In Search of Lost Time (54 page)

Now as it happened, the Princesse des Laumes, whom one would not have expected to see at Mme de Saint-Euverte's, had just arrived. In order to show that she was not trying to advertise, in a drawing-room to which she had come only out of condescension, the superiority of her rank, she had entered with her shoulders turned sideways even
where there was no crowd to cleave through and no person attempting to get past her, staying deliberately at the back, with the air of being in her proper place, like a king who stands in line at the door of a theatre so long as the management have not been informed that he is there; and, merely confining her gaze – so as not to seem to be signalling her presence and demanding attention – to a consideration of the design in the carpet or in her own skirt, she stood in the spot that had seemed to her the most modest (and from which she was well aware she would be drawn by a delighted exclamation from Mme de Saint-Euverte as soon as the latter noticed her), next to Mme de Cambremer, whom she did not know. She observed the pantomime of her music-loving neighbour, but did not imitate it. It was not that, the one time she came to spend five minutes at Mme de Saint-Euverte's, the Princesse des Laumes would not have wished, so that the courtesy she was showing her might count double, to prove as friendly as possible. But by nature, she had a horror of what she called ‘exaggerations' and was anxious to show that she ‘did not have to' indulge in displays of emotion which were not in keeping with the ‘style' of the circle she moved in, but which still, on the other hand, could not help but impress her, by virtue of that spirit of imitation akin to timidity which is developed in the most confident persons by the atmosphere of a new environment, even if it is an inferior one. She began to wonder if this gesticulation was not perhaps a necessary response to the piece being played, which did not come quite within the scope of the music she had heard up to now, if to refrain was not to give proof of incomprehension with respect to the work and impropriety towards the lady of the house: so that, in order to express both of her contradictory inclinations by a compromise, she first merely straightened up her shoulder-straps or put a hand to her blonde hair to secure the little balls of coral or pink enamel flecked with diamonds which formed her simple and charming coiffure, while at the same time examining her ardent neighbour with cold curiosity, then with her fan she beat time for a moment, but, so as not to forfeit her independence, on the off-beat. When the pianist ended the piece by Liszt and begun a prelude by Chopin, Mme de Cambremer gave Mme de Franquetot a fond smile of competent satisfaction and allusion to the past. When
she was young she had learned to caress the phrases of Chopin with their sinuous and excessively long necks, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by seeking out and exploring a place for themselves far outside and away from the direction in which they started, far beyond the point which one might have expected them to reach, and which frolic in this fantasy distance only to come back more deliberately – with a more premeditated return, with more precision, as though upon a crystal glass that resonates until you cry out – to strike you in the heart.

Living in a provincial family that had few friends, scarcely ever going out to a ball, she had intoxicated herself in the solitude of her manor house, with all those imaginary dancing couples, now slowing them, now speeding them, now scattering them like flowers, now leaving the ball for a moment to hear the wind blow in the pine trees, at the edge of the lake, and suddenly seeing, as he came towards her there, more unlike anything anyone had ever dreamed of than an earthly lover could be, a slender young man in white gloves whose voice had a strange and false lilt to it. But nowadays the old-fashioned beauty of that music seemed stale. Having fallen in the esteem of the discriminating public over the past several years, it had lost its position of distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste is bad no longer took more than an unacknowledged and moderate pleasure in it. Mme de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her young daughter-in-law (full of respect for her new family, except regarding the things of the mind about which, since she knew a little harmony and even some Greek, she was especially enlightened) despised Chopin and suffered when she heard it played. But far away from the surveillance of that Wagnerian who was off in the distance with a group of people her own age, Mme de Cambremer abandoned herself to her delightful impressions. The Princesse des Laumes was enjoying them too. Though without a natural gift for music, she had had lessons fifteen years earlier from a piano teacher of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who at the end of her life had been reduced to poverty and had returned, at the age of seventy, to giving piano lessons, to the daughters and grand-daughters of her old pupils. She was dead now. But her method, her lovely sound, came back to
life sometimes under the fingers of her pupils, even those who had become in other respects ordinary people, had abandoned music and almost never opened a piano any more. And so Mme des Laumes could shake her head, with expert knowledge, with a just appreciation of the way the pianist was playing this prelude, which she knew by heart. The end of the phrase he had begun already sang on her lips. And she murmured, ‘It's always
ch
arming,' with a double
ch
at the start of the word which was a mark of refinement and which, she felt, crinkled her lips so romantically like a beautiful flower, that she instinctively brought her eyes into harmony with them by giving them an expression just then of sentimentality and vague yearning. Meanwhile, Mme de Gallardon was saying to herself how annoying it was that she only very rarely had the opportunity to meet the Princesse des Laumes, for she wanted to teach her a lesson by not responding to her greeting. She did not know her cousin was there. A movement of Mme de Franquetot's head revealed the Princesse to her. Immediately she hurried towards her, disturbing everyone; but though she wanted to preserve a haughty and glacial manner which would remind everyone that she did not wish to be on friendly terms with a person in whose house one might find oneself coming face to face with Princesse Mathilde, and to whom it was not for her to make advances since she was not ‘of her generation', still she wanted to offset this air of haughtiness and reserve by some remark that would justify her overture and force the Princesse to engage in conversation; and so when she came near her cousin, Mme de Gallardon, with a hard expression and a hand out-thrust like a ‘forced' card, said to her: ‘How is your husband?' in the concerned tone she would have used if the Prince had been gravely ill. The Princesse, bursting into a laugh which was peculiar to her and which was intended at once to show others that she was making fun of someone and also to make herself look prettier by concentrating her features around her animated lips and sparkling eyes, answered:

– Why, he's never been better!

And she laughed again. Whereupon Mme de Gallardon, drawing herself up and contriving an expression which was even chillier, yet still concerned about the Prince's condition, said to her cousin:

– Oriane (here Mme des Laumes looked with an air of surprise and merriment at an invisible third party in whose presence she seemed to be anxious to attest that she had never authorized Mme de Gallardon to call her by her first name), I would be so pleased if you could stop by my house for a moment tomorrow evening to hear a clarinet quintet by Mozart. I would like to have your opinion.

She seemed not to be offering an invitation, but to be asking a favour, and to need the Princesse's assessment of the Mozart quintet as if it were a dish composed by a new cook about whose talents it was valuable to her to obtain the opinion of a gourmet.

– But I know that quintet. I can tell you right now… I like it!

– You know, my husband isn't well; it's his liver… It would give him great pleasure to see you, resumed Mme de Gallardon, now placing the Princesse under a charitable obligation to appear at her soirée.

The Princesse never liked to tell people she did not want to go to their homes. Every day she would write notes expressing her regrets at having been prevented – by an unexpected visit from her mother-in-law, an invitation from her brother-in-law, the opera, an expedition to the country – from attending a soirée to which she would never have dreamed of going. In this way she gave many people the joy of believing that she was one of their friends, that she would readily have gone to visit them, that she had been kept from doing so only by princely inconveniences which they were flattered to see enter into competition with their soirée. Then, too, since she was part of that witty circle of the Guermantes in which something survived of the alert mentality unburdened by platitudes and conventional feelings which was handed down from Mérimée
⁹⁶
and had found its latest expression in the theatre of Meilhac and Halévy,
⁹⁷
she adapted it even to social relations, transposed it even into her politeness, which endeavoured to be positive and precise, and to approximate the plain truth. She would never develop at any length to a hostess the expression of her desire to be present at her party; she thought it friendlier to put to her a few little facts on which it would depend whether or not it was possible for her to come.

– The thing is, she said to Mme de Gallardon, tomorrow evening I
have to go to see a friend who has been asking me to make a date with her for ages. If she takes us to the theatre, even with the best will in the world there won't be any chance of my coming to you; but if we stay in the house, since I know we'll be alone, I'll be able to leave her.

– Oh, by the way, did you see your friend M. Swann?

– Why no! My beloved Charles, I didn't know he was here, I must try to attract his attention.

– It's funny that he should go to old Saint-Euverte's, said Mme de Gallardon. Oh, I know he's intelligent, she added, meaning he was a schemer, but still and all, a Jew in the home of the sister and sister-in-law of two archbishops!

– I confess to my shame that I'm not shocked, said the Princesse des Laumes.

– I know he's a convert, and even his parents and grandparents before him. But they do say converts remain more attached to their religion than anyone else, that it's all just a pretence. Is that true?

– I don't know a thing about that.

The pianist, who was to play two pieces by Chopin, after finishing the prelude had immediately attacked a polonaise. But now that Mme de Gallardon had told her cousin that Swann was there, Chopin himself might have risen from the dead and played all his pieces in succession without Mme des Laumes paying the slightest attention. She belonged to that half of the human race in whom the curiosity the other half feels about the people it does not know is replaced by an interest in the people it does. As with many women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the presence in a place where she happened to be of someone from her set, though she had nothing in particular to say to him, monopolized her attention at the expense of everything else. From that moment on, in the hopes that Swann would notice her, the Princesse, like a tame white mouse to which one offers a bit of sugar and then withdraws it, kept turning her face, which was filled with a thousand signs of complicity unrelated to the feeling in Chopin's polonaise, in Swann's direction and if he moved, she would shift in a corresponding direction her magnetic smile.

– Oriane, don't be angry, resumed Mme de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and
highest hopes of some day dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable, but people do claim that M. Swann is someone whom one can't have in one's house; is that true?

– Why… you ought to know it's true, answered the Princesse des Laumes, since you've invited him fifty times and he hasn't come once.

And leaving her mortified cousin, she burst into laughter again, scandalizing the people who were listening to the music, but attracting the attention of Mme de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed near the piano out of politeness and only now noticed the Princesse. Mme de Saint-Euverte was especially delighted to see Mme des Laumes because she had thought she was still at Guermantes looking after her sick father-in-law.

– Why, Princesse, I didn't know you were here!

– Yes, I tucked myself away in a little corner, and I've been hearing such lovely things.

– What! Have you been here for a long time?

– Why yes, a very long time which seemed very short to me – it was long only because I couldn't see you.

Mme de Saint-Euverte tried to give her chair to the Princesse, who answered:

– Oh, please, no! Why should you? I'm comfortable wherever I sit!'

And, intentionally selecting, the better to display her simplicity, great lady though she was, a low seat without a back:

– Here, this hassock is all I need. It'll make me sit up straight. Oh, my Lord, I'm making too much noise again, if I'm not careful they'll turn on me and throw me out.

Meanwhile, the pianist having redoubled his speed, the musical emotion was at its height, a servant was passing refreshments on a tray and making the spoons clink and, as happened every week, Mme de Saint-Euverte signalled to him, without his seeing her, to go away. A newly-wed, who had been taught that a young woman must not appear bored, smiled with pleasure, and tried to catch the hostess's eye in order to send her a look her gratitude for having ‘thought of her' for such a treat. However, although she remained calmer than Mme de
Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she followed the music; but the object of her uneasiness was, not the pianist, but the piano, on which a candle jumping with each fortissimo risked, if not setting its shade on fire, at least spotting the Brazilian rosewood. In the end she could not bear it any longer and, scaling the two steps of the dais on which the piano was placed, swooped down to remove the sconce. But her hands were just about to touch it when, with a final chord, the piece ended and the pianist stood up. Nevertheless the young woman's bold initiative, the resulting brief promiscuity between her and the instrumentalist, produced a generally favourable impression.