In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (47 page)

"And so you think that good, do you?" she would ask, "inspired, as you
call it. I must confess that I am always surprised to see people
taking things seriously nowadays which the friends of those gentlemen,
while doing ample justice to their merits, were the first to laugh at.
People weren't so free then with the word 'inspired' as they are now,
when if you say to a writer that he has mere talent he thinks you're
insulting him. You quote me a fine passage from M. de Chateaubriand
about moonlight. You shall see that I have my own reasons for being
refractory. M. de Chateaubriand used constantly to come to see my
father. He was quite a pleasant person when you were alone with him,
because then he was simple and amusing, but the moment he had an
audience he would begin to pose, and then he became absurd; when my
father was in the room, he pretended that he had flung his resignation
in the King's face, and that he had controlled the voting in the
Conclave, forgetting that it was my father whom he had asked to beg
the King to take him back, and that my father had heard him make the
most idiotic forecasts of the Papal election. You ought to have heard
M. de Blacas on that famous Conclave; he was a very different kind of
man from M. de Chateaubriand. As to his fine phrases about the moon,
they became part of our regular programme for entertaining our guests.
Whenever there was any moonlight about the house, if there was anyone
staying with us for the first time he would be told to take M. de
Chateaubriand for a stroll after dinner. When they came in, my father
would take his guest aside and say: 'Well, and was M. de Chateaubriand
very eloquent?'—'Oh, yes.' 'He's been talking about the moon?'—'Yes,
how did you know?'—'One moment, didn't he say——' and then my father
would quote the passage. 'He did; but how in the world…?'—'And he
spoke to you of the moonlight on the Roman Campagna?'—'But, my dear
sir, you're a magician.' My father was no magician, but M. de
Chateaubriand had the same little speech about the moon which he
served up every time."

At the mention of Vigny she laughed: "The man who said: 'I am the
Comte Alfred de Vigny!' One either is a Comte or one isn't; it is not
of the slightest importance." And then perhaps she discovered that it
was after all, of some slight importance, for she went on: "For one
thing I am by no means sure that he was, and in any case he was of the
humblest origin, that gentleman who speaks in his verses of his
'Esquire's crest.' In such charming taste, is it not, and so
interesting to his readers! Like Musset, a plain Paris cit, who laid
so much stress on 'The golden falcon that surmounts my helm.' As if
you would ever hear a real gentleman say a thing like that! And yet
Musset had some talent as a poet. But except
Cinq–Mars
I have never
been able to read a thing by M. de Vigny. I get so bored that the book
falls from my hands. M. Molé, who had all the cleverness and tact that
were wanting in M. de Vigny, put him properly in his place when he
welcomed him to the Academy. Do you mean to say you don't know the
speech? It is a masterpiece of irony and impertinence." She found
fault with Balzac, whom she was surprised to see her nephews admire,
for having pretended to describe a society 'in which he was never
received' and of which his descriptions were wildly improbable. As for
Victor Hugo, she told us that M. de Bouillon, her father, who had
friends among the young leaders of the Romantic movement, had been
taken by some of them to the first performance of
Hernani
, but that
he had been unable to sit through it, so ridiculous had he found the
lines of that talented but extravagant writer who had acquired the
title of 'Major Poet' only by virtue of having struck a bargain, and
as a reward for the not disinterested indulgence that he shewed to the
dangerous errors of the Socialists.

We had now come in sight of the hotel, with its lights, so hostile
that first evening, on our arrival, now protecting and kind, speaking
to us of home. And when the carriage drew up outside the door, the
porter, the pages, the lift–boy, attentive, clumsy, vaguely uneasy at
our lateness, were numbered, now that they had grown familiar, among
those beings who change so many times in the course of our life, as we
ourself change, but by whom, when they are for the time being the
mirror of our habits, we find something attractive in the feeling that
we are being faithfully reflected and in a friendly spirit. We prefer
them to friends whom we have not seen for some time, for they contain
more of what we actually are. Only the outside page, exposed to the
sun all day, had been taken indoors for protection from the cold night
air and swaddled in thick woollen garments which, combined with the
orange effulgence of his locks and the curiously red bloom of his
cheeks, made one, seeing him there through the glass front of the
hall, think of a hot–house plant muffled up for protection from the
frost. We got out of the carriage, with the help of a great many more
servants than were required, but they were conscious of the importance
of the scene and each felt obliged to take some part in it. I was
always very hungry. And so, often, so as not to keep dinner waiting, I
would not go upstairs first to the room which had succeeded in
becoming so really mine that to catch sight of its long violet
curtains and low bookcases was to find myself alone again with that
self of which things, like people, gave me a reflected image; but we
would all wait together in the hall until the head waiter came to tell
us that our dinner was ready. And this gave us another opportunity of
listening to Mme. de Villeparisis.

"But you must be tired of us by now," protested my grandmother.

"Not at all! Why, I am delighted, what could be nicer?" replied her
friend with a winning smile, drawing out, almost intoning her words in
a way that contrasted markedly with her customary simplicity of
speech.

And indeed at such moments as this she was not natural, her mind
reverted to her early training, to the aristocratic manner in which a
great lady is supposed to shew common people that she is glad to see
them, that she is not at all stiff. And her one and only failure in
true politeness lay in this excess of politeness; which it was easy to
identify as one of the professional 'wrinkles' of a lady of the
Faubourg Saint–Germain, who, always seeing in her humbler friends the
latent discontent that she must one day arouse in their bosoms,
greedily seizes every opportunity en which she can possibly, in the
ledger in which she keeps her social account with them, write down a
credit balance which will allow her to enter presently on the opposite
page the dinner or reception to which she will not invite them. And
so, having long ago taken effect in her once and for all, and ignoring
the fact that now both the circumstances and the people concerned were
different, that in Paris she hoped to see us often come to her house,
the spirit of her caste was urging Mme. de Villeparisis on with
feverish ardour, and as if the time that was allowed her for being
kind to us was limited, to multiply, while we were still at Balbec,
her gifts of roses and melons, loans of books, drives in her carriage
and verbal effusions. And for that reason, quite as much as the
dazzling glories of the beach, the many–coloured flamboyance and
subaqueous light of the rooms, as much even as the riding–lessons by
which tradesmen's sons were deified like Alexander of Macedon, the
daily kindnesses shewn us by Mme. de Villeparisis and also the
unaccustomed, momentary, holiday ease with which my grandmother
accepted them have remained in my memory as typical of life at a
watering–place.

"Give them your cloaks to take upstairs."

My grandmother handed hers to the manager, and because he had been so
nice to me I was distressed by this want of consideration, which
seemed to pain him.

"I think you've hurt his feelings," said the Marquise. "He probably
fancies himself too great a gentleman to carry your wraps. I remember
so well the Duc de Nemours, when I was still quite little, coming to
see my father who was living then on the top floor of the Bouillon
house, with a fat parcel under his arm of letters and newspapers. I
can see the Prince now, in his blue coat, framed in our doorway, which
had such pretty woodwork round it—I think it was Bagard made it—you
know those fine laths that they used to cut, so supple that the joiner
would twist them sometimes into little shells and flowers, like the
ribbons round a nosegay. 'Here you are, Cyrus,' he said to my father,
'look what your porter's given me to bring you. He said to me: "Since
you're going up to see the Count, it's not worth my while climbing all
those stairs; but take care you don't break the string."' Now that you
have got rid of your things, why don't you sit down; look, sit in this
seat," she said to my grandmother, taking her by the hand.

"Oh, if you don't mind, not in that one! There is not room for two,
and it's too big for me by myself; I shouldn't feel comfortable."

"You remind me, for it was exactly like this, of a seat that I had for
many years until at last I couldn't keep it any longer because it had
been given to my mother by the poor Duchesse de Praslin. My mother,
though she was the simplest person in the world, really, had ideas
that belonged to another generation, which even in those days I could
scarcely understand; and at first she had not been at all willing to
let herself be introduced to Mme. de Praslin, who had been plain Mlle.
Sebastiani, while she, because she was a Duchess, felt that it was not
for her to be introduced to my mother. And really, you know," Mme. de
Villeparisis went on, forgetting that she herself did not understand
these fine shades of distinction, "even if she had just been Mme. de
Choiseul, there was a good deal to be said for her claim. The
Choiseuls are everything you could want; they spring from a sister of
Louis the Fat; they were ruling princes down in Basigny. I admit that
we beat them in marriages and in distinction, but the precedence is
pretty much the same. This little difficulty gave rise to several
amusing incidents, such as a luncheon party which was kept waiting a
whole hour or more before one of these ladies could make up her mind
to let herself be introduced to the other. In spite of which they
became great friends, and she gave my mother a seat like that, in
which people always refused to sit, just as you did, until one day my
mother heard a carriage drive into the courtyard. She asked a young
servant we had, who it was. 'The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, ma'am.'
'Very well, say that I am at home.' A quarter of an hour passed; no
one came. 'What about the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld?' my mother
asked. 'Where is she?' 'She's on the stairs, ma'am, getting her
breath,' said the young servant, who had not been long up from the
country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her
servants. Often she had seen them born. That's the only way to get
really good ones. And they're the rarest of luxuries. And sure enough
the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld had the greatest difficulty in
getting upstairs, for she was an enormous woman, so enormous, indeed,
that when she did come into the room my mother was quite at a loss for
a moment to know where to put her. And then the seat that Mme. de
Praslin had given her caught her eye. 'Won't you sit down?' she said,
bringing it forward. And the Duchess filled it from side to side.
She was quite a pleasant woman, for all her massiveness. 'She still
creates an effect when she comes in,' one of our friends said once.
'She certainly creates an effect when she goes out,' said my mother,
who was rather more free in her speech than would be thought proper
nowadays. Even in Mme. de La Rochefoucauld's own drawing–room people
weren't afraid to make fun of her to her face (at which she was always
the first to laugh) over her ample proportions. 'But are you all
alone?' my grandmother once asked M. de La Rochefoucauld, when she had
come to pay a call on the Duchess, and being met at the door by him
had not seen his wife who was at the other end of the room. 'Is Mme.
de La Rochefoucauld not at home? I don't see her.'—'How charming of
you!' replied the Duke, who had about the worst judgment of any man I
have ever known, but was not altogether lacking in humour."

After dinner, when I had retired upstairs with my grandmother, I said
to her that the qualities which attracted us in Mme. de Villeparisis,
her tact, her shrewdness, her discretion, her modesty in not referring
to herself, were not, perhaps, of very great value since those who
possessed them in the highest degree were simply people like Molé and
Loménie, and that if the want of them can make our social relations
unpleasant yet it did not prevent from becoming Chateaubriand, Vigny,
Hugo, Balzac, a lot of foolish fellows who had no judgment, at whom it
was easy to mock, like Bloch…. But at the name of Bloch, my
grandmother cried out in protest. And she began to praise Mme. de
Villeparisis. As we are told that it is the preservation of the
species which guides our individual preferences in love, and, so that
the child may be constituted in the most normal fashion, sends fat men
in pursuit of lean women and
vice versa
, so in some dim way it was the
requirements of my happiness threatened by my disordered nerves, by my
morbid tendency to melancholy, to solitude, that made her allot the
highest place to the qualities of balance and judgment, peculiar not
only to Mme. de Villeparisis but to a society in which our ancestors
saw blossom the minds of a Doudan, a M. de Rémusat, not to mention a
Beausergent, a Joubert, a Sévigné, a type of mind that invests life
with more happiness, with greater dignity than the converse
refinements which brought a Baudelaire, a Poe, a Verlaine, a Rimbaud
to sufferings, to a disrepute such as my grandmother did not wish for
her daughter's child. I interrupted her with a kiss and asked her if
she had noticed some expression which Mme. de Villeparisis had used
and which seemed to point to a woman who thought more of her noble
birth than she was prepared to admit. In this way I used to submit my
impressions of life to my grandmother, for I was never certain what
degree of respect was due to anyone until she had informed me. Every
evening I would come to her with the mental sketches that I had made
during the day of all those non–existent people who were not her. Once
I said to her: "I shouldn't be able to live without you." "But you
mustn't speak like that;" her voice was troubled. "We must harden our
hearts more than that, you know. Or what would become of you if I went
away on a journey? But I hope that you would be quite sensible and
quite happy."