The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (217 page)

“Oh, no! Do tell me!”

“Now, Basin, you keep quiet. In the first place, it was a stupid remark, and it will make the Princess think me inferior even to my nitwit of a cousin. Though I don’t know why I should call her my cousin. She’s one of Basin’s cousins. Still, I believe she is related to me in some sort of way.”

“Oh!” cried the Princesse de Parme at the idea that she could possibly think Mme de Guermantes stupid, and protesting desperately that nothing could ever make the Duchess fall from the place she held in her estimation.

“Besides, we’ve already deprived her of the qualities of the mind, and since the remark in question tends to deny certain qualities of the heart, it seems to me inopportune to repeat it.”

“‘Deny her!’ ‘Inopportune!’ How well she expresses herself!” said the Duke with a pretence of irony, to win admiration for the Duchess.

“Now, then, Basin, you’re not to make fun of your wife.”

“I should explain to your Royal Highness,” went on the Duke, “that Oriane’s cousin may be superior, good, stout, anything you like to mention, but she is not exactly—what shall I say—lavish.”

“Yes, I know, she’s terribly close-fisted,” broke in the Princess.

“I should not have ventured to use the expression, but you have hit on exactly the right word. It’s reflected in her house-keeping, and especially in the cooking, which is excellent, but strictly rationed.”

“Which gives rise to some quite amusing scenes,” M. de Bréauté interrupted him. “For instance, my dear Basin, I was down at Heudicourt one day when you were expected, Oriane and yourself. They had made the most sumptuous preparations when a footman brought in a telegram during the afternoon to say that you weren’t coming.”

“That doesn’t surprise me!” said the Duchess, who not only was difficult to get, but liked people to know as much.

“Your cousin read the telegram, was duly distressed, then immediately, without missing a trick, telling herself that there was no point in going to unnecessary expense for so unimportant a gentleman as myself, called the footman back: ‘Tell the cook not to put on the chicken!’ she shouted after him. And that evening I heard her asking the butler: ‘Well? What about the beef that was left over yesterday? Aren’t you going to let us have that?’ ”

“All the same, one must admit that the fare you get there is of the very best,” said the Duke, who fancied that in using this expression he was showing himself to be very old school. “I don’t know any house where one eats better.”

“Or less,” put in the Duchess.

“It’s quite wholesome and quite adequate for what you would call a vulgar yokel like myself,” went on the Duke. “One doesn’t outrun one’s appetite.”

“Oh, if it’s to be taken as a cure, that’s another matter. It’s certainly more healthy than sumptuous. Not that it’s as good as all that,” added Mme de Guermantes, who was not at all pleased that the title of “best table in Paris” should be awarded to any but her own. “With my cousin it’s just the same as with those costive authors who turn out a one-act play or a sonnet every fifteen years. The sort of thing people call little masterpieces, trifles that are perfect gems, in fact what I loathe most in the world. The cooking at Zénaïde’s is not bad, but you would think it more ordinary if she was less parsimonious. There are some things her cook does quite well, and others he doesn’t bring off. I’ve had some thoroughly bad dinners there, as in most houses, only they’ve done me less harm there because the stomach is, after all, more sensitive to quantity than to quality.”

“Well, to get on with the story,” the Duke concluded, “Zénaïde insisted that Oriane should go to luncheon there, and as my wife is not very fond of going out anywhere she resisted, wanted to be sure that under the pretence of a quiet meal she was not being trapped into some great junket, and tried in vain to find out who else would be of the party. ‘You must come,’ Zénaïde insisted, boasting of all the good things there would be to eat. ‘You’re going to have a purée of chestnuts, I need say no more than that, and there will be seven little
bouchées à la reine
.’ ‘Seven little
bouchées
!’ cried Oriane, ‘that means that we shall be at least eight!’ ”

There was silence for a few seconds, and then the Princess, having seen the point, let her laughter explode like a peal of thunder. “Ah! ‘Then we shall be eight’—it’s exquisite. How very well phrased!” she said, having by a supreme effort recalled the expression she had heard used by Mme d’Epinay, which this time was more appropriate.

“Oriane, that was very charming of the Princess, she said your remark was well phrased.”

“But, my dear, you’re telling me nothing new. I know how clever the Princess is,” replied Mme de Guermantes, who readily appreciated a remark when it was uttered at once by a royal personage and in praise of her own wit. “I’m very proud that Ma’am should appreciate my humble phrasings. I don’t remember, though, that I ever did say such a thing, and if I did, it must have been to flatter my cousin, for if she had ordered seven ‘mouthfuls,’ the mouths, if I may so express myself, would have been a round dozen if not more.”

During this time the Comtesse d’Arpajon, who, before dinner, had told me that her aunt would have been so happy to show me round her house in Normandy, was saying to me over the Prince d’Agrigente’s head that where she would most like to entertain me was in the Côte d’Or, because there, at Pont-le-Duc, she would be at home.

“The archives of the château would interest you. There are some absolutely fascinating correspondences between all the most prominent people of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I’ve spent many wonderful hours there, living in the past,” she declared, and I remembered that M. de Guermantes had told me that she was extremely well up in literature.

“She owns all M. de Bornier’s manuscripts,” went on the Princess, speaking of Mme d’Heudicourt, and anxious to make the most of the good reasons she might have for befriending that lady.

“She must have dreamed it, I don’t believe she ever even knew him,” said the Duchess.

“What is especially interesting is that these correspondences are with people of different countries,” went on the Comtesse d’Arpajon who, allied to the principal ducal and even reigning families of Europe, was always glad to remind people of the fact.

“Surely, Oriane,” said M. de Guermantes, meaningly, “you can’t have forgotten that dinner-party where you had M. de Bornier sitting next to you!” “But, Basin,” the Duchess interrupted him, “if you mean to inform me that I knew M. de Bornier, why of course I did, he even called upon me several times, but I could never bring myself to invite him to the house because I should always have been obliged to have it disinfected afterwards with formol. As for the dinner you mean, I remember it only too well, but it was certainly not at Zénaïde’s, who never set eyes on Bornier in her life and would probably think if you spoke to her of
La Fille de Roland
that you meant a Bonaparte princess who is said to be engaged to the son of the King of Greece;
²⁵
no, it was at the Austrian Embassy. Dear Hoyos imagined he was giving me a great treat by planting that pestiferous academician on the chair next to mine. I quite thought I had a squadron of mounted police sitting beside me. I was obliged to stop my nose as best I could all through dinner; I didn’t dare breathe until the gruyère came round.”

M. de Guermantes, having achieved his secret objective, made a furtive examination of his guests’ faces to judge the effect of the Duchess’s pleasantry.

“As a matter of fact I find that old correspondences have a peculiar charm,” the lady who was well up in literature and had such fascinating letters in her château went on, in spite of the intervening head of the Prince d’Agrigente. “Have you noticed how often a writer’s letters are superior to the rest of his work? What’s the name of that author who wrote
Salammbô
?”

I should have liked not to have to reply in order not to prolong this conversation, but I felt it would be disobliging to the Prince d’Agrigente, who had pretended to know perfectly well who
Salammbô
was by and out of pure politeness to be leaving it to me to say, but who was now in a painful quandary.

“Flaubert,” I ended up by saying, but the vigorous signs of assent that came from the Prince’s head smothered the sound of my reply, so that my interlocutress was not exactly sure whether I had said Paul Bert or Fulbert, names which she did not find entirely satisfactory.

“In any case,” she went on, “how intriguing his correspondence is, and how superior to his books! It explains him, in fact, because one sees from everything he says about the difficulty he has in writing a book that he wasn’t a real writer, a gifted man.”

“Talking of correspondence, I must say I find Gambetta’s admirable,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes, to show that she was not afraid to be found taking an interest in a proletarian and a radical. M. de Bréauté, who fully appreciated the brilliance of this feat of daring, gazed round him with an eye at once tipsy and affectionate, after which he wiped his monocle.

“Gad, it’s infernally dull, that
Fille de Roland
,” said M. de Guermantes (who was still on the subject of M. de Bornier), with the satisfaction which he derived from the sense of his own superiority over a work which had bored him so much, and perhaps also from the
suave mari magno
feeling one has in the middle of a good dinner, when one recalls such terrible evenings in the past. “Still, there were some quite good lines in it, and a patriotic feeling.”

I made a remark that implied that I had no admiration for M. de Bornier.

“Ah! have you got something against him?” the Duke asked with genuine curiosity, for he always imagined when anyone spoke ill of a man that it must be on account of a personal resentment, just as to speak well of a woman marked the beginning of a love affair. “You’ve obviously got a grudge against him. What did he do to you? You must tell us. Why yes, there must be some skeleton in the cupboard or you wouldn’t run him down. It’s long-winded,
La Fille de Roland
, but it’s quite strong in parts.”

“Strong is just the word for such an odorous author,” Mme de Guermantes broke in sarcastically. “If this poor boy ever found himself in his company I can quite understand that he got up his nostrils!”

“I must confess, though, Ma’am,” the Duke went on, addressing the Princesse de Parme, “that quite apart from
La Fille de Roland
, in literature and even in music I’m terribly old-fashioned; no old junk can be too stale for my taste. You won’t believe me, perhaps, but in the evenings, if my wife sits down to the piano, I find myself calling for some old tune by Auber or Boieldieu, or even Beethoven! That’s the sort of thing I like. As for Wagner, he sends me to sleep at once.”

“You’re wrong there,” said Mme de Guermantes. “In spite of his insufferable long-windedness, Wagner was a genius.
Lohengrin
is a masterpiece. Even in
Tristan
there are some intriguing passages here and there. And the Spinning Chorus in the
Flying Dutchman
is a perfect marvel.”

“Aren’t I right, Babal,” said M. de Guermantes, turning to M. de Bréauté, “what we like is:

It’s delightful. And
Fra Diavolo
and the
Magic Flute
, and
Le Chalet
, and the
Marriage of Figaro
, and
Les Diamants de la Couronne
—there’s music for you! It’s the same thing in literature. For instance, I adore Balzac,
Le Bal de Sceaux, Les Mohicans de Paris
.”

“Ah! my dear man, if you’re off on the subject of Balzac we’ll be here all night. Keep it for some evening when Mémé’s here. He’s even better, he knows it all by heart.”

Irritated by his wife’s interruption, the Duke held her for some seconds under the fare of a menacing silence. Meanwhile Mme d’Arpajon had been exchanging with the Princesse de Parme some remarks about poetry, tragic and otherwise, which did not reach me distinctly until I caught the following from Mme d’Arpajon: “Oh, I quite agree with all that, I admit he makes the world seem ugly because he’s unable to distinguish between ugliness and beauty, or rather because his insufferable vanity makes him believe that everything he says is beautiful. I agree with your Highness that in the piece in question there are some ridiculous things, unintelligible, and errors of taste, and that it’s difficult to understand, that it’s as much trouble to read as if it was written in Russian or Chinese, because obviously it’s anything in the world but French; but still, when one has taken the trouble, how richly one is rewarded, it’s so full of imagination!”

I had missed the opening sentences of this little lecture. I gathered in the end not only that the poet incapable of distinguishing between beauty and ugliness was Victor Hugo, but furthermore that the poem which was as difficult to understand as Chinese or Russian was a piece dating from the poet’s earliest period, and perhaps even nearer to Mme Deshoulières
²⁷
than to the Victor Hugo of the
Légende des Siècles
. Far from thinking Mme d’Arpajon ridiculous, I saw her (the first person at this table, so real and so ordinary, at which I had sat down with such keen disappointment), I saw her in my mind’s eye crowned with that lace cap, with the long spiral ringlets falling from it on either side, which was worn by Mme de Rémusat, Mme de Broglie, Mme de Saint-Aulaire, all those distinguished ladies who in their delightful letters quote with such learning and such aptness Sophocles, Schiller and the
Imitation
, but in whom the earliest poetry of the Romantics induced the alarm and exhaustion inseparable for my grandmother from the later verses of Stéphane Mallarmé.

“Mme d’Arpajon is very fond of poetry,” said the Princesse de Parme to her hostess, impressed by the ardent tone in which the speech had been delivered.