to meet the faithful and brought them back to the station later on. He was accompanied by extra helpers (whom he chose himself) if the necessity arose. He was an excellent fellow, sober and skilled, but with one of those melancholy faces on which a fixed stare indicates a person who will worry himself sick over the merest trifle and even harbour black thoughts. But at the moment he was quite happy, for he had managed to secure a place for his brother, another excellent young man, with the Verdurins. We began by driving through Douville. Grassy knolls ran down from the village to the sea, spreading out into broad pastures which were extraordinarily thick, lush and vivid in hue from saturation in moisture and salt. The islands and indentations of Rivebelle, much closer here than at Balbec, gave this part of the coast the appearance, novel to me, of a relief map. We passed several little bungalows, almost all of which were let to painters, turned into a track upon which some loose cattle, as frightened as were our horses, barred our way for ten minutes, and emerged upon the cliff road.

  “But, by the immortal gods,” Brichot suddenly asked, “to return to that poor Dechambre, do you suppose Mme Verdurin knows? Has anyone told her?”

  Mme Verdurin, like most people who move in society, simply because she needed the society of other people, never thought of them again for a single day as soon as, being dead, they could no longer come to her Wednesdays, or her Saturdays, or drop in for dinner. And it could not be said of the little clan, akin in this respect to every other salon, that it was composed of more dead than living members, seeing that, as soon as you were dead, it was as though you had never existed. But, to avoid the tedium of having to talk about the deceased, and even suspend the dinners—an inconceivable thing for the Mistress—as a token of mourning, M. Verdurin used to pretend that the death of the faithful had such an effect on his wife that, in the interest of her health, the subject must never be mentioned to her. Moreover, and perhaps just because the death of other people seemed to him so conclusive and so vulgar an accident, the thought of his own death filled him with horror and he shunned any reflexion that might have any bearing on it. As for Brichot, since he was a good-natured man and completely taken in by what M. Verdurin said about his wife, he dreaded for her sake the distress that such a bereavement must cause her.

  “Yes, she knew the worst this morning,” said the Princess, “it was impossible to keep it from her.”

  “Ye gods!” cried Brichot, “ah! it must have been a terrible blow, a friend of twenty-five years’ standing. There was a man who was one of us.”

  “Of course, of course, but it can’t be helped,” said Cottard. “Such events are bound to be painful; but Mme Verdurin is a brave woman, she is even more cerebral than emotional.”

  “I don’t altogether agree with the Doctor,” said the Princess, whose rapid speech and garbled diction made her somehow appear at once sulky and mischievous. “Beneath a cold exterior, Mme Verdurin conceals treasures of sensibility. M. Verdurin told me that he had had great difficulty in preventing her from going to Paris for the funeral; he was obliged to let her think that it was all to be held in the country.”

  “The devil! She wanted to go to Paris, did she? Of course, I know that she has a heart, too much heart perhaps. Poor Dechambre! As Madame Verdurin remarked not two months ago: ‘Compared with him, Planté, Paderewski, even Risler himself are nowhere!’ Ah, he could say with better reason than that show-off Nero, who has managed to hoodwink even German scholarship: Qualis artifex pereo! But he at least, Dechambre, must have died in the fulfilment of his vocation, in the odour of Beethovenian devotion; and bravely, I have no doubt; he had every right, that interpreter of German music, to pass away while celebrating the Missa Solemnis. But at any rate he was the man to greet the Reaper with a trill, for that inspired performer would produce at times, from the Parisianised Champagne ancestry of which he came, the gallantry and swagger of a guardsman.”

  From the height we had now reached, the sea no longer appeared, as it did from Balbec, like an undulating range of hills, but on the contrary like the view, from a mountain-peak or from a road winding round its flank, of a blue-green glacier or a glittering plain situated at a lower level. The ripples of eddies and currents seemed to be fixed upon its surface, and to have traced there for ever their concentric circles; the enamelled face of the sea, imperceptibly changing colour, assumed towards the head of the bay, where an estuary opened, the blue whiteness of milk in which little black boats that did not move seemed entangled like flies. I felt that from nowhere could one discover a vaster prospect. But at each turn in the road a fresh expanse was added to it and when we arrived at the Douville toll-house, the spur of the cliff which until then had concealed from us half the bay receded, and all of a sudden I saw upon my left a gulf as profound as that which I had already had in front of me, but one that changed the proportions of the other and doubled its beauty. The air at this lofty point had a keenness and purity that intoxicated me. I adored the Verdurins; that they should have sent a carriage for us seemed to me a touching act of kindness. I should have liked to kiss the Princess. I told her that I had never seen anything so beautiful. She professed that she too loved this spot more than any other. But I could see that to her as to the Verdurins the thing that really mattered was not to gaze at the view like tourists, but to partake of good meals there, to entertain people whom they liked, to write letters, to read books, in short to live in these surroundings, passively allowing the beauty of the scene to soak into them rather than making it the object of their conscious attention.

  After the toll-house, where the carriage had stopped for a moment at such a height above the sea that, as from a mountain-top, the sight of the blue gulf beneath almost made one dizzy, I opened the window; the sound, distinctly caught, of each wave breaking in turn had something sublime in its softness and clarity. Was it not like an index of measurement which, upsetting all our ordinary impressions, shows us that vertical distances may be compared with horizontal ones, contrary to the idea that our mind generally forms of them; and that, though they bring the sky nearer to us in this way, they are not great; that they are indeed less great for a sound which traverses them, as did the sound of those little waves, because the medium through which it has to pass is purer? And in fact if one drew back only a couple of yards behind the toll-house, one could no longer distinguish that sound of waves which six hundred feet of cliff had not robbed of its delicate, minute and soft precision. I thought to myself that my grandmother would have listened to it with the delight that she felt in all manifestations of nature or art that combine simplicity with grandeur. My exaltation was now at its height and raised everything round about me accordingly. It melted my heart that the Verdurins should have sent to meet us at the station. I said as much to the Princess, who seemed to think that I was greatly exaggerating so simple an act of courtesy. I know that she admitted subsequently to Cottard that she found me remarkably enthusiastic; he replied that I was too emotional, that I needed sedatives and ought to take up knitting. I pointed out to the Princess every tree, every little house smothered in its mantle of roses, I made her admire everything, I would have liked to take her in my arms and press her to my heart. She told me that she could see that I had a gift for painting, that I ought to take up sketching, that she was surprised that nobody had told me before. And she confessed that the country was indeed picturesque. We drove through the little village of Englesqueville perched on its hill—Engleberti vi
lla, Brichot informed us. “But are you quite sure that this evening’s dinner party will take place in spite of Dechambre’s death, Princess?” he went on, without stopping to think that the arrival at the station of the carriage in which we were sitting was in itself an answer to his question.

  “Yes,” said the Princess, “M. Veldulin insisted that it should not be put off, precisely in order to keep his wife from thinking. And besides, after never failing for all these years to entertain on Wednesdays, such a change in her habits would have been bound to upset her. Her nerves are velly bad just now. M. Verdurin was particularly pleased that you were coming to dine this evening, because he knew that it would be a great distraction for Mme Verdurin,” the Princess said to me, forgetting her pretence of having never heard my name before. “I think that it will be as well not to say anything in front of Mme Verdurin,” she added.

  “Ah! I’m glad you warned me,” Brichot artlessly replied. “I shall pass on your advice to Cottard.”

  The carriage stopped for a moment. It moved on again, but the sound that the wheels had been making in the village street had ceased. We had turned into the drive of La Raspelière, where M. Verdurin stood waiting for us on the steps. “I did well to put on a dinner-jacket,” he said, observing with pleasure that the faithful had put on theirs, “since I have such smart gentlemen in my party.” And as I apologised for not having changed: “Why, that’s quite all right. We’re all friends here. I should be delighted to offer you one of my own dinner-jackets, but it wouldn’t fit you.”

  The handclasp full of emotion which, by way of condolence at the death of the pianist, Brichot gave our host as he entered the hall of La Raspelière elicited no response from the latter. I told him how greatly I admired the scenery. “Ah! I’m delighted, and you’ve seen nothing yet; we must take you round. Why not come and spend a week or two here? The air is excellent.”