There were other people (a certain actress, really better known for her elegance, her wit and her collection of fine Dresden than for the few parts she had had at the Odéon; her lover, a very wealthy young man, for whose sake she had acquired her cultured tastes; and a pair of very visible aristocrats) whose preference for no company other than their own – they only ever travelled as a group, lunched while at Balbec very late, long after everyone else, then spent their days over cards in their private drawing-room – was motivated not by ill-will towards others but only by the requirements of the pleasure they took in a certain conversational bantering and in certain refined tastes in food and wines, which meant they could only enjoy things together, even meal-times, and would have found it unbearable to spend their time with other people uninitiated into their preferences. Even when sitting at a dinner-table or a gambling-table, each of them needed to be sure that, in their fellow-guest or partner at cards, there reposed in a suspended and latent form a certain shared knowledge enabling one to detect the fake furniture which in so many Parisian households passes for genuine Medieval or Renaissance and, in general, a common set of criteria for discriminating between the good and the bad. At such moments, the special element in which they wished to have their being could show only in an occasional witticism proffered amid the silence of the dinner-party or the game, or in a charming new dress which the young actress had put on specially for lunch-time, or because they were going to play poker. But this element, by enveloping them in habits which were second nature to them, was enough to keep at bay the mysteries of life about them. Throughout the long afternoons, the sea hung before their eyes like a mere canvas of a pleasing shade on the wall of a well-to-do bachelor’s sitting-room; and it was only between hands that one of the players, for lack of anything better to do, would glance out at it for a glimpse of a fine day or a clue to what time it might be, then remind the others that it was just on tea-time. In the evenings, they never dined in the hotel, where the electric fountains gushed their light into the spacious dining-room, turning it into an immense and wonderful aquarium, while, invisible in the outer shadows beyond the glass wall, the working classes of Balbec, the fishermen and even middle-class families pressed against the windows, in an attempt to see the luxurious life of these denizens, glowing amid the golden sway of the eddies, all of it as weird and fascinating for the poor as the existence of strange fish and molluscs (but whether the glass barrier will go on protecting for ever the feeding of the marvellous creatures, or whether the obscure onlookers gloating towards them from the outer dark will break into their aquarium and hook them for the pot, therein lies a great social question). In the meantime, perhaps among the nameless clusters in the night there may have been a writer, a fancier of human ichthyology who, at the spectacle of the closing jaws of old female monsters gulping down a bite of food, could enjoy classifying them by species, by innate characteristics, but also by the acquired characteristics which may mean that an old Serbian lady with a great ocean fish’s mouth-parts eats her lettuce – because since childhood she has swum in the fresh waters of the Faubourg Saint-Germain – like a La Rochefoucauld.
At that hour, one could see the three men in dinner-suits waiting for the woman: she was late but, having rung the ‘lift’ from her floor, wearing a new dress almost every night, with a scarf or a stole dictated by a taste peculiar to her lover, she would soon step out of the lift as from a toybox. Then all four of them, who thought that the sprouting of this palatial international establishment at Balbec had fostered mere luxury rather than fine cuisine, clambered into a carriage and were driven off to dine a couple of miles away at a small but highly regarded restaurant, where they would have interminable consultations with the chef on the composition of the evening’s menu and the preparation of the different dishes. And as they drove, the road from Balbec, lined by apple-trees, was mere mileage – not very different in the dark from the distance separating their houses in Paris from the Café Anglais or the Tour d’Argent – which they had to cover in order to reach the smart little restaurant, where they would sit among friends who envied the wealthy young man his possession of such a well-dressed mistress, and where her scarves drew a sort of sleek perfumed veil over the little group, while secluding it from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I was quite unlike all these people: I was greatly concerned about many of them. I wished not to be so ignored by a man with a low forehead and a pair of shifty eyes flitting between the blinkers of his prejudices and breeding, who was the first gentleman of those parts, none other than Legrandin’s brother-in-law, who occasionally came into Balbec, and whose wife’s weekly garden-party deprived the hotel of a contingent of its inhabitants each Sunday, one or two of them because they were invited to these functions, and many others who, so as not to appear to have been excluded from them, chose that day to go on a lengthy outing. The first day he turned up at the hotel he had had a very poor reception, as the staff had only recently arrived from the Riviera and had no idea who he was. Not only was he not wearing white flannel but, unused to the ways of such grandiose establishments, he had removed his hat in his old-fashioned French manner as soon as he stepped into a vestibule with women in it, which was why the manager had not so much as tipped his to him as they spoke, in the belief that this must be someone of no social importance, what he called ‘a man of no extraction’. The only person who had viewed him with some favour was the wife of the notable notary who, sensing in him the stilted vulgarity of the prim and proper, had declared, with all the infallible and authoritative insight of one whose acuity had been acquired through long contact with the very best circles of Le Mans society, that one could see at a glance that here was a man of great distinction and impeccable breeding, a man who was a cut above everybody else one might meet at Balbec (all of whom she deemed it impossible to be seen with, until she started to be seen with them). This favourable judgment of hers on the brother-in-law of Legrandin was perhaps inspired by the drab demeanour of a man who was anything but imposing, or perhaps by the fact that in this gentleman farmer with the look of a sexton her clericalism had read the secret signs that showed he was a kindred spirit.
Even though I soon learned that the young horsemen who rode past the hotel every day were the sons of a dishonest tradesman – he owned a drapery and fancy-goods business – whom my father would never have condescended to know, the fact of being ‘on holiday at the seaside’ made them equestrian statues of demi-gods in my eyes; and the best I could hope for was that they would never deign to notice my own paltry person, who had nothing to do other than exchange a seat in the hotel dining-room for a seat on the sands. I wanted to be liked, even by the adventurer who had been king of a desert island in the South Seas, even by the consumptive young ‘masher’, who I fancied was really hiding a diffident and loving nature behind a stand-offish appearance, and would have been capable of lavishing on me alone all the unspent treasures of his friendship. Moreover – and it is usually the opposite of this that one hears in accounts of holiday relationships – since being seen about with certain people, at a resort which one revisits from time to time, may give one a certain cachet which has no equivalent in real society, the social world of Paris, rather than discouraging relationships struck up at the seaside, in fact cultivates nothing more sedulously. I was anxious about the esteem in which I was held by all these personages of temporary or local importance; and after my habit of putting myself in others’ shoes and viewing the world as they must view it, I saw them not as occupying their proper rank, the one they would have had in Paris, say, which would have been a very lowly one, but the one they must believe was theirs by rights, and which actually was theirs in Balbec, where the lack of a common yardstick endowed them with a mode of relative superiority and a pregnant interest. Sad to say, the contempt of none of these people wounded me so deeply as that of M. de Stermaria.
I had noticed his daughter as soon as she came in, the bluish pallor of her prett
y face, her height and distinctive way of carrying herself, her gait, all of which brought accurately to mind her lineage and aristocratic upbringing, all the more acutely because I knew her name – like those evocative themes invented by gifted composers which, for any listeners who have already glanced at the score and set their imagination on the right track, bring vividly to the mind’s eye the shimmer of a flame, the rippling murmur of a stream, the calm of the countryside. ‘Breeding’ enhanced the charms of Mlle de Stermaria, added to them the knowledge of their cause, made them more intelligible and more complete. It also made them more desirable, with its hint that they were possibly out of my reach, as a high price adds to the value of an object we find attractive. The hereditary strain imbued her complexion with choice savours, the tang of an exotic fruit, the bouquet of a fine vintage.
It was chance which afforded my grandmother and myself a way of endowing ourselves, in the eyes of all the hotel’s inhabitants, with instantaneous prestige. On our very first day there, as the old lady came down from her apartments, radiating an influence, through the footman before her and the maidservant scurrying after with a forgotten book and blanket, which affected every mind, inspiring curiosity and respect in all, visibly more so in M. de Stermaria than in anyone else, the manager leaned towards my grandmother and in a kindly way, as one points out the Shah of Persia or Queen Ranavalo of Madagascar to some obscure by-stander, who cannot possibly have the slightest link with the potentate but may be intrigued to realize who it is passing by, murmured to her, ‘The Marquise de Villeparisis’, and at that very moment the old lady, catching sight of my grandmother, gave a start of joy and surprise.
The sudden appearance, in the guise of a little old lady, of the most influential of fairy godmothers could not have caused me greater pleasure, devoid as I was of any device to bring myself closer to Mlle de Stermaria in a place where I knew no one. No one, I mean, of any practical assistance. The aesthetic range available to the human countenance being so narrow, one frequently has the pleasure, wherever one may be, of meeting faces known to one, without needing to seek them out, as Swann did, in the paintings of old masters. So it was that, in the very first days of our stay at Balbec, I had happened upon first Legrandin, then Swann’s concierge and finally Mme Swann herself, turned into a waiter in a café, a visiting foreigner whom I never set eyes on again and a bathing monitor. There is a sort of magnetism which brings together, and keeps together, certain features of physiognomy and mentality, so that when Nature fits such a person into a different body, it does so without much mutilation. Though transformed into a waiter, Legrandin had kept his stature, the line of his nose and a part of his chin; Mme Swann, though she had undergone a sex-change and was a bathing monitor, had retained her usual facial features and even something of her own ways of speaking. However, even with her red belt and waving her flag to warn swimmers out of the water at the slightest swell (bathing monitors being cautious creatures, so few of them being themselves swimmers), she was of no more help to me in the present circumstances than she would have been in the Life of Moses fresco, where Swann had once noticed her disguised as Jethro’s daughter. Mme de Villeparisis, however, was there in person; not only had no spell stripped her of her power, but she could actually cast a spell on my power, greatly increasing it and enabling me in an instant, as though on the wings of some fabled bird, to sweep over the infinite social distance – infinite in Balbec at least – separating me from Mlle de Stermaria.
Unfortunately, it would have been impossible to find a person who lived more enclosed within her own little world than my grandmother. It was not that she would have despised me, she would not even have understood me, if she had realized that the good opinion of, and personal acquaintance with, people whose very existence she had not even noticed, whose name she would never have found out by the time she left Balbec, were for me matters of consuming interest; I did not dare tell her that, if only these people could see her chatting with Mme de Villeparisis, I would be overcome with pleasure, because I sensed that being friends with the Marquise, who had such prestige within the hotel, would have greatly enhanced our own in the eyes of Mlle de Stermaria. Not that I thought of my grandmother’s old friend as someone belonging to the aristocracy: I was too used to hearing her name spoken at home during my childhood, at a time long before I had given any conscious thought to it; and the title she bore was only an added strangeness, rather like that conferred by an unusual first name or one of those noble names given to Paris streets, like the rue Lord-Byron, the rue de Gramont or the rue Rochechouart, which has come down in the world, none of them any nobler than the names of ordinary streets, such as the rue Léonce-Reynaud or the rue Hippolyte-Lebas. The name of Mme de Villeparisis conjured up no special world for me, any more than did the name of her cousin Mac-Mahon, someone no different from M. Carnot, who like him had been a president of the Republic, or from Raspail, whose photograph Françoise had bought along with that of Pius IX. For my grandmother, however, it was a matter of principle that when you go on holiday, you sever relations with people; you do not go to the seaside to meet people, there is plenty of time for that in Paris; they just make you squander in trite civilities the invaluable time you should be spending exclusively in the open air, communing with the waves. So, finding it convenient to believe that her view on this was shared by everyone else, that it allowed old friends whose paths happened to cross in a hotel vestibule to maintain the polite fiction of a reciprocal incognito, when the manager murmured the name of Mme de Villeparisis, my grandmother saw fit to glance away and appear not to see her old friend, whereupon the latter, sensing that my grandmother was not in the mood for a reunion, also averted her eyes. As she walked away, I stood there as forlorn as a shipwrecked mariner who has watched the approach of a vessel, which then sails on its way without rescuing him.
Mme de Villeparisis also took her meals in the dining-room, but she sat right at the other end. She was unacquainted with anyone who was staying in the hotel or who occasionally visited it, even with M. de Cambremer: I noticed that he did not greet her, one day when he and his wife came to lunch at the invitation of the bâtonnier from Cherbourg, who, intoxicated by the heady honour of having this noble at his table with him, made sure to keep away from his everyday acquaintances, at whom he just winked from a distance, to mark the historic occasion, but discreetly enough for them not to take this as permission to come over.
‘So we’re hob-nobbing now, are we? the wife of the First President from Caen said to him that evening. Mixing with the upper crust, is that it?
– Upper crust? Why on earth? the bâtonnier asked, masking his delight with a show of astonishment. What – oh, you mean my guests? he added, unable to keep up the pretence: But what’s ‘hob-nobbing’ in having some friends to lunch? They’ve got to have their lunch somewhere!
– Of course it’s upper crust! They’re the de Cambremers, aren’t they?17 I knew it was them. The wife’s a marquise. In her own right. Not from the distaff side.
– She’s a very unspoiled lady, you know, quite charming. A less stuck-up person would be hard to find. I thought you might come over. I tried to tip you the wink. I could have introduced you!’ said the bâtonnier, moderating with a slight irony the enormity of the suggestion, like Asahuerus saying to Esther, ‘So now must I give you the half of my Estate?’18
– No, no! We’re shy retiring little violets!
– Well, take it from me, you should really have come over, said the bâtonnier from Cherbourg, full of boldness now that the danger was past. They wouldn’t have eaten you. So, is it time for our little hand at bézique?
– But of course! We were reluctant to suggest it, now that you’re rubbing shoulders with marquises!
– Oh, come now! I do assure you, there’s nothing very special about them! Look, I’m supposed to go there to dinner tomorrow night. Would you like to go instead of me? I mean it sincerely, I really do! Honestly, I wouldn’t at all mind just staying here.
&nbs
p; – Out of the question! I’d be turned off the bench as a Reactionary! exclaimed the First President, guffawing at his own joke; then he added, to the notary, But of course, you’re on visiting terms up at Féterne.
– Well, yes, I do go up there on Sundays. It’s in one door and out the other, actually. But they don’t come and have lunch with me, unlike our bâtonnier here.’
M. de Stermaria was away from Balbec that day, to the great chagrin of the bâtonnier. However, he had a quiet word with the head waiter:
‘Aimé, would you mind dropping the hint to M. de Stermaria that he’s not the only noble who has graced this dining-room? You saw that gentleman lunching with me this forenoon? Toothbrush moustache, military bearing? The Marquis de Cambremer no less!
– Is that so? Well, I’m not surprised!
– That would let him know he’s not the only one with a title. Take that, eh? Do these nobilities good to be taken down a peg or two from time to time! Actually, Aimé, if you’d rather not say anything, then don’t bother. I wasn’t speaking my own views there, you understand. And anyway, he knows the man quite well.’
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 33