In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV (43 page)

“Yes,” said the Princess, “M. Veldulin insisted that it should not be put off, precisely in order to keep his wife from
thinking
. And besides, after never failing for all these years to entertain on Wednesdays, such a change in her habits would have been bound to upset her. Her nerves are velly bad just now. M. Verdurin was particularly pleased that you were coming to dine this evening, because he knew that it would be a great distraction for Mme Verdurin,” the Princess said to me, forgetting her pretence of having never heard my name before. “I think that it will be as well not to say
anything
in front of Mme Verdurin,” she added.

“Ah! I’m glad you warned me,” Brichot artlessly replied. “I shall pass on your advice to Cottard.”

The carriage stopped for a moment. It moved on again, but the sound that the wheels had been making in the village street had ceased. We had turned into the drive of La Raspelière, where M. Verdurin stood waiting for us on the steps. “I did well to put on a dinner-jacket,” he said, observing with pleasure that the faithful had put on theirs, “since I have such smart gentlemen in my party.” And as I apologised for not having changed: “Why, that’s quite all right. We’re all friends here. I should be delighted to offer you one of my own dinner-jackets, but it wouldn’t fit you.”

The handclasp full of emotion which, by way of condolence at the death of the pianist, Brichot gave our host as he entered the hall of La Raspelière elicited no response from the latter. I told him how greatly I admired the scenery. “Ah! I’m delighted, and you’ve seen nothing yet; we must take you round. Why not come and spend a week or two here? The air is excellent.”

Brichot was afraid that his handclasp had not been understood. “Ah! poor Dechambre!” he said, but in an undertone, in case Mme Verdurin was within earshot.

“It’s dreadful,” replied M. Verdurin cheerfully.

“So young,” Brichot pursued the point.

Annoyed at being detained over these futilities, M. Verdurin replied hurriedly and with a high-pitched moan, not of grief but of irritated impatience: “Ah well, there we are, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, talking about him won’t bring him back to life, will it?” And, his civility returning with his joviality: “Come along, my dear Brichot, get your things off quickly. We have a bouillabaisse which mustn’t be kept waiting. But, in heaven’s name, don’t start talking about Dechambre to Mme Verdurin. You know that she always hides her feelings, but she’s quite morbidly sensitive. No, but I swear to you, when she heard that Dechambre was dead, she almost wept,” said M. Verdurin in a tone of profound irony. Hearing him, one might have concluded that it implied a form of insanity to regret the death of a friend of thirty years’ standing, and at the same time one gathered that the perpetual union of M. Verdurin and his wife did not preclude constant censure and frequent irritation on his part. “If you mention it to her, she’ll go and make herself ill again. It’s deplorable, three weeks after her bronchitis. When that happens, it’s I who have to nurse her. You can understand that I’ve had more than enough of it. Grieve for Dechambre’s fate in your heart as much as you like. Think of him, but don’t speak about him. I was very fond of Dechambre, but you cannot blame me for being fonder still of my wife. Here’s Cottard, now, you can ask him.” And indeed he knew that a family doctor can do many little services, such as prescribing that one must not give way to grief.

The docile Cottard had said to the Mistress: “Upset yourself like that, and tomorrow you’ll give
me
a temperature of 102,” as he might have said to the cook: “Tomorrow you’ll give me sweetbread.” Medicine, when it fails to cure, busies itself with changing the sense of verbs and pronouns.

M. Verdurin was glad to find that Saniette, notwithstanding the snubs that he had had to endure two days earlier, had not deserted the little nucleus. And indeed Mme Verdurin and her husband had acquired, in their idleness, cruel instincts for which the great occasions, occurring too rarely, no longer sufficed. They had succeeded in effecting a breach between Odette and Swann, and between Brichot and his mistress. They would try it again with others, that was understood. But the opportunity did not present itself every day. Whereas, thanks to his quivering sensibility, his timorous and easily panicked shyness, Saniette provided them with a whipping-boy for every day in the year. And so, for fear of his defecting, they took care always to invite him with friendly and persuasive words, such as the senior boys at school or the old soldiers in a regiment address to a greenhorn whom they are anxious to cajole so that they may get him into their clutches with the sole object of ragging and bullying him when he can no longer escape.

“Whatever you do,” Cottard reminded Brichot, not having heard what M. Verdurin had been saying, “mum’s the word in front of Mme Verdurin.”

“Have no fear, O Cottard, you are dealing with a sage, as Theocritus says. Besides, M. Verdurin is right, what is the use of lamentations?” Brichot added, for, though capable of assimilating verbal forms and the ideas which they suggested to him, but lacking subtlety, he had discerned and admired in M. Verdurin’s remarks the most courageous stoicism. “All the same, it’s a great talent that has gone from the world.”

“What, are you still talking about Dechambre?” said M. Verdurin, who had gone on ahead of us, and, seeing that we were not following him, turned back. “Listen,” he said to Brichot, “don’t let’s exaggerate. The fact of his being dead is no excuse for making him out a genius, which he was not. He played well, I admit, but the main thing was that he was in the right surroundings here; transplanted, he ceased to exist. My wife was infatuated with him and made his reputation. You know what she’s like. I will go further: in the interest of his own reputation he died at the right moment,
à point
, as the lobsters, grilled according to Pampille’s incomparable recipe, are going to be, I hope (unless you keep us standing here all night with your jeremiads in this kasbah exposed to all the winds of heaven). You don’t seriously expect us all to die of hunger because Dechambre is dead, when for the last year he was obliged to practise scales before giving a concert, in order to recover for the moment, and for the moment only, the suppleness of his wrists. Besides, you’re going to hear this evening, or at any rate to meet, for the rascal is too fond of deserting his art for the card-table after dinner, somebody who is a far greater artist than Dechambre, a youngster whom my wife has discovered” (as she had discovered Dechambre, and Paderewski, and the rest), “called Morel. The beggar hasn’t arrived yet. I shall have to send a carriage down to meet the last train. He’s coming with an old friend of his family whom he ran into, and who bores him to tears, but otherwise, so as not to get into trouble with his father, he would have been obliged to stay down at Doncières and keep him company: the Baron de Charlus.”

The faithful entered the drawing-room. M. Verdurin, who had remained behind with me while I took off my things, took my arm by way of a joke, as one’s host does at a dinner-party when there is no lady for one to take in. “Did you have a pleasant journey?” “Yes, M. Brichot told me things which interested me greatly,” said I, thinking of the etymologies, and because I had heard that the Verdurins greatly admired Brichot. “I’m surprised to hear that he told you anything,” said M. Verdurin, “he’s such a retiring man, and talks so little about the things he knows.” This compliment did not strike me as being very apt. “He seems charming,” I remarked. “Exquisite, delightful, not an ounce of pedantry, such a light, fantastic touch, my wife adores him, and so do I!” replied M. Verdurin in an exaggerated tone, as though reciting a lesson. Only then did I grasp that what he had said to me about Brichot was ironical. And I wondered whether M. Verdurin, since those far-off days of which I had heard reports, had not shaken off his wife’s tutelage.

The sculptor was greatly astonished to learn that the Verdurins were willing to have M. de Charlus in their house. Whereas in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where M. de Charlus was so well known, nobody ever referred to his morals (of which the majority had no suspicion and others remained doubtful, crediting him rather with intense but platonic friendships, with indiscretions, while the enlightened few carefully concealed them, shrugging their shoulders at any insinuation upon which some malicious Gallardon might venture), these morals, the nature of which was known to only a handful of intimates, were on the contrary denounced daily far from the circle in which he moved, just as, at times, the sound of artillery fire is audible only beyond an intervening zone of silence. Moreover, in those professional and artistic circles where he was regarded as the personification of inversion, his high social position and his noble origin were completely unknown, by a process analogous to that which, among the people of Romania, has brought it about that the name of Ronsard is known as that of a great nobleman, while his poetical work is unknown there. Furthermore, the Romanian estimate of Ronsard’s nobility is founded upon an error. Similarly, if in the world of painters and actors M. de Charlus had such a bad reputation, this was due to their confusing him with a Comte Leblois de Charlus who was not even related to him (or, if so, the connexion was extremely remote), and who had been arrested, possibly by mistake, in the course of a notorious police raid. In short, all the stories related of our M. de Charlus referred to the other. Many professionals swore that they had had relations with M. de Charlus, and did so in good faith, believing that the false M. de Charlus was the true one, the false one possibly encouraging, partly from an affectation of nobility, partly to conceal his vice, a confusion which was for a long time prejudicial to the real one (the Baron we know), and afterwards, when he had begun to go down the hill, became a convenience, for it enabled him likewise to say: “It isn’t me.” And in the present instance it was not him to whom the rumours referred. Finally, what added even more to the falseness of the comments on a true fact (the Baron’s taste) was the fact that he had had an intimate but perfectly pure friendship with an author who, in the theatrical world, had for some reason acquired a similar reputation which he in no way deserved. When they were seen together at a first night, people would say: “You see,” just as it was supposed that the Duchesse de Guermantes had immoral relations with the Princesse de Parme—an indestructible legend, for it would have been dispelled only by a proximity to those two noble ladies to which the people who spread it would presumably never attain other than by staring at them through their glasses in the theatre and slandering them to the occupant of the next stall. From M. de Charlus’s morals, the sculptor concluded all the more readily that the Baron’s social position must be equally low, since he had no information whatsoever about the family to which M. de Charlus belonged, his title or his name. Just as Cottard imagined that everybody knew that the title of doctor of medicine meant nothing and the title of hospital consultant meant something, so people in society are mistaken when they suppose that everybody has the same idea of the social importance of their name as they themselves and the other people of their circle.

The Prince d’Agrigente was regarded as a flashy foreigner by a club servant to whom he owed twenty-five louis, and regained his importance only in the Faubourg Saint-Germain where he had three sisters who were duchesses, for it is not among humble people, in whose eyes he is of small account, but among smart people, who know who is who, that a nobleman can hope to make an impression. M. de Charlus, indeed, was to learn in the course of the evening that his host had only the most superficial notions about the most illustrious ducal families.

Convinced that the Verdurins were making a grave mistake in allowing an individual of tarnished reputation to be admitted to so “select” a household as theirs, the sculptor felt it his duty to take the Mistress aside. “You are entirely mistaken; besides, I never pay any attention to such tales, and even if it were true, I may be allowed to point out that it could hardly compromise
me
!” replied Mme Verdurin angrily, for, Morel being the principal feature of the Wednesdays, she was particularly anxious not to give him any offence. As for Cottard, he could not express an opinion, for he had asked leave to go upstairs for a moment to “do a little job” in the
buen retiro
and afterwards, in M. Verdurin’s bedroom, to write an extremely urgent letter for a patient.

An eminent publisher from Paris who had come to call, expecting to be invited to stay to dinner, withdrew with savage abruptness, realising that he was not smart enough for the little clan. He was a tall, stout man, very dark, with a studious and somewhat trenchant look about him. He reminded one of an ebony paper-knife.

Mme Verdurin, who, to welcome us in her immense drawing-room, in which displays of grasses, poppies, field-flowers, picked only that morning, alternated with a similar theme painted in monochrome two centuries earlier by an artist of exquisite taste, had risen for a moment from a game of cards which she was playing with an old friend, begged us to excuse her for a minute or two until she finished her game while continuing to talk to us. What I told her about my impressions was not entirely pleasing to her. For one thing I was shocked to observe that she and her husband came indoors every day long before the hour of those sunsets which were considered so fine when seen from that cliff, and finer still from the terrace of La Raspelière, and which I would have travelled miles to see. “Yes, it’s incomparable,” said Mme Verdurin carelessly, with a glance at the huge windows which gave the room a wall of glass. “Even though we have it in front of us all the time, we never grow tired of it,” and she turned her attention back to her cards. But my very enthusiasm made me exacting. I complained of not being able to see from the drawing-room the rocks of Darnetal which Elstir had told me were quite lovely at that hour, when they reflected so many colours. “Ah! you can’t see them from here, you’d have to go to the end of the gardens, to the ‘view of the bay.’ From the seat there, you can take in the whole panorama. But you can’t go there by yourself, you’ll lose your way. I can take you there, if you like,” she added half-heartedly. “Come now, no,” said her husband, “haven’t you had enough of those rheumatic pains you had the other day? Do you want a new lot? He can come back and see the view of the bay another time.” I did not insist, and realised that it was enough for the Verdurins to know that this sunset made its way into their drawing-room or dining-room, like a magnificent painting, like a priceless Japanese enamel, justifying the high rent they were paying for La Raspelière, furnished, without their having constantly to raise their eyes towards it; the important thing here for them was to live comfortably, to go for drives, to eat well, to talk, to entertain agreeable friends whom they provided with amusing games of billiards, good meals, merry tea-parties. I noticed, however, later on, how intelligently they had got to know the district, taking their guests for excursions as “novel” as the music to which they made them listen. The part which the flowers of La Raspelière, the paths along the edge of the sea, the old houses, the undiscovered churches, played in M. Verdurin’s life was so great that those who saw him only in Paris and who themselves substituted urban luxuries for seaside and country life could barely understand the exalted idea that he himself had of his own life, or the importance that his pleasures gave him in his own eyes. This importance was further enhanced by the fact that the Verdurins were convinced that La Raspelière, which they hoped to purchase, was a property without its match in the world. This superiority which their self-esteem made them attribute to La Raspelière justified in their eyes my enthusiasm which, but for that, would have annoyed them slightly, because of the disappointments which it involved (like those which my first experience of Berma had once caused me) and which I frankly admitted to them.