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

by Marcel Proust

  Mme de Guermantes had in fact applied to the ostracism of Mme and Mlle Swann a perseverance that caused general surprise. When Mme Mole and Mme de Marsantes had begun to make friends with Mme Swann and to bring a quantity of society ladies to her house, Mme de Guermantes had not only remained intractable but had contrived to sabotage the lines of communication and to see that her cousin the Princesse de Guermantes followed her example. On one of the gravest days of the crisis during Rouvier’s ministry when it was thought that there was going to be war with Germany, I dined at Mme de Guermantes’s with M. de Bréauté and found the Duchess looking worried. I supposed that, since she was always dabbling in politics, this was a manifestation of her fear of war, as when, appearing at the dinner-table one evening looking similarly pensive and barely replying in monosyllables, upon somebody’s inquiring timidly what was the cause of her anxiety, she had answered solemnly: “I’m worried about China.” But a moment later Mme de Guermantes, herself volunteering an explanation of that preoccupied air which I had put down to fear of a declaration of war, said to M. de Bréauté: “I’m told that Marie-Aynard intends to launch the Swanns. I simply must go and see Marie-Gilbert tomorrow and get her to help me prevent it. Otherwise there’ll be no society left. The Dreyfus case is all very well. But then the grocer’s wife round the corner has only to call herself a nationalist and expect us to invite her to our houses in return.” And this remark was in such frivolous contrast to the one I expected to hear that I felt the same astonishment as a reader who, turning to the usual column of the Figaro for the latest news of the Russo-Japanese war, finds instead the list of people who have given wedding-presents to Mlle de Mortemart, the importance of an aristocratic marriage having relegated the battles on land and sea to the back of the paper. Moreover the Duchess had come to derive from this immoderate perseverance of hers a self-satisfied pride which she lost no opportunity of expressing. “Babal” she said, “maintains that we are the two most elegant people in Paris because he and I are the only two people who do not allow Mme and Mlle Swann to greet us. For he assures me that elegance consists in not knowing Mme Swann.” And the Duchess laughed heartily.

  However, when Swann was dead, it happened that her determination not to know his daughter had ceased to provide Mme de Guermantes with all the satisfactions of pride, independence, “self-government” and cruelty which she was capable of deriving from it and which had come to an end with the passing of the man who had given her the exquisite sensation that she was resisting him, that he could not compel her to revoke her decrees. Then the Duchess had proceeded to the promulgation of other decrees which, being applied to people who were still alive, could make her feel that she was free to act as she thought fit. She did not think about the Swann girl, but, when anyone mentioned her, she would feel a certain curiosity, as about some place that she had never visited, which was no longer suppressed by the desire to stand out against Swann’s pretensions. Besides, so many different sentiments may contribute to the formation of a single one that it could not be said that there was not a lingering trace of affection for Swann in this interest. No doubt—for at every level of society a worldly and frivolous life paralyses the sensibility and robs people of the power to resuscitate the dead—the Duchess was one of those people who require a personal presence—that presence which, like a true Guermantes, she excelled in protracting—in order to love truly, but also, and this is less common, in order to hate a little. So that often her friendly feeling for people, suspended during their lifetime by the irritation caused her by some action or other on their part, revived after their death. She then felt almost a longing to make reparation, because she pictured them now—though very vaguely—with only their good qualities, and stripped of the petty satisfactions, the petty pretensions, which had irritated her in them when they were alive. This imparted at times, notwithstanding the frivolity of Mme de Guermantes, something rather noble—mixed with much that was base—to her conduct. For, whereas three-quarters of the human race flatter the living and pay no attention to the dead, she often did after their deaths what those whom she had treated badly would have wished her to do while they were alive.

  As for Gilberte, all the people who were fond of her and had a certain respect for her dignity could rejoice at the change in the Duchess’s attitude towards her only by thinking that Gilberte, by scornfully rejecting advances coming after twenty-five years of insults, would be able to avenge them at last. Unfortunately, moral reflexes are not always identical with what common sense imagines. A man who, by an untimely insult, thinks that he has forfeited for ever all hope of winning the friendship of a person whom he cares about, finds that, on the contrary, he has thereby assured himself of it. Gilberte, who remained fairly indifferent to the people who were kind to her, never ceased to think with admiration of the insolent Mme de Guermantes, to ask herself the reasons for such insolence; once indeed (and this would have made all the people who were at all fond of her die of shame on her behalf) she had thought of writing to the Duchess to ask her what she had against a girl who had never done her any harm. The Guermantes had assumed in her eyes proportions which their birth would have been powerless to give them. She placed them not only above all the nobility, but even above all the royal houses.

  Some of Swann’s former women-friends took a great interest in Gilberte. When the aristocracy learned of her latest inheritance, they began to remark how well brought up she was and what a charming wife she would make. People said that a cousin of Mme de Guermantes, the Princesse de Nièvre, was thinking of Gilberte for her son. Mme de Guermantes hated Mme de Nièvre. She spread the word that such a marriage would be a scandal. Mme de Nièvre took fright and swore that she had never considered such a thing. One day, after lunch, as the sun was shining and M. de Guermantes was going to take his wife for a drive, Mme de Guermantes was arranging her hat in front of the mirror, her blue eyes gazing at their own reflexion and at her still golden hair, her maid holding in her hand various sunshades among which her mistress might choose. The sun was flooding in through the window and they had decided to take advantage of the fine weather to pay a visit to Saint-Cloud, and M. de Guermantes, all ready to set off with his pearl-grey gloves and topper, said to himself: “Oriane is really astounding still; I find her delicious,” and went on, aloud, seeing that his wife seemed to be in a good humour: “By the way, I have a message for you from Mme de Virelef. She wanted to ask you to the Opera on Monday, but as she’s having the Swann girl she didn’t dare, and asked me to explore the ground. I don’t express any opinion, I simply convey the message. But really, it seems to me that we might …” he added evasively, for, their attitude towards people being a collective one, springing up identically in each of them, he knew from his own feelings that his wife’s hostility to Mlle Swann had subsided and that she was curious to meet her. Mme de Guermantes settled her veil to her liking and chose a sunshade. “Just as you like. What difference do you suppose it makes to me? I see no objection to our meeting the child. You know quite well that I’ve never had anything against her. I simply didn’t want us to appear to be countenancing the dubious establishments of our friends. That’s all.” “And you were perfectly right,” replied the Duke. “You are wisdom incarnate, Madame, and you are more ravishing than ever in that hat.” “You’re very kind,” said Mme de Guermantes with a smile at her husband as she made her way to the door. But, before entering the carriage, she insisted on giving him a further explanation: “Lots of people call on the mother now. Besides, she has the sense to be ill for nine months of the year … Apparently the child is quite charming. Everybody knows that we were very fond of Swann. People will think it quite natural.” And they set off together for Saint-Cloud.

  A month later, the Swann girl, who had not yet taken the name of Forcheville, came to lunch with the Guermantes. They talked about a variety of things, and at the end of the meal, Gilberte said timidly: “I believe you knew my father quite well.” “Why, of course we did,” said Mme de Guerm
antes in a melancholy tone which proved that she understood the daughter’s grief and with a spurious intensity as though to conceal the fact that she was not sure whether she did remember the father very clearly. “We knew him very well, I remember him very well.” (As indeed she might, seeing that he had come to see her almost every day for twenty-five years.) “I know quite well who he was, let me tell you,” she went on, as though she were seeking to explain to the daughter what sort of man her father had been and to provide her with some information about him, “he was a great friend of my mother-in-law and he was also very attached to my brother-in-law Palamède.” “He used to come here too, in fact he used to come to luncheon here,” added M. de Guermantes with ostentatious modesty and a scrupulous regard for accuracy. “You remember, Oriane. What a fine man your father was! One felt that he must come of a very decent family. As a matter of fact, I once saw his father and mother long ago. What excellent people they were, he and they!”

  One felt that if Swann and his parents had still been alive, the Duc de Guermantes would not have hesitated to recommend them for jobs as gardeners. And this is how the Faubourg Saint-Germain speaks to any bourgeois about other bourgeois, either to flatter him with the exception being made in his favour (for as long as the conversation lasts) or rather, or at the same time, to humiliate him. Thus it is that an anti-semite, at the very moment when he is smothering a Jew with affability, will speak ill of Jews, in a general fashion which enables him to be wounding without being rude.

  But, queen of the present moment, when she knew how to be infinitely amiable to you, and could not bring herself to let you go, Mme de Guermantes was also its slave. Swann might have managed at times to give the Duchess the illusion, in the excitement of conversation, that she was genuinely fond of him, but he could do so no longer. “He was charming,” said the Duchess with a wistful smile, fastening upon Gilberte a soft and kindly gaze which would at least, if the girl should prove to be a sensitive soul, show her that she was understood and that Mme de Guermantes, had the two been alone together and had circumstances permitted, would have loved to reveal to her all the depth of her sensibility. But M. de Guermantes, whether because he was indeed of the opinion that the circumstances forbade such effusions, or because he considered that any exaggeration of sentiment was a matter for women and that men had no more part in it than in the other feminine attributions, except for food and wine which he had reserved to himself, knowing more about them than the Duchess, felt it incumbent upon him not to encourage, by taking part in it, this conversation to which he listened with visible impatience.

  However, this burst of sensibility having subsided, Mme de Guermantes added with worldly frivolity, addressing Gilberte: “Why, he was not only a gggreat friend of my brother-in-law Charlus, he was also on very good terms with Voisenon” (the country house of the Prince de Guermantes), not only as though Swann’s acquaintance with M. de Charlus and the Prince had been a mere accident, as though the Duchess’s brother-in-law and cousin were two men with whom Swann had happened to become friendly through some fortuitous circumstance, whereas Swann had been on friendly terms with all the people in that set, but also as though Mme de Guermantes wanted to explain to Gilberte roughly who her father had been, to “place” him for her by means of one of those characteristic touches whereby, when one wants to explain how it is that one happens to know somebody whom one would not naturally know, or to point up one’s story, one invokes the names of his particular social sponsors.

  As for Gilberte, she was all the more glad to find the subject being dropped, in that she herself was only too anxious to drop it, having inherited from Swann his exquisite tact combined with a delightful intelligence that was recognised and appreciated by the Duke and Duchess, who begged her to come again soon. Moreover, with the passion for minutiae of people whose lives are purposeless, they would discern, one after another, in the people with whom they became acquainted, qualities of the simplest kind, exclaiming at them with the artless wonderment of a townsman who on going into the country discovers a blade of grass, or on the contrary magnifying as with a microscope, endlessly commenting upon and inveighing against the slightest defects, and often applying both processes alternately to the same person. In Gilberte’s case it was first of all upon her agreeable qualities that the idle perspicacity of M. and Mme de Guermantes was brought to bear: “Did you notice the way she pronounces certain words?” the Duchess said to her husband after the girl had left them; “it was just like Swann, I seemed to hear him speaking.” “I was just about to say the very same thing, Oriane.” “She’s witty, she has exactly the same cast of mind as her father.” “I consider that she’s even far superior to him. Think how well she told that story about the sea-bathing. She has a vivacity that Swann never had.” “Oh! but he was, after all, quite witty.” “I’m not saying that he wasn’t witty, I’m saying that he lacked vivacity,” said M. de Guermantes in a querulous tone, for his gout made him irritable, and when he had no one else upon whom to vent his irritation, it was to the Duchess that he displayed it. But being incapable of any clear understanding of its causes, he preferred to adopt an air of being misunderstood.

  This friendly attitude on the part of the Duke and Duchess meant that from now on, if the occasion arose, they would have said to her “your poor father,” but this would no longer do, since it was just about this time that Forcheville adopted the girl. She addressed him as “Father,” charmed all the dowagers by her politeness and distinction, and it was generally acknowledged that, if Forcheville had behaved admirably towards her, the child was very good-hearted and more than recompensed him. True, since she was able at times and anxious to show a great deal of naturalness and ease, she had reintroduced herself to me and had spoken to me about her real father. But this was an exception and no one now dared utter the name Swann in her presence.

  As it happened, on entering the drawing-room I had caught sight of two sketches by Elstir which formerly had been banished to a little room upstairs where I had seen them only by chance. Elstir was now in fashion. Mme de Guermantes could not forgive herself for having given so many of his pictures away to her cousin, not because they were in fashion, but because she now appreciated them. For fashion is composed of the collective infatuation of a number of people of whom the Guermantes are typical. But she could not think of buying other pictures by him, for they had now begun to fetch madly high prices. She was determined to have something at least by Elstir in her drawing-room and had brought down these two drawings which, she declared, she “preferred to his paintings.”

  Gilberte recognised the technique. “They look like Elstirs,” she said. “Why, yes,” replied the Duchess without thinking, “in fact it was your fa … some friends of ours who made us buy them. They’re admirable. To my mind, they’re superior to his paintings.”

  Not having heard this conversation, I went up to one of the drawings to examine it, and exclaimed: “Why, this is the Elstir that …” I saw Mme de Guermantes’s desperate signals. “Ah, yes, the Elstir that I admired upstairs. It looks much better here than in that passage. Talking of Elstir, I mentioned him yesterday in an article in the Figaro. Did you happen to read it?”

  “You’ve written an article in the Figaro!” exclaimed M. de Guermantes with the same violence as if he had exclaimed: “Why, she’s my cousin.”

  “Yes, yesterday.”

  “In the Figaro, are you sure? I can’t believe it. Because we each of us get our Figaro, and if one of us had missed it, the other would certainly have noticed it. That’s so, isn’t Oriane, there was nothing.”

  The Duke sent for the Figaro and only yielded to the evidence of his own eyes, as though up till then the probability had been that I had made a mistake as to the newspaper for which I had written.

  “What’s that? I don’t understand. So you’ve written an article in the Figaro!” said the Duchess, making an obvious effort in speaking of something that did not interest her. “Come, Basin, you can read it afterwar
ds.”

  “No, the Duke looks so nice like that with his great beard dangling over the paper,” said Gilberte. “I shall read it as soon as I get home.”

  “Yes, he wears a beard now that everybody else is clean-shaven,” said the Duchess. “He never does anything that other people do. When we were first married, he shaved not only his beard but his moustache as well. The peasants who didn’t know him by sight thought that he couldn’t be French. At that time he was called the Prince des Laumes.”

  “Is there still a Prince des Laumes?” asked Gilberte, who was interested in everything that concerned the people who had refused to acknowledge her existence during all those years.

  “Why, no,” the Duchess replied with a melancholy, caressing gaze.

  “Such a charming title! One of the finest titles in France!” said Gilberte, a certain sort of banality springing inevitably, as a clock strikes the hour, to the lips of certain quite intelligent persons.

  “Ah, yes, I’m sorry too. Basin would like his sister’s son to adopt it, but it isn’t the same thing; though it would be possible, since it doesn’t have to be the eldest son, it can be passed to a younger brother. I was telling you that in those days Basin was clean-shaven. One day, at a pilgrimage—you remember, my dear,” she turned to her husband, “that pilgrimage at Paray-le-Monial—my brother-in-law Charlus, who always enjoys talking to peasants, was saying to one after another: ‘Where do you come from?’ and as he’s extremely generous, he would give them something, take them off to have a drink. For nobody was ever at the same time simpler and more haughty than Meme. You’ll see him refuse to bow to a Duchess whom he doesn’t think duchessy enough, and heap kindnesses on a kennelman. So then I said to Basin: ‘Come, Basin, say something to them too.’ My husband, who is not always very inventive …” (“Thank you, Oriane,” said the Duke, without interrupting his reading of my article in which he was immersed) “… went up to one of the peasants and repeated his brother’s question in so many words: ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘I’m from Les Laumes.’ ‘You’re from Les Laumes? Why, I’m your Prince.’ Then the peasant looked at Basin’s hairless face and replied: ‘That ain’t true. You’re an English.’ ”28