In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV of 4 by Marcel Proust
Perhaps the best thing would be to wait a little longer, to begin by seeing Albertine as I had seen her in the past, so as to find out whether I really loved her. I might take her, as a diversion, to see the Verdurins, and this thought reminded me that I had come there myself that evening only to learn whether Mme Putbus was staying there or was expected. In any case, she was not dining with them.
“Speaking of your friend Saint-Loup,” said Mme de Cambremer, using an expression which betrayed more consistency in her train of thought than her remarks might have led one to suppose, for if she spoke to me about music she was thinking about the Guermantes, “you know that everybody is talking about his marriage to the niece of the Princesse de Guermantes. Though I may say that, for my part, all that society gossip concerns me not one whit.” I was seized by a fear that I might have spoken unfeelingly to Robert about the girl in question, a girl full of sham originality, whose mind was as mediocre as her temper was violent. Hardly ever do we hear anything that does not make us regret something we have said. I replied to Mme de Cambremer, truthfully as it happened, that I knew nothing about it, and that anyhow I thought that the girl seemed rather young to be engaged.
“That is perhaps why it’s not yet official. Anyhow there’s a lot of talk about it.”
“I ought to warn you,” Mme Verdurin observed drily to Mme de Cambremer, having heard her talking to me about Morel and supposing, when she had lowered her voice to speak of Saint-Loup’s engagement, that Morel was still under discussion. “You needn’t expect any light music here. In matters of art, you know, the faithful who come to my Wednesdays, my children as I call them, are all fearfully advanced,” she added with an air of terrified pride. “I say to them sometimes: My dear people, you move too fast for your Mistress, and she’s not exactly notorious for being afraid of daring innovations. Every year it goes a little further; I can see the day coming when they will have no more use for Wagner or d’Indy.”
“But it’s splendid to be advanced, one can never be advanced enough,” said Mme de Cambremer, scrutinising every corner of the dining-room as she spoke, trying to identify the things that her mother-in-law had left there and those that Mme Verdurin had brought with her, and to catch the latter red-handed in an error of taste. At the same time she tried to get me to talk of the subject that interested her most, M. de Charlus. She thought it touching that he should offer his patronage to a violinist: “He seems intelligent.”
“Yes, his mind is extremely active for a man of his age,” I replied.
“Age? But he doesn’t seem at all old, look, the hair is still young.” (For, during the last three or four years, the word hair had been used with the article by one of those unknown persons who launch the literary fashions, and everybody at the same radius from the centre as Mme de Cambremer would say “the hair,” not without an affected smile. At the present day, people still say “the hair,” but from an excessive use of the article the pronoun will be born again.)13 “What interests me most about M. de Charlus,” she went on, “is that one can feel that he is naturally gifted. I may tell you that I attach little importance to knowledge. I’m not interested in what’s learnt.”
These words were not incompatible with Mme de Cambremer’s own particular quality, which was precisely imitated and acquired. But it so happened that one of the things one was required to know at that moment was that knowledge is nothing, and is not worth a straw when compared with originality. Mme de Cambremer had learned, with everything else, that one ought not to learn anything. “That is why,” she explained to me, “Brichot, who has an interesting side to him, for I’m not one to despise a certain lively erudition, interests me far less.”
But Brichot, at that moment, was occupied with one thing only: hearing people talk about music, he trembled lest the subject should remind Mme Verdurin of the death of Dechambre. He wanted to say something that would avert that harrowing memory. M. de Cambremer provided him with an opportunity with the question: “You mean to say that wooded places always take their names from animals?”
“Not so,” replied Brichot, happy to display his learning before so many strangers, among whom, I had told him, he would be certain to interest one at least. “We have only to consider how often, even in the names of people, a tree is preserved, like a fern in a seam of coal. One of our eminent Senators is called M. de Saulces de Freycinet, which means, if I’m not mistaken, a spot planted with willow and ash, salix et fraxinetum; his nephew M. de Selves combines more trees still, since he is named de Selves, sylva.”
Saniette was delighted to see the conversation take so animated a turn. Since Brichot was talking all the time, he himself could preserve a silence which would save him from being the butt of M. and Mme Verdurin’s wit. And growing even more sensitive in his joy and relief, he had been touched when he heard M. Verdurin, notwithstanding the formality of so grand a dinner-party, tell the butler to put a jug of water in front of him since he never drank anything else. (The generals responsible for the death of most soldiers insist upon their being well fed.) Moreover, Mme Verdurin had actually smiled at him once. Decidedly, they were kind people. He was not going to be tortured any more.
At this moment the meal was interrupted by one of the party whom I have forgotten to mention, an eminent Norwegian philosopher who spoke French very well but very slowly, for the twofold reason that, in the first place, having learned the language only recently and not wishing to make mistakes (though he did make a few), he referred each word to a sort of mental dictionary, and secondly, being a metaphysician, he always thought of what he intended to say while he was saying it, which, even in a Frenchman, is a cause of slowness. For the rest, he was a delightful person, although similar in appearance to many other people, save in one respect. This man who was so slow in his diction (there was an interval of silence after every word) developed a startling rapidity in escaping from the room as soon as he had said good-bye. His haste made one suppose, the first time one saw it, that he was suffering from colic or some even more urgent need.
“My dear—colleague,” he said to Brichot, after deliberating in his mind whether colleague was the correct term, “I have a sort of—desire to know whether there are other trees in the—nomenclature of your beautiful French—Latin—Norman tongue. Madame” (he meant Mme Verdurin, although he dared not look at her) “has told me that you know everything. Is not this precisely the moment?”
“No, it’s the moment for eating,” interrupted Mme Verdurin, who saw the dinner becoming interminable.
“Very well,” the Scandinavian replied, bowing his head over his plate with a resigned and sorrowful smile. “But I must point out to Madame that if I have permitted myself this questionnaire—pardon me, this questation—it is because I have to return tomorrow to Paris to dine at the Tour d’Argent or at the Hôtel Meurice. My French—confrère—M. Boutroux is to address us there about certain séances of spiritualism—pardon me, certain spirituous evocations—which he has verified.”
“The Tour d’Argent is not nearly as good as they make out,” said Mme Verdurin sourly. “In fact, I’ve had some disgusting dinners there.”
“But am I mistaken, is not the food that one consumes at Madame’s table an example of the finest French cookery?”
“Well, it’s not positively bad,” replied Mme Verdurin, mollified. “And if you come next Wednesday, it will be better.”
“But I am leaving on Monday for Algiers, and from there I am going to the Cape. And when I am at the Cape of Good Hope, I shall no longer be able to meet my illustrious colleague—pardon me, I shall no longer be able to meet my confrère.”
And he set to work obediently, after offering these retrospective apologies, to devour his food at a headlong pace. But Brichot was only too delighted to be able to furnish other vegetable etymologies, and replied, so greatly interesting the Norwegian that he again stopped eating, but with a sign to the servants that they might remove his full plate and go on to the next course.
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On hearing the name Saniette on Brichot’s lips, M. Verdurin glanced at his wife and at Cottard with an ironical smile which disconcerted their timid guest.
“You said that Cholet was derived from chou,” I remarked to Brichot. “Does the name of a station I passed before reaching Doncières, Saint-Frichoux, also come from chou?”
“No, Saint-Frichoux is Sanctus Fructuosus, as Sanctus Ferreolus gave rise to Saint-Fargeau, but that’s not Norman in the least.”
“He knows too much, he’s boring us,” the Princess gurgled softly.
“There are so many other names that interest me, but I can’t ask you everything at once.” And turning to Cottard, “Is Madame Putbus here?” I asked him.
“No, thank heaven,” replied Mme Verdurin, who had overheard my question, “I’ve managed to divert her holiday plans towards Venice, so we are rid of her for this year.”
“I shall myself be entitled presently to two trees,” said M. de Charlus, “for I have more or less taken a little house between Saint-Martin-du-Chêne and Saint-Pierredes-Ifs.”
“But that’s quite close to here. I hope you’ll come over often with Charlie Morel. You have only to come to an arrangement with our little group about the trains, you’re just a stone’s throw from Doncières,” said Mme Verdurin, who hated people not coming by the same train and at the hours when she sent carriages to meet them. She knew how stiff the climb was to La Raspelière, even by the zigzag path behind Féterne which was half an hour longer; she was afraid that those of her guests who came on their own might not find carriages to take them, or even, having in reality stayed away, might plead the excuse that they had not found a carriage at Douville-Féterne, and had not felt strong enough to make so stiff a climb on foot. To this invitation M. de Charlus responded with a silent nod.
“I bet he’s an awkward customer, he’s got a very starchy look,” the Doctor whispered to Ski, for, having remained very unassuming in spite of a surface-dressing of arrogance, he made no attempt to conceal the fact that Charlus was snubbing him. “He’s obviously unaware that at all the fashionable spas, and even in Paris, in all the clinics, the physicians, who naturally regard me as the ‘big boss,’ make it a point of honour to introduce me to all the noblemen present, not that they need to be asked twice. It makes my stay at the spas quite enjoyable,” he added lightly. “Indeed at Doncières the medical officer of the regiment, who is the doctor who attends the Colonel, invited me to lunch to meet him, saying that I was fully entitled to dine with the General. And that general is a Monsieur de something. I don’t know whether his title-deeds are more or less ancient than those of this Baron.”
“Don’t you worry about him, his is a very humble coronet,” replied Ski in an undertone, and he added something indistinct including a word of which I caught only the last syllable, -ast, being engaged in listening to what Brichot was saying to M. de Charlus.
“No, as to that, I’m sorry to have to tell you, you have probably one tree only, for if Saint-Martin-du-Chêne is obviously Sanctus Martinus juxta quercum, on the other hand the word if [yew] may be simply the root ave, eve, which means moist, as in Aveyron, Lodève, Yvette, and which you see survive in our kitchen sinks (éviers). It is the word eau which in Breton is represented by ster, Stermaria, Sterlaer, Sterbouest, Ster-en-Dreuchen.”
I did not hear the rest, for whatever the pleasure I might feel on hearing again the name Stermaria, I could not help listening to Cottard, near whom I was seated, as he murmured to Ski: “Really! I didn’t know that. So he’s a gentleman who knows how to cope in life. He’s one of the happy band, is he? And yet he hasn’t got rings of fat round his eyes. I shall have to watch out for my feet under the table or he might take a fancy to me. But I’m not at all surprised. I’m used to seeing noblemen in the showers in their birthday suits, they’re all more or less degenerates. I don’t talk to them, because after all I’m in an official position and it might do me harm. But they know quite well who I am.”
Saniette, who had been scared by Brichot’s interpellation, was beginning to breathe again, like a man who is afraid of storms when he finds that the lightning has not been followed by any sound of thunder, when he heard M. Verdurin interrogate him, fastening upon him a stare which did not let go of the poor man until he had finished speaking, so as to disconcert him from the start and prevent him from recovering his composure. “But you never told us that you went to those matinées at the Odéon, Saniette?”
Trembling like a recruit before a bullying sergeant, Saniette replied, making his reply as exiguous as possible, so that it might have a better chance of escaping the blow: “Only once, to the Chercheuse.”
“What’s that he says?” shouted M. Verdurin, with an air of disgust and fury combined, knitting his brows as though he needed all his concentration to grasp something unintelligible. “It’s impossible to understand what you say. What have you got in your mouth?” inquired M. Verdurin, growing more and more furious, and alluding to Saniette’s speech defect.
“Poor Saniette, I won’t have him made unhappy,” said Mme Verdurin in a tone of false pity, so as to leave no one in doubt as to her husband’s rudeness.
“I was at the Ch . . . Che . . .”
“Che, che, do try to speak distinctly,” said M. Verdurin, “I can’t understand a word you say.”
Almost without exception, the faithful burst out laughing, looking like a group of cannibals in whom the sight of a wounded white man has aroused the thirst for blood. For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike. And we all of us laugh at a person whom we see being made fun of, though it does not prevent us from venerating him ten years later in a circle where he is admired. It is in the same fashion that the populace banishes or acclaims its kings.
“Come, now, it’s not his fault,” said Mme Verdurin.
“It’s not mine either, people ought not to dine out if they can’t speak properly.”
“I was at the Chercheuse d’Esprit by Favart.”
“What! It’s the Chercheuse d’Esprit that you call the Chercheuse? Why, that’s marvellous[ I might have gone on trying for a hundred years without guessing it,” cried M. Verdurin, who nevertheless would have decided immediately that you were not literary, were not artistic, were not “one of us,” if he had heard you quote the full title of certain works. For instance, one was expected to say the Malade, the Bourgeois, and anyone who added imaginaire or gentilhomme would have shown that he did not “belong,” just as in a drawing-room a person proves that he is not in society by saying “M. de Montesquiou-Fezensac” instead of “M. de Montesquiou.”
“But it isn’t so extraordinary,” said Saniette, breathless with emotion but smiling, although he was in no smiling mood.
Mme Verdurin could not contain herself: “Oh yes it is!” she exclaimed with a snigger. “You may be quite sure that nobody would ever have guessed that you meant the Chercheuse d’Esprit.”
M. Verdurin went on in a gentler tone, addressing both Saniette and Brichot: “It’s not a bad play, actually, the Chercheuse d’Esprit.”
Uttered in a serious tone, this simple remark, in which no trace of malice was to be detected, did Saniette as much good and aroused in him as much gratitude as a compliment. He was unable to utter a single word and preserved a happy silence. Brich
“I know the portrait of Favart to which you allude,” said M. de Charlus. “I have seen a very fine print of it at the Comtesse Molé’s.”
This name made a great impression upon Mme Verdurin. “Oh! so you go to Mme de Molé’s!” she exclaimed. She supposed that people said “the Comtesse Molé,” “Madame Molé,” simply as an abbreviation, as she heard people say “the Rohans” or in contempt, as she herself said, “Madame La Trémoïlle.” She had no doubt that the Comtesse Molé, who knew the Queen of Greece and the Princesse de Caprarola, must have as much right as anybody to the particle, and for once in a way had decided to bestow it upon so brilliant a personage, and one who had been extremely civil to herself. And so, to make it clear that she had spoken thus on purpose and did not grudge the Comtesse her “de,” she went on: “But I had no idea that you knew Madame de Molé!” as though it was doubly extraordinary, both that M. de Charlus should know the lady and that Mme Verdurin should not know that he knew her. Now society, or at least the people to whom M. de Charlus gave that name, forms a relatively homogeneous and closed whole. And whereas it is understandable that in the disparate vastness of the middle classes a barrister should say to somebody who knows one of his schoolfriends: “But how in the world do you come to know him?”, to be surprised at a Frenchman’s knowing the meaning of the word temple or forest would be hardly more extraordinary than to wonder at the accidents that might have brought together M. de Charlus and the Comtesse Molé. Moreover, even if such an acquaintance had not followed quite naturally from the laws that govern society, even if it had been fortuitous, how could there be anything strange in the fact that Mme Verdurin did not know of it, since she was meeting M. de Charlus for the first time, and his relations with Mme Molé were far from being the only thing she did not know about him, for in fact she knew nothing.