My father’s attitude to my type of mind was scorn sufficiently diluted by affection for his reaction to whatever I did to be, on the whole, blind indulgence. So he had no hesitation in sending me to fetch a little prose poem I had written one year at Combray on the way home from an outing. I had written it in a state of exhilaration which I felt it must directly convey to anyone who read it. But my exhilaration must have failed to touch M. de Norpois; and he handed it back to me without a word.
My mother, who was full of respect for any of my father’s occupations, came in to ask shyly whether it was time for her to have dinner served. She was reluctant to interrupt any conversation in which she was not supposed to be participating. So my father went on reminding the Marquis of some useful measure or other which they had decided to support at the next meeting of the Select Committee, in that special tone of voice used by two professional colleagues (or two class-mates) who, though out of their usual element, and in the presence of others who are not privy to the shared experiences of their other life, speak of these, while apologizing for doing so.
The state of total independence from his facial muscles in which M. de Norpois lived enabled him to listen while not seeming to hear. My father, having stumbled through a longish preamble, eventually had to grope for a word: ‘So I had been thinking I might just ask for, you know, the views of the Select Committee …’ Whereupon, from the countenance of the aristocratic virtuoso, who had been sitting as still as an instrumentalist awaiting his turn to play, there came, with perfect attack and a smooth delivery, in a sharpened pitch and sounding as though finishing a phrase just begun, but in a different tone-colouring, the words, ‘ … of which, of course, you will not hesitate to convene a meeting, given that each and every one of its members is personally known to you and can come in at any moment.’ In itself, this completion was hardly remarkable. But the unmoving posture which had preceded it gave it the sudden crystal clarity, the almost mischievous surprise of the phrases by which the piano, after its silent rests, makes its punctual little replies to the cello, in a concerto by Mozart.
As we went through to dinner, my father asked me, ‘So, did you enjoy the matinée?’ so as to give me a chance to shine, and in the hope that my enthusiasm would find favour in the eyes of M. de Norpois; then with the technical and conspiratorial tone of retrospective allusiveness which he used for referring to the sessions of the Select Committee, he added for the benefit of the diplomat, ‘He’s just been to see La Berma, you know. You remember we spoke of it.’
‘You must have been delighted,’ M. de Norpois said; ‘especially if you were seeing her for the first time. Your good father here was inclined to be anxious about the repercussions your little escapade might have on your state of health – I understand you’re rather delicate, not in the best of health. However, I reassured him. Theatres nowadays are not what they used to be, even just twenty years ago. I mean, one has more or less comfortable seats to sit in; and the air circulates a bit – though we still have a long way to go to equal Germany and England, which in that respect (as in many another!) have far outstripped us. I have never seen Mme Berma in Phèdre, but I have been told she is outstanding. It must, of course, have been a great thrill for you.’
M. de Norpois, being incomparably cleverer than I was, must be in possession of the truth that I had been unable to derive from La Berma’s acting! He would be able to reveal it to me. In answer to his question, I was going to beg him to tell me where that truth lay; and in so doing he would vindicate the desire which had urged me to go and see her. I had no more than a moment to take advantage of, to focus my inquiries on the salient points. But what were they? Concentrating my whole attention on my impressions, which were hopelessly confused, with no thought of shining or finding favour, but in the hope of getting from him the truth I sought, I made no effort to substitute set phrases for the words which failed me, I made no sense and eventually, so as to have him say straight out what was so admirable about La Berma, I owned up to my disappointment.
‘What’s that?’ exclaimed my father, appalled at the poor impression my ineptness might make on M. de Norpois. ‘How can you say you didn’t enjoy it? Your grandmother told us you didn’t miss a word, that you just stared and stared at her, that nobody else in the whole audience lapped it up the way you did!’
– Well, yes, I was listening as hard as I could, to see what was so great about her. I mean, she’s very good …
– Well then, if she’s very good, what more do you want?
– One of the things which contribute most definitely to the success of Mme Berma,’ said M. de Norpois, taking care to turn towards my mother, so as to bring her into the conversation and to fulfil punctiliously the duty of being courteous towards one’s hostess, ‘is the impeccable taste she exercises in her choice of parts, and which always ensures her a clear success, one which is thoroughly deserved. She rarely plays mediocre parts – I mean, here she is now as Phèdre. And one can see the same good taste in her costumes and in her acting. Even though she has made frequent and profitable tours to England and to America, the vulgarity – I won’t say of John Bull, that would be quite an unfair thing to say of the England of this Victorian era of ours – but the vulgarity of Uncle Sam seems not to have affected her. Never any colours that are too flagrant, never any exaggerated vocal effects. Just that wonderful voice, which serves her so well, which she uses to such good effect, which she plays on, I might almost say, like a musician on an instrument!’
My interest in La Berma’s acting, being no longer subject to the compression and constraints of reality, had gone on growing since the end of the performance. But I felt the need to find explanations for this interest which, while she was on stage, had sated itself with equal intensity on all the rich complexities of real life, as she offered them to my eyes and ears, but without separating any of them or distinguishing anything. So there was some relief to be had in finding a reasonable cause for it in these praises of her as an unspoiled and tasteful artiste; it attracted them to itself by its own power of absorption; it latched on to them, as the drunk man in his bonhomie is moved to maudlin by the actions of a passer-by. ‘He’s right, you know!’ I thought. ‘What a lovely voice, what simple costumes! How clever of her to think of doing Phèdre! Of course I’m not disappointed!’
The cold beef with carrots now made its appearance, laid out by the Michelangelo of our kitchen on great crystals of aspic that looked like blocks of transparent quartz.
‘You have a chef of superlative quality, Madame,’ said M. de Norpois. ‘And that is a thing worthy of note. Speaking as one who has had to keep up a certain standard of such things in foreign parts, I know how difficult it can often be to find the perfect Vatel.5 I see you have prepared a sumptuous repast for your guest.’
It was true that Françoise, inspired by the challenge offered by a guest of such quality to create a dinner fraught with difficulties which for once were worthy of her, had taken pains of a sort which she no longer took when we dined among ourselves, and had become once more the incomparable cook she had been in Combray days.
‘Now, that is something you can’t get in any public eating establishment, not excluding the very best: a dish of braised beef, with aspic that doesn’t smell like glue, in which the meat has absorbed the flavour of the carrots – quite magnificent! Do allow me to have a little more,’ he added, with a gesture that requested another helping of the aspic. ‘I would be interested to see how your Vatel would acquit himself of quite a different dish, beef Stroganoff for example.’
So as to contribute his fair share to the enjoyment of the meal, M. de Norpois now served up for us several stories which his diplomatic colleagues were familiar with, some of them featuring the sesquipedalianism of a certain politician known for his preposterous utterances larded with mixed metaphors, others featuring the epigrammatic brevity of a diplomat who was a master of elegant atticism. It was clear that M. de Norpois’s judgment of these two types of sentence was ba
sed on a criterion which was utterly unlike the one I applied to literature. I missed many niceties in his stories: I could see little difference between the clumsy sentences which he accompanied with guffaws, and the others which he thought were so fine. He was the kind of man who would have said of the books I liked, ‘So you fancy this sort of stuff, do you? Personally, I have to say I don’t see much in it, I’m not one of the initiated.’ But I could have said the same thing to him: in a statement or a speech, I could not see what he saw as witty or what he thought was stupid, what was eloquence and what was bombast; and the lack of any apparent reason why one was good and the other bad meant that these literary standards struck me as most mysterious and obscure. The only deduction I could draw was that, in politics, it was a mark of superiority rather than inferiority to repeat what everybody else thought. Each time M. de Norpois used certain expressions, which were as trite as the newspapers in which he read them, and which he spoke with emphasis, one could sense that, by virtue of having been uttered by him, they became an act, and that this act would not go unnoticed.
My mother had been expecting the pineapple-and-truffle salad to be a great success. But the ambassador, after having spent a moment exercising his penetrating gift of observation on the dish, ate the salad with complete diplomatic discretion and vouchsafed no opinion on it. My mother urged him to have some more; and as he did so, instead of offering the expected compliment, he said, ‘I cannot refuse, Ma’am, since you have clearly issued an ukase.
– We read in the ‘public prints’, my father said, that you had a long conversation with King Theodosius.
– Quite. His Majesty, whose memory for faces is remarkable, was gracious enough to recall, when he noticed me in the front stalls, that I had had the honour of seeing him over a period of a few days at the Court of Bavaria, at a time when he had no thought of his Eastern throne – as you know, it fell to him as a result of a European congress; and he even had some serious hesitation about whether to accept it or not, as he saw it as not quite up to his lineage, which is the noblest in the whole of Europe, heraldically speaking. So an equerry brought me the command to go and greet His Majesty, and naturally I lost no time in complying.
– And do you find the results of his visit satisfactory?
– Completely and entirely! Mind you, one might well have harboured some misgivings about how well such a young monarch might comport himself in such difficult circumstances, especially given the delicate times we live in. Personally, I must say I had no qualms whatsoever about the sovereign’s political instincts. However, even my expectations were more than borne out. The toast he proposed at the Élysée – which wholly reliable sources have assured me was entirely his own work, from the first word to the last – was in every way worthy of the universal interest it has aroused. It can only be called a master-stroke. A daring one, I grant you, but one which events have fully vindicated. The traditions of diplomacy undoubtedly have their value, but in this case they had managed to create between his country and our own a staleness in the atmosphere, which was unhealthy for both of us. And, of course, one way to get a breath of fresh air – a way which one would obviously be loth to recommend, but which King Theodosius could afford to adopt – is to break windows! He did it with a fine humour, which delighted everyone, and an accuracy in the choice of words which showed he is the worthy descendant of that lineage of highly literate princes to which he belongs through his mother. Certainly, when he spoke of the ‘affinities’ linking his country to France, he used a word which, though it may not be of common currency in the lexicon of the chancellery, was singularly apt. As you can see, he said, aiming the remark at me, literature never goes amiss, even in diplomacy, even on a throne. I admit that the state of affairs had been recognized for a long time; and the relations between the two powers had become excellent. But still, it needed to be said. We had been hoping for some such word; the one used was selected with perfect taste; and you can see what an effect it has had. I for one applaud it wholeheartedly.
– Your friend, M. de Vaugoubert, must have been very happy. He had been working at the rapprochement for years.
– Yes, especially since His Majesty made a point of springing it on him by surprise, the sort of thing he is in the habit of doing, I may add. And it was a complete surprise for everybody, not excluding his own Minister for Foreign Affairs, who, as I have been told, did not find it entirely to his taste. He is reported to have said quite unambiguously to someone who broached the matter with him, and in a loud enough voice to be heard by others, ‘I was neither consulted nor warned,’ giving clearly to understand that he took no share of responsibility for the event. It must be admitted that it has stirred up quite a fuss; and I should not care to wager, he went on with a mischievous smile, that certain colleagues of mine, who appear to make a virtue of sloth, have not been disturbed in their repose. As for Vaugoubert, you know he had been roundly attacked for his policy of rapprochement, which must have cut the man to the quick – and he’s so sensitive, he’s the soul of delicacy. I know what I’m saying, you know, for though he’s very much my junior, I have had a great deal to do with him, we have been friends for many a year and I know him well. Who wouldn’t know him, I ask you? The man’s soul is as clear as crystal. Actually, that’s the only fault one could find with him – it’s not necessary for a diplomatist to have a heart as transparent as his. Despite which, there’s talk of sending him to Rome, which would be a great step forward for him, but also a very great challenge. Between ourselves, I suspect that Vaugoubert, though he’s utterly devoid of ambition, would be very pleased if it were true, and has no desire to let that cup pass from him. If he does go to Rome, he may well turn out to be very successful. He’s the candidate favoured by the Consulta; and I for one can see him being well suited, with that artistic bent of his, to the setting of the Farnese Palace and the Carracci gallery.6 One might think that nobody could dislike such a man, though it must be said there is a clique who are close to King Theodosius, who are little more than the creatures of the Wilhelmstrasse,7 always acting in response to its suggestions, and who have definitely attempted to put a spoke in Vaugoubert’s wheel. He has had to contend not only with backstairs intrigues, but with the insults of hired scribblers who, with the cowardice of all stipendiary journalists, and though later they were the first to cry ‘Pax’, had no objection to broadcasting the paltry accusations made against our representative by unprincipled men. Yes, for more than a month, the enemies of Vaugoubert were like a scalping party doing the war-dance, M. de Norpois said, stressing this word. ‘But forewarned, as we know, is forearmed, and he just kicked the insults aside,’ he said, with even greater force, and a glare that made us stop eating for a moment. ‘As a fine old Arabian proverb puts it: “The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.” ’ M. de Norpois paused, watching us to see what effect this quotation would have on us. It had a great effect: his proverb was well known to us. All worthy men had been using it that year instead of ‘Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind,’ which was in need of a rest, not being a hardy annual like ‘To labour and to seek for no reward’. The culture of these eminent men was of the alternating variety, usually triennial in its cycle. Not that the articles M. de Norpois wrote for the Revue des Deux Mondes would have appeared less than sound and well informed, had he not deftly sprinkled these sayings throughout them. Even without the ornamentation which they added to his prose, the lay reader could instantly identify and acknowledge the career diplomat in the other type of expression which M. de Norpois could always be relied upon to place aptly in his articles: ‘The Court of St James was not slow to perceive the danger’; or ‘At Pevchesky Bridge, where an anxious eye was kept on the selfish yet astute policy of the Double-Headed Eagle, excitement now reached fever pitch’; or ‘A cry of alarm sounded in the Montecitorio’; or ‘This predictable double game carries the hallmark of the Ballhausplatz.’8 But what had led some to see in M. de Norpois not just the career diplomat but the man of higher culture was
his studied way of using certain quotations, of which the unquestionable paradigm in those days was: ‘Show me sound policies and I’ll show you sound finances, as Baron Louis was fond of saying.’ (This was before the time when we imported from the Far East: ‘Victory goes to him who can hold out for a quarter of an hour longer than his opponent, as the Japanese say.’) It was this reputation as a man of letters, as well as a real genius for intrigue concealed behind a mask of indifference, which had got M. de Norpois elected to the Académie des sciences morales. There were those who became convinced that his rightful place was actually in the Académie française on the day when, in his conviction that it was by strengthening our ties with Russia that we could reach an understanding with England, he did not hesitate to pen the following sentence: ‘Let this be well understood at the Quai d’Orsay, let it figure in all school geography-books which do not make a point of saying so today, let every candidate at the baccalauréat who cannot repeat it be failed out of hand: All roads may lead to Rome, but the road which goes from Paris to London must of necessity pass through St Petersburg.’
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 5