In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV (40 page)

You alone did seem to me that which one always seeks,

that the Lady President of the little circle, anxious to make sure of one of her “faithful” even after death, had made her promise that whichever of them survived the other should be buried by her side. In front of strangers—among whom we must always reckon the one to whom we lie the most because he is the one whose contempt would be most painful to us: ourselves—Princess Sherbatoff took care to represent her only three friendships—with the Grand Duchess, the Verdurins, and the Baroness Putbus—as the only ones, not which cataclysms beyond her control had allowed to emerge from the destruction of all the rest, but which a free choice had made her elect in preference to any other, and to which a taste for solitude and simplicity had made her confine herself. “I see
nobody
else,” she would say, underlining the inflexible character of what appeared to be rather a rule that one imposes upon oneself than a necessity to which one submits. She would add: “I visit only three houses,” as a dramatist who fears that it may not run to a fourth announces that there will be only three performances of his play. Whether or not M. and Mme Verdurin gave credence to this fiction, they had helped the Princess to instil it into the minds of the faithful. And they in turn were persuaded both that the Princess, among the thousands of invitations that were available to her, had chosen the Verdurins’ alone, and that the Verdurins, deaf to the overtures of the entire aristocracy, had consented to make but a single exception, in favour of a great lady of more intelligence than the rest of her kind, the Princess Sherbatoff.

The Princess was very rich; she engaged for every first night a large box on the ground floor, to which, with Mme Verdurin’s assent, she invited the faithful and nobody else. People would point out to one another this pale and enigmatic person who had grown old without turning white, turning red, rather, like certain tough and shrivelled hedgerow fruits. They admired both her influence and her humility, for, having always with her an Academician, Brichot, a famous scientist, Cottard, the leading pianist of the day, and at a later date M. de Charlus, yet she made a point of reserving the least prominent box in the theatre, sat at the back, paid no attention to the rest of the house, lived exclusively for the little group, who, shortly before the end of the performance, would withdraw in the wake of this strange sovereign, who was not without a certain shy, bewitching, faded beauty. But if Mme Sherbatoff did not look at the audience, if she stayed in the shadows, it was to try to forget that there existed a living world which she passionately desired and could not know; the coterie in a box was to her what is to certain animals their almost corpselike immobility in the presence of danger. Nevertheless the thirst for novelty and for the curious which possesses society people made them pay even more attention perhaps to this mysterious stranger than to the celebrities in the front boxes to whom everybody paid a visit. They imagined that she must be different from the people they knew, that a marvellous intellect combined with a discerning bounty retained round about her that little circle of eminent men. The Princess was compelled, if you spoke to her about anyone, or introduced her to anyone, to feign an intense coldness, in order to keep up the fiction of her loathing of society. Nevertheless, with the support of Cottard or of Mme Verdurin, several new recruits succeeded in getting to know her and such was her excitement at making a fresh acquaintance that she forgot the fable of her deliberate isolation, and went to the wildest extremes to please the newcomer. If he was something of a nonentity, the rest would be astonished. “How strange that the Princess, who refuses to know anyone, should make an exception of such an uninteresting person.” But these fertilising acquaintances were rare, and the Princess lived narrowly confined in the midst of the faithful.

Cottard said far more often: “I shall see him on Wednesday at the Verdurins’,” than: “I shall see him on Tuesday at the Academy.” He also spoke of the Wednesdays as of an equally important and inescapable occupation. But Cottard was one of those people, little sought-after, who make it as imperious a duty to obey an invitation as if such invitations were orders, like a military or judicial summons. It required a very important call to make him “fail” the Verdurins on a Wednesday, the importance depending moreover rather upon the rank of the patient than upon the gravity of his complaint. For Cottard, excellent fellow as he was, would forgo the delights of a Wednesday not for a workman who had had a stroke, but for a minister’s cold. Even then he would say to his wife: “Make my apologies to Mme Verdurin. Tell her that I shall be coming later on. His Excellency really might have chosen some other day to catch a cold.” One Wednesday, their old cook having cut open a vein in her arm, Cottard, already in his dinner-jacket to go to the Verdurins’, had shrugged his shoulders when his wife had timidly inquired whether he could not bandage the wound: “Of course I can’t, Léontine,” he had groaned, “can’t you see I’ve got my white waistcoat on?” So as not to annoy her husband, Mme Cottard had sent posthaste for the house surgeon. The latter, to save time, had taken a cab, with the result that, his carriage entering the courtyard just as Cottard’s was emerging to take him to the Verdurins’, five minutes had been wasted in manoeuvring backwards and forwards to let one another pass. Mme Cottard was worried that the house surgeon should see his chief in evening dress. Cottard sat cursing the delay, from remorse perhaps, and started off in a villainous temper which it took all the Wednesday’s pleasures to dispel.

If one of Cottard’s patients were to ask him: “Do you ever see the Guermantes?” it was with the utmost sincerity that the Professor would reply: “Perhaps not actually the Guermantes, I can’t be certain. But I meet all those people at the house of some friends of mine. You must, of course, have heard of the Verdurins. They know everybody. Besides, they at least aren’t grand people who’ve come down in the world. They’ve got the goods, all right. It’s generally estimated that Mme Verdurin is worth thirty-five million. Well, thirty-five million, that’s quite a figure. And so she doesn’t go in for half-measures. You mentioned the Duchesse de Guermantes. I’ll tell you the difference. Mme Verdurin is a great lady, the Duchesse de Guermantes is probably a pauper. You see the distinction, of course? In any case, whether the Guermantes go to Mme Verdurin’s or not, she entertains all the very best people, the d’Sherbatoffs, the d’Forchevilles,
e tutti quanti
, people of the top flight, all the nobility of France and Navarre, with whom you would see me conversing as man to man. Of course, those sort of people are only too glad to meet the princes of science,” he would add, with a smile of fatuous conceit, brought to his lips by his proud satisfaction not so much that the expression formerly reserved for men like Potain and Charcot should now be applicable to himself, as that he knew at last how to employ all these expressions that were sanctioned by usage, and, after a long course of swotting, had learned them by heart. And so, after mentioning to me Princess Sherbatoff as one of the people who went to Mme Verdurin’s, Cottard added with a wink: “That gives you an idea of the style of the house, if you see what I mean?” He meant that it was the very height of fashion. Now, to entertain a Russian lady who knew nobody but the Grand Duchess Eudoxie meant very little. But Princess Sherbatoff might not have known even her, and it would in no way have diminished Cottard’s estimate of the supreme elegance of the Verdurin salon or his joy at being invited there. The splendour with which the people whose houses we visit seem to us to be endowed is no more intrinsic than that of stage characters in dressing whom it is useless for a producer to spend hundreds and thousands of francs in purchasing authentic costumes and real jewels which will make no impression, when a great designer will procure a far more sumptuous impression by focusing a ray of light on a doublet of coarse cloth studded with glass spangles and on a paper cloak. A man may have spent his life among the great ones of the earth, who to him have been merely boring relatives or tedious acquaintances because a familiarity engendered in the cradle had stripped them of all glamour in his eyes. Yet on the other hand, such glamour need only, by some accident, have come to be attached to the most obscure people, for innumerable Cottards to be permanently dazzled by titled ladies whose drawing-rooms they imagined as the centres of aristocratic elegance, ladies who were not even what Mme de Villeparisis and her friends were (noble ladies fallen from grace, whom the aristocracy that had been brought up with them no longer visited); no, if the ladies whose friendship has been the pride of so many people were to be named in the memoirs of these people together with those whom they entertained, no one, Mme de Cambremer no more than Mme de Guermantes, would be able to identify them. But what of that! A Cottard has thus his baroness or his marquise, who is for him “the Baroness” or “the Marquise,” as, in Marivaux, the baroness whose name is never mentioned and who for all one knows may never even have had one. A Cottard is all the more convinced that she epitomises the aristocracy—which has never heard of the lady—in that, the more dubious titles are, the more prominently coronets are displayed upon wine glasses, silver, note-paper and luggage. Many Cottards who have supposed that they were living in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain have perhaps had their imaginations more beguiled by feudal dreams than the men who really have lived among princes, just as, for the small shopkeeper who sometimes goes on a Sunday to look at buildings of the “olden days,” it is often those of which every stone is of our own, the vaults of which have been painted blue and sprinkled with golden stars by pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, that provide the most potent sensation of the Middle Ages.

“The Princess will be at Maineville,” Cottard went on. “She will be coming with us. But I shan’t introduce you to her at once. It will be better to leave that to Mme Verdurin. Unless I find a loophole. Then you can rely on me to take the bull by the horns.”

“What were you saying?” asked Saniette, as he rejoined us, pretending to have been taking the air.

“I was quoting to this gentleman,” said Brichot, “a saying, which you will remember, of the man who, to my mind, is the first of the
fins-de-siècle
(of the eighteenth century, that is), by name Charles-Maurice, Abbé de Périgord. He began by promising to be an excellent journalist. But he took a wrong turning, by which I mean that he became a minister! Such scandals happen in life. A far from scrupulous politician to boot, who, with all the lofty contempt of a thoroughbred nobleman, did not hesitate to play both ends against the middle when he felt like it, and remained left of centre until his dying day.”

At Saint-Pierre-des-Ifs we were joined by a glorious girl who, unfortunately, was not a member of the little group. I could not take my eyes off her magnolia skin, her dark eyes, the bold and admirable composition of her forms. After a moment she wanted to open a window, for it was hot in the compartment, and not wishing to ask leave of everybody, as I alone was without an overcoat she said to me in a quick, cool, cheerful voice: “Do you mind a little fresh air, Monsieur?” I would have liked to say to her: “Come with us to the Verdurins’ ” or “Give me your name and address.” I answered: “No, fresh air doesn’t bother me, Mademoiselle.” Whereupon, without stirring from her seat: “Your friends don’t object to smoke?” and she lit a cigarette. At the third station she sprang from the train. Next day, I inquired of Albertine who she could be. For, stupidly thinking that people could have but one sort of love, in my jealousy of Albertine’s attitude towards Robert, I was reassured so far as women were concerned. Albertine told me, I believe quite sincerely, that she did not know. “I should so like to see her again,” I exclaimed. “Don’t worry, one always sees people again,” replied Albertine. In this particular instance she was wrong; I never saw again, and never identified, the handsome girl with the cigarette. We shall see, moreover, why for a long time I ceased to look for her. But I never forgot her. I find myself at times, when I think of her, seized by a wild longing. But these recurrences of desire oblige us to reflect that if we wish to rediscover these girls with the same pleasure we must also return to the year which has since been followed by ten others in the course of which her bloom has faded. We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one. For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love. Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever. But one feels that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength one has left. Eternal rest has already interposed intervals during which one can neither go out nor even speak. Setting one’s foot on the right step is an achievement, like bringing off a somersault. To be seen in such a state by a girl one loves, even if one has kept the features and all the golden locks of one’s youth! One can no longer face the strain of keeping up with the young. Too bad if carnal desire increases instead of languishing! One procures for it a woman whom one need make no effort to please, who will share one’s couch for one night only and whom one will never see again.

“Still no news, I suppose, of the violinist,” said Cottard. For the event of the day in the little clan was the defection of Mme Verdurin’s favourite violinist. The latter, who was doing his military service near Doncières, came three times a week to dine at La Raspelière, having a midnight pass. But two days ago, for the first time, the faithful had been unable to discover him on the train. It was assumed that he had missed it. But in vain had Mme Verdurin sent to meet the next train, and the next, and so on until the last, the carriage had returned empty.

“He’s certain to have been put in the glasshouse,” Cottard went on, “there’s no other explanation of his desertion. Oh yes, in the Army, you know, with those fellows, it only needs a crusty sergeant-major.”

“It will be all the more mortifying for Mme Verdurin,” said Brichot, “if he defects again this evening, because our kind hostess has invited to dinner for the first time the neighbours from whom she rented La Raspelière, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer.”

“This evening, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer!” exclaimed Cottard. “But I knew absolutely nothing about it. Naturally, I knew like everybody else that they would be coming one day, but I had no idea it was to be so soon. By Jove!” he went on, turning to me, “what did I tell you? The Princess Sherbatoff, the Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer.” And, after repeating these names, lulling himself with their melody: “You see that we move in good company,” he said to me. “No doubt about it, for your first appearance you’ve really struck lucky. It’s going to be an exceptionally brilliant roomful.” And, turning to Brichot, he went on: “The Mistress will be furious. It’s time we got there to lend her a hand.”

Ever since Mme Verdurin had been at La Raspelière she had pretended for the benefit of the faithful to be under the disagreeable obligation of inviting her landlords for one evening. By so doing she would obtain better terms next year, she explained, and was inviting them merely out of self-interest. But she affected to regard with such terror, to make such a bugbear of the idea of dining with people who did not belong to the little group, that she kept putting off the evil day. The prospect did indeed alarm her slightly for the reasons which she professed, albeit exaggerating them, if at the same time it enchanted her for reasons of snobbery which she preferred to keep to herself. She was therefore partly sincere, for she believed the little clan to be something so unique, one of those perfect entities which it takes centuries to produce, that she trembled at the thought of seeing these provincials, ignorant of the
Ring
and the
Meistersinger
, introduced into its midst, people who would be unable to play their part in the concert of general conversation and were capable of ruining one of those famous Wednesdays, masterpieces as incomparably fragile as those Venetian glasses which one false note is enough to shatter. “Besides, they’re bound to be absolutely
anti
, and jingoistic,” M. Verdurin had said. “Oh, as to that I don’t really mind, we’ve heard quite enough about that business,” Mme Verdurin had replied, for, though a sincere Dreyfusard, she would nevertheless have been glad to discover a social counterpoise to the preponderant Dreyfusism of her salon. For Dreyfusism was triumphant politically but not socially. Labori, Reinach, Picquart, Zola were still, to people in society, more or less traitors, who could only keep them estranged from the little nucleus. And so, after this incursion into politics, Mme Verdurin was anxious to return to the world of art. Besides, were not d’Indy and Debussy on the “wrong” side in the Affair! “As far as the Affair goes, we have only to put them beside Brichot,” she said (the Professor being the only one of the faithful who had sided with the General Staff, thus forfeiting a great deal of esteem in the eyes of Mme Verdurin). “There’s no need to be eternally discussing the Dreyfus case. No, the fact of the matter is that the Cambremers bore me.” As for the faithful, no less excited by their unavowed desire to meet the Cambremers than they were taken in by Mme Verdurin’s affected reluctance to invite them, they returned, day after day, in conversation with her, to the base arguments which she herself produced in favour of the invitation, and tried to make them irresistible. “Make up your mind to it once and for all,” Cottard repeated, “and you’ll get a reduction of the rent, they’ll pay the gardener, you’ll have the use of the meadow. That will be well worth a boring evening. I’m thinking only of you,” he added, though his heart had leapt once when, in Mme Verdurin’s carriage, he had passed old Mme de Cambremer’s on the road, and he felt humiliated in front of the railway employees when he found himself standing beside the Marquis at the station. For their part, the Cambremers, living much too far outside the social “swim” ever to suspect that certain ladies of fashion now spoke of Mme Verdurin with a certain respect, imagined that she was a person who could know none but Bohemians, was perhaps not even legally married, and so far as people of “birth” were concerned would never meet any but themselves. They had resigned themselves to the thought of dining with her only in order to be on good terms with a tenant who, they hoped, would return again for many seasons, especially since they had learned, during the previous month, that she had recently inherited all those millions. It was in silence and without any vulgar pleasantries that they prepared themselves for the fatal day. The faithful had given up hope of its ever coming, so often had Mme Verdurin already fixed in their hearing a date that was invariably postponed. These false alarms were intended not merely to make a show of the boredom that she felt at the thought of this dinner-party, but to keep in suspense those members of the little group who were staying in the neighbourhood and were sometimes inclined to default. Not that the Mistress guessed that the “great day” was as delightful a prospect to them as to herself, but in order that, having persuaded them that this dinner-party was for her the most terrible of chores, she might appeal to their devotedness. “You’re not going to leave me all alone with those freaks! We must assemble in full force to stand the boredom. Naturally we shan’t be able to talk about any of the things that interest us. It will be a Wednesday spoiled, but what is one to do!”