The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (18 page)

From his books I had formed an impression of
Bergotte as a frail and disappointed old man, who had lost some of his children and had never got over the loss. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in my mind, with rather more
dolce
, rather more
lento
than he himself had perhaps intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my ears with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More than anything else I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the age when I should be eligible for the class at school called “Philosophy.” But I did not wish to do anything else there but exist and be guided exclusively by the mind of Bergotte, and if I had been told then that the metaphysicians to whom I was actually to become attached there would resemble him in nothing, I should have been struck down by the despair of a young lover who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.

One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by Swann, who had come to call upon my parents.

“What are you reading? May I look? Why, it’s Bergotte! Who has been telling you about him?”

I said it was Bloch.

“Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait of Mahomet II. It’s an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When he has a little beard he’ll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow, he has good taste, for Bergotte is a delightful soul.” And seeing how much I seemed to admire Bergotte, Swann, who never spoke at all about the people he knew, made an exception
in my favour and said: “I know him well. If you would like him to write a few words on the title-page of your book I could ask him for you.”

I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions about his friend. “Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?”

“Actor? No, I can’t say. But I do know this: there’s not a man on the stage whom he thinks equal to Berma—he puts her above everyone. Have you seen her?”

“No, sir, my parents don’t allow me to go to the theatre.”

“That’s a pity. You should insist. Berma in
Phèdre
, in the
Cid
; she’s only an actress, if you like, but you know I don’t believe very much in the ‘
hierarchy
’ of the arts.” (As he spoke I noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother’s sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say “the
‘hierarchy
,’ don’t you know, as silly people call it.” But then, if it was so absurd, why did he use the word?) A moment later he went on: “Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art, as—oh, I don’t know—” and he laughed, “shall we say the Queens of Chartres?” Until then I had supposed that this horror of having to give a serious opinion was something Parisian and refined, in contrast to the provincial dogmatism of my grandmother’s sisters; and I imagined also
that it was characteristic of the mental attitude of the circle in which Swann moved, where, by a natural reaction from the lyrical enthusiasms of earlier generations, an excessive importance was now given to precise and petty facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of “phrase-making” was proscribed. But now I found myself slightly shocked by this attitude of Swann’s. He appeared unwilling even to risk having an opinion, and to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy, some precise detail. But did he not realise that to postulate that the accuracy of his information was of some importance was tantamount to professing an opinion? I thought again of the dinner that night when I had been so unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to my room, and when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de Léon as being of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he devoted his life. I found all this contradictory. What other life did he set apart for saying in all seriousness what he thought about things, for formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas, and for no longer indulging with punctilious politeness in occupations which at the same time he professed to find absurd? I noticed, too, in the manner in which Swann spoke to me of Bergotte, something which, to do him justice, was not peculiar to himself, but was shared at the time by all that writer’s admirers, including my mother’s friend and Dr du Boulbon. Like Swann, they would say of Bergotte: “He has a delightful mind, so individual, he has a way of his own of saying things, which is a little far-fetched, but so agreeable. You never need to look for the signature, you can tell his work at once.” But none of
them would go so far as to say “He’s a great writer, he has great talent.” They did not even credit him with talent at all. They did not do so, because they did not know. We are very slow to recognise in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the model which is labelled “great talent” in our museum of general ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather originality, charm, delicacy, strength; and then one day we realise that it is precisely all this that adds up to talent.

“Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?” I asked M. Swann.

“I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of print. Still, perhaps there has been a second impression. I’ll find out. In fact I can ask Bergotte himself all you want to know next time he comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year’s end to another. He’s my daughter’s greatest friend. They go and look at old towns and cathedrals and castles together.”

As I was still completely ignorant of the social hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see anything of Swann’s wife and daughter had for a long time had the effect, in making me imagine them as separated from us by an enormous gulf, of enhancing their prestige in my eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her lips, as I had heard our neighbour Mme Sazerat say that Mme Swann did, to gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to her, we must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on account of the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, of whom I used often to
dream, ascribing to her each time the same arbitrarily chosen and enchanting features. But when, that day, I learned that Mlle Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate circumstances, bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of privilege that, if she should ask her parents whether anyone were coming to dinner, she would be answered by those two syllables, radiant with light, by the name of that golden guest who was to her no more than an old friend of the family, Bergotte, that for her the intimate conversation at table, corresponding to what my great-aunt’s conversation was for me, would be the words of Bergotte on all those subjects which he had not been able to take up in his writings, and on which I should have liked to hear him pronounce his oracles, and that, above all, when she went to visit other towns, he would be walking by her side, unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came down of old to dwell among mortals—then I realised both the rare worth of a creature such as Mlle Swann and, at the same time, how coarse and ignorant I should appear to her; and I felt so keenly how sweet and how impossible it would be for me to become her friend that I was filled at once with longing and despair. Henceforth, more often than not when I thought of her, I would see her standing before the porch of a cathedral, explaining to me what each of the statues meant, and, with a smile which was my highest commendation, presenting me as her friend to Bergotte. And invariably the charm of all the fancies which the thought of cathedrals used to inspire in me, the charm of the hills and valleys of the Ile-de-France and of the plains of Normandy, would be reflected in the picture I had formed in my mind’s eye of Mlle Swann; nothing more remained
but to know and to love her. The belief that a person has a share in an unknown life to which his or her love may win us admission is, of all the prerequisites of love, the one which it values most highly and which makes it set little store by all the rest. Even those women who claim to judge a man by his looks alone, see in those looks the emanation of a special way of life. That is why they fall in love with soldiers or with firemen; the uniform makes them less particular about the face; they feel they are embracing beneath the gleaming breastplate a heart different from the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a young king or a crown prince may make the most gratifying conquests in the countries that he visits, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, for a stockbroker.

While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never have understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which it is unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she herself would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said, “What! still amusing yourself with a book? It isn’t Sunday, you know!”—putting into the word “amusing” an implication of childishness and waste of time), my aunt Léonie would be gossiping with Françoise until it was time for Eulalie to arrive. She would tell her that she had just seen Mme Goupil go by “without an umbrella, in the silk dress she had made for her the other day at Châteaudun. If she has far to go before vespers, she may get it properly soaked.”

“Maybe, maybe” (which meant “maybe not”), was
the answer, for Françoise did not wish definitely to exclude the possibility of a happier alternative.

“Heavens,” said my aunt, slapping herself on the forehead, “that reminds me I never heard if she got to church this morning before the Elevation. I must remember to ask Eulalie … Françoise, just look at that black cloud behind the steeple, and how poor the light is on the slates. You may be certain it will rain before the day is out. It couldn’t possibly go on like that, it’s been too hot. And the sooner the better, for until the storm breaks my Vichy water won’t go down,” she added, since, in her mind, the desire to accelerate the digestion of her Vichy water was of infinitely greater importance than her fear of seeing Mme Goupil’s new dress ruined.

“Maybe, maybe.”

“And you know that when it rains in the Square there’s none too much shelter.” Suddenly my aunt turned pale. “What, three o’clock!” she exclaimed. “But vespers will have begun already, and I’ve forgotten my pepsin! Now I know why that Vichy water has been lying on my stomach.” And pouncing on a prayer-book bound in purple velvet with gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of those pictures bordered in a lace fringe of yellowish paper which mark the pages of feast-days, my aunt, while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred text, its meaning slightly clouded by the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be able to catch up with it and send it down. “Three o’clock! It’s unbelievable how time flies.”

A little tap on the window-pane, as though something had struck it, followed by a plentiful light falling sound,
as of grains of sand being sprinkled from a window overhead, gradually spreading, intensifying, acquiring a regular rhythm, becoming fluid, sonorous, musical, immeasurable, universal: it was the rain.

“There, Françoise, what did I tell you? How it’s coming down! But I think I heard the bell at the garden gate: go along and see who can be outside in this weather.”

Françoise went and returned. “It’s Mme Amédée” (my grandmother). “She said she was going for a walk. And yet it’s raining hard.”

“I’m not at all surprised,” said my aunt, raising her eyes to the heavens. “I’ve always said that she was not in the least like other people. Well, I’m glad it’s she and not myself who’s outside in all this.”

“Mme Amédée is always the exact opposite of everyone else,” said Françoise, not unkindly, refraining until she should be alone with the other servants from stating her belief that my grandmother was “slightly batty.”

“There’s Benediction over! Eulalie will never come now,” sighed my aunt. “It will be the weather that’s frightened her away.”

“But it’s not five o’clock yet, Mme Octave, it’s only half-past four.”

“Only half-past four! And here am I, obliged to draw back the curtains just to get a tiny streak of daylight. At half-past four! Only a week before the Rogation-days. Ah, my poor Françoise, the good Lord must be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far these days. As my poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and he is taking his revenge.”

A bright flush animated my aunt’s cheeks; it was Eulalie.
As ill luck would have it, scarcely had she been admitted to the presence when Françoise reappeared and, with a smile that was meant to indicate her full participation in the pleasure which, she had no doubt, her tidings would give my aunt, articulating each syllable so as to show that, in spite of her having to translate them into indirect speech, she was repeating, as a good servant should, the very words which the new visitor had condescended to use, said: “His reverence the Curé would be delighted, enchanted, if Mme Octave is not resting just now, and could see him. His reverence don’t wish to disturb Mme Octave. His reverence is downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour.”

Had the truth been known, the Curé’s visits gave my aunt no such ecstatic pleasure as Françoise supposed, and the air of jubilation with which she felt bound to illuminate her face whenever she had to announce his arrival did not altogether correspond to the sentiments of her invalid. The Curé (an excellent man, with whom I now regret not having conversed more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts, he knew a great many etymologies), being in the habit of showing distinguished visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile a history of the Parish of Combray), used to weary her with his endless commentaries which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree. But when his visit synchronised exactly with Eulalie’s it became frankly distasteful to my aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of Eulalie, and not to have the whole of her circle about her at one time. But she dared not send the Curé away, and had to content herself with making a sign to Eulalie not to leave
when he did, so that she might have her to herself for a little after he had gone.