Swann's Way
in such favour with the people who 'really counted,' that he made it
possible for us to transgress laws which Françoise had taught me to
regard as more ineluctable than the laws of life and death, as when we
were allowed to postpone for a year the compulsory repainting of the
walls of our house, alone among all the houses in that part of Paris,
or when he obtained permission from the Minister for Mme. Sazerat's
son, who had been ordered to some watering-place, to take his degree two
months before the proper time, among the candidates whose surnames began
with 'A,' instead of having to wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen
seriously ill, if I had been captured by brigands, convinced that my
father's understanding with the supreme powers was too complete, that
his letters of introduction to the Almighty were too irresistible for my
illness or captivity to turn out anything but vain illusions, in which
there was no danger actually threatening me, I should have awaited
with perfect composure the inevitable hour of my return to comfortable
realities, of my deliverance from bondage or restoration to health.
Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind
when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no
more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to
an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the
Government and with Providence that I should be the first writer of
my day. But at other times, while my parents were growing impatient
at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my actual life,
instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and one which he
could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be comprised in
a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit, from whose
judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was bound,
helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in
the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die
like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one
of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I
renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches
that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud
in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
conscience.
One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de
Guermantes. Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was
ill, four years ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's
wedding. You will be able to see her in church." It was from Dr.
Percepied, as it happened, that I had heard most about Mme. de
Guermantes, and he had even shewn us the number of an illustrated paper
in which she was depicted in the costume which she had worn at a fancy
dress ball given by the Princesse de Léon.
Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a
large nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy
and new and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And
because on the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had
been very warm, I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible,
details which resembled the portrait that had been shewn to me; because,
more especially, the particular features which I remarked in this lady,
if I attempted to catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the
same terms:--_a large nose, blue eyes_, as Dr. Percepied had used when
describing in my presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself:
"This lady is like the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from
which she was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath
its flat tombstones, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb,
rested the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having
heard it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family,
whenever any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there
was, indeed, but one woman resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes
who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there,
could be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was
immense. It arose from my not having borne in mind, when I thought of
Mme. de Guermantes, that I was picturing her to myself in the colours of
a tapestry or a painted window, as living in another century, as being
of another substance than the rest of the human race. Never had I taken
into account that she might have a red face, a mauve scarf like Mme.
Sazerat; and the oval curve of her cheeks reminded me so strongly of
people whom I had seen at home that the suspicion brushed against my
mind (though it was immediately banished) that this lady in her creative
principle, in the molecules of her physical composition, was perhaps
not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but that her body, in
ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged to a certain
type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors and
tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!" were
the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de
Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like
the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for
the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was
not of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others
that allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous
syllable, but which was so real that everything, even to the fiery
little spot at the corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her
subjection to the laws of life, as in a transformation scene on the
stage a crease in the dress of a fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger,
indicate the material presence of a living actress before our eyes,
whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking merely
at a projection of limelight from a lantern.
Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
(perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder
whether the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme. de
Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes,
with a space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often
dreamed, now that I could see that she had a real existence independent
of myself, acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination,
which, paralysed for a moment by contact with a reality so different
from anything that it had expected, began to react and to say within me:
"Great and glorious before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes
had the right of life and death over their vassals; the Duchesse de
Guermantes descends from Geneviève de Brabant. She does not know, nor
would she consent to know, any of the people who are here to-day."
And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
alone, as far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here
and wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested
upon myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray
of sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since
she remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to
notice the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course
of their play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was
impossible for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the
vagrancy of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.
I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before
I had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her
I should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red
cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so much precious,
authentic, unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now
that, whenever I brought my mind to bear upon that face--and
especially, perhaps, in my determination, that form of the instinct
of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in
ourselves, not to admit that I had been in any way deceived--I found
only beauty there; setting her once again (since they were one and the
same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes
whom, until then, I had been used to conjure into an imagined shape)
apart from and above that common run of humanity with which the sight,
pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
round me: "She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle.
Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility!
it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant,
that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all
those Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose
inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in
return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might
count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and
natural charm. And then, too, since she could not bring into play the
deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs,
in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but must allow her vague
thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light
which she was powerless to control, she was anxious not to distress in
any way, not to seem to be despising those humbler mortals over whom
that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere arrested. I can see
again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and buoyant, the gentle
astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without daring to