Swann's Way
fashionable gathering to which she was going to the simple proportions
of a ceremony which would be boring in the extreme, but at which she was
obliged to be present, and there would be something touching about her
appearance. "Besides, I must pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's
gone to see those friends of his--you know them too, I'm sure,--who are
called after a bridge--oh, yes, the Iénas."
"It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!"
said the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went
on, wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying
a fresh dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess
instinctively looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's
not the same thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine
of its kind; they were people who really did fight like heroes."
"But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented,
though with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see
this Princesse d'Iéna, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because
I don't know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not
what you think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face
against! Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face
against them?" she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that,
ever since the day upon which the Prince des Laumes had married his
fascinating cousin, he had been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow,
it isn't that at all. They're people he has known for ever so long, they
do him very well, and that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell
you what he's told me about their house; it's quite enough. Can you
imagine it, all their furniture is 'Empire'!"
"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
grandparents."
"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say?
I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that
hideous style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like
bath-taps!"
"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough
from the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be
beautiful ... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that
myself, that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in
the attics at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all,
that's not the point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even
go to see them among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them,
but--I don't know them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a
little girl, that it was not polite to call on people one didn't know."
She assumed a tone of childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what
I was taught to do. Can't you see those good people, with a totally
strange woman bursting into their house? Why, I might get a most hostile
reception."
And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
"My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
"No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell
her so. "Why? How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most
unpleasant thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them,
but if they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see
the people I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know
as well, even if they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad.
Besides, except when it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite
apart from that, I'm not sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in
society. It's often quite boring enough to have to give a dinner-party,
but if one had to offer one's arm to Spartacus, to let him take one
down...! Really, no; it would never be Vercingetorix I should send for,
to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I should keep him for really big
'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
"Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You
have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
"But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied
him, with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked
to the service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with
a radiant sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such
speeches--even if the Princess had to make them herself--as were in
praise of her wit or of her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your
Cambremer woman; over there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see
him? Ask him to introduce you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
"Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
"My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think
he didn't want to see me!"
Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of
her recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all
that country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not
to be separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
half-amorous--with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess--a
manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words,
for his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
"Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has
come up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the
birds, and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go
and pick a few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are
even some drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost
which must be making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty
indeed, my dear Princess."
"What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress,
"Why, you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not
chestnuts, no,--oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess
have known what was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't
tell me, even."
Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept
up the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
compliments which most other people would not and need not understand,
did not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had
been speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of
laughter, both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set,
and because she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself
without finding it exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
"Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with
your approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person,
are you also her neighbour in the country?"
Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy
talking to Swann, had drifted away.
"But you are, yourself, Princess!"
"I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
wish I had!"
"No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used
to come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are
Comtesse de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
"I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
for a hundred francs, every year, by the Curé, which is a due that I
could very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a
startling name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with
a laugh.
"It begins no better." Swann took the point.
"Yes; that double abbreviation!"
"Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
word."
"But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in
the most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of
taste--but how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in
a coaxing tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not
make that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the
name Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only
when I see you that I stop feeling bored."
Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the
trouble to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that
enwrapped them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one
found that they were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they
had the 'tone' of the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and
the Princess had not an idea in common. But since Swann had become so
melancholy, and was always in that trembling condition which precedes
a flood of tears, he had the same need to speak about his grief that
a murderer has to tell some one about his crime. And when he heard
the Princess say that life was a dreadful business, he felt as much
comforted as if she had spoken to him of Odette.
"Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
spend a most pleasant evening together."
"I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but
I must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a
horror of 'picturesque spots'."
"I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to
be happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there
speak to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields
begin to stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that
I am going to hear some news; and those little houses by the water's
edge... I should be quite wretched!"
"Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off
her daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),--perhaps both--to
each other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince...
Pretend to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and
invite me to dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now
that I have seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you
off and take you to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased