The Lemoine Affair

by Marcel Proust

  And, sensing him deeply wounded (because of which, despite what I knew of his insouciance, I conceived some hope), without pausing, so as to unburden myself once and for all of the unfortunate medicine I had to make him swallow, and so as not to give him time to interrupt me, I represented to him with the most frightful detail with what abandon he lived at the court, and how advanced this neglect—the right word had to be said, this contempt—had become in a few years; how these would be increased by the intrigues that would not fail to use the so-called inventions of Le Moine to cast wicked accusations against the Duc d’Orléans himself that might be absurd, but dangerous down to the last point; I reminded him—and I still tremble sometimes, at night when I wake up, when I think of the boldness I had in using these very words—that he had been accused many times of poisoning the princes who barred his way to the throne; that this great pile of gemstones they would have accepted as real would help him more easily attain the throne of Spain, for which reason no one doubted there was an entente between him, the Viennese court, the Emperor, and Rome; that because of the detestable authority of Rome he rejected Mme d’Orléans, and that it was a blessing from Providence for him that her recent confinements were fortunate, since otherwise the wicked rumors of poisoning would have been renewed; that to tell the truth, for desiring the death of Madame his wife, he was not like his brother guilty of Italian taste—these were my very terms—but that it was the only vice of which he was not accused (along with not having clean hands), since his relations with Mme la Duchesse de Berry seemed to many not to be those of a father; that if he had not inherited the abominable taste of Monsieur for all the rest, he was indeed his son from the habit of the perfumes that had put him out of favor with the king who could not bear them, and later on had favored the frightful rumors of having made an attempt on the Dauphine’s life, and by having always put into practice the detestable maxim of dividing to conquer with the help of repeating rumors from one person to another which were the plague of his court, as they had been that of Monsieur, his father, where they had prevented a unified reign: that he had preserved for Monsieur’s favorites a consideration that he did not grant to another, and that it was they—I did not force myself to name Effiat—who, aided by Mirepoix and La Mouchi, had cleared the way for Le Moine; that having as his only shield only men who no longer counted for anything after the death of Monsieur and who during his life had only amounted to anything because of the horrid conviction everyone had, even the king who had thus arranged to marry Mme d’Orléans, that one could obtain anything from them by means of money, and from him by those in whose clutches he was, no one feared attacking him by the most odious, the most intimate calumny, that it was high time, if indeed there still was time, for him finally to recover his grandeur and there was only one way to do that: to take measures in the greatest secrecy to have Le Moine arrested and, as soon as the thing was decided, not to delay the execution of it, and not to let him ever return to France.

  M. the Duc d’Orléans, who had merely exclaimed once or twice at the beginning of this speech, had afterwards kept the silence of a man devastated by such a great blow; but my last words finally made a few of his own come out of his mouth. He was not spiteful, and resolution was not his strong point:

  “What, then!” he said to me in a complaining tone, “Arrest him? But what if his invention happens to be real?”

  “What’s this, Monsieur,” I replied, utterly surprised at such an extreme and pernicious blindness, “how can you think that, and so soon after having been disabused about the writing of the false Marquis de Ruffec? But really, if you have even one doubt, call for the man who knows more than anyone else in France about chemistry and all the sciences, as has been recognized by the academies and by astronomers; his character and birth, and the stainless life that has accompanied him, are your guarantee of his word.” He understood that I was talking about the Duc de Guiche, and with the joy of a man entangled in conflicting choices, from whom another man has removed the anxiety of having to make the right one:

  “Excellent! We both had the same idea,” he said. “Guiche will decide, but I cannot see him today. You know that the King of England, traveling quite incognito under the name of the Earl of Stanhope, is coming tomorrow to talk with the King about matters in Holland and Germany; I’m giving him a party at Saint-Cloud, to which Guiche is invited. You will speak to him and me both, after dinner. But are you sure he’ll come?” he added in an embarrassed way.

  I understood that he didn’t dare summon the Duc de Guiche to the Palais Royal, where, as you may imagine from the kind of people that M. the Duc d’Orléans saw, with whom Guiche was not at all acquainted, aside from Besons and me, he came as seldom as he could, knowing that it was the libertines who ranked first there rather than men like himself. Also the Regent, always fearing the duke would shower him with reproaches, lived in constant suspicion and reserve towards him. Very careful to give everyone his due and not being unaware of what was due the true son of Monsieur, Guiche visited him only on special occasions, and I do not think anyone had seen him at the Palais Royal since he had come to pay him his respects upon the death of Monsieur, and the pregnancy of Mme d’Orléans. Even then he stayed only a short while, with indeed an air of respect, but as one who knew how to show with discernment that he was addressing, not the person, but the rank of a first prince of the blood. M. the Duc d’Orléans sensed this and did not fail to be affected by so bitter and cutting a treatment.

  As I was leaving the Palais Royal, deeply sorry to see a project consigned to the parvulo4 at Saint-Cloud, something which might not even be carried out at all if it wasn’t done at the very instant, so great were the habitual fickleness and sophistries of M. the Duc d’Orléans, a curious adventure befell me that I relate here only because it foretold only too well what would happen at the parvulo. I had just climbed into my carriage where Mme de Saint-Simon was awaiting me, when I was utterly surprised to see about to pass in front of it the carriage of S. Murat, so well-known by armies for his valor, and for that of his entire family. His sons had covered themselves with honor by traits worthy of antiquity; one, who lost a leg, shines everywhere with beauty; another son died, leaving parents who were inconsolable; so much so that although displaying pretensions as unbearable as those of the Bouillons, they did not lose the esteem of respectable people as the Bouillons had.

  I might have been less surprised by this matter of the carriage perhaps, if I had remembered some rather strange suggestions, such as at one of the last marlis5 where Mme Murat had tried the ruse of making way for Mme de Saint-Simon, but very equivocally and without putting on a show of rank, saying that there was less air there, that Mme de Saint-Simon feared air but that Fagon on the other hand had prescribed it for her; Mme de Saint-Simon had not let herself be taken in by these bold words and had briskly replied that she chose that place not because she feared the air, but because it was her place and that if Mme Murat made as if to have one, she and the other duchesses would go ask Mme the Duchesse de Bourgogne to complain to the King. To which Princess Murat had said not a word, except that she knew what was due to Mme de Saint-Simon, who was strongly applauded for her firmness by the duchesses present and by the Princess d’Espinoy. Despite this very singular marli, which had remained in my memory and where I clearly grasped that Mme Murat had wanted to test the waters, I believed this time in a mistake, so strong did the pretension seem to me; but seeing that Prince Murat’s horses were getting ahead, I sent a gentleman to ask him to make them fall back, to whom it was replied that Prince Murat would have done so with great pleasure had he been alone, but that he was with Mme Murat, and some vague words about the fancy of a foreign prince. Deeming that this was not the place to demonstrate the triviality of such an enormous undertaking, I gave the order to my coachman to spur on my horses, which did some little damage to Prince Murat’s carriage in passing. But, thoroughly worked up over the Le Moine business, I had already forgotten that of the carriage, importa
nt as it was for what concerns the smooth functioning of the justice and honor of the kingdom, when on the very day of the parvulo at Saint-Cloud, the Ducs de Mortemart and de Chevreuse came to warn me, as one who had at heart the fairest concern for the ancient and indubitable privileges of dukes, the true foundation of the monarchy, that Prince Murat, to whom the royal court had already given the dangerous assurance of its favor, had claimed the royal hand for dinner, claiming precedence over the Duc de Gramont, supporting this fine claim on being the grandson of a man who had been King of the Two Sicilies, as he had explained to M. d’Orléans through Effiat, and had been the chief support of the court of Monsieur his father, so that M. the Duc d’Orléans, utterly embarrassed and moreover not having that clear, clean, profound training whereby a decisive person reduces such whims to nothingness, had not dared to make any definitive decision about this, but had replied that he would see, that he would speak about it with the Duchesse d’Orléans. Strange irony of going off to entrust the most vital interests of the affairs of state, which rests on the privileges of dukes so long as they are not interfered with, to a person who was connected with them only by the most shameful ties and had never known what was proper to herself, much less to Monsieur her husband and to the entire peerage. This very curious and unprecedented reply had been relayed by Princess Soutzo to Messieurs de Mortemart and de Chevreuse who, surprised to the extreme, had immediately come to find me. It is common enough knowledge that she is the only woman who, for my unhappiness, had succeeded in making me emerge from the retirement in which I had been dwelling since the death of the Dauphin and the Dauphine. One scarcely knows oneself the reason for these kinds of preferences, and I could not say how she succeeded, where so many others had failed. She looked like Minerva, as she is represented in the beautiful miniatures on the pendant earrings my mother left me. Her charms had captivated me and I hardly ever stirred from my room in Versailles except to go see her. But I will wait for another part of these Memoirs that will be especially devoted to the Comtesse de Chevigné, to speak at greater length about her and her husband, who had greatly distinguished himself by his valor and was one of the most honest people I have ever known. I had had almost no commerce with M. de Mortemart since the bold cabal he had initiated against me at the Duchesse de Beauvilliers’ to make me lose the King’s esteem. Never was there a duller mind, one more inclined to be contrary, more tempted to strengthen this contrariness with gibes without any foundation whatsoever, gibes that he then went on to peddle by himself. As for M. de Chevreuse, companion to Monsieur, he was another kind of man and he has been too often spoken of elsewhere here for me to have to go back over his infinite qualities, his science, his kindness, his gentleness, his word that was always kept. But he was a man who, as they say, made mountains out of molehills, a man to dig holes in the moon. We have seen the hours I spent trying to show him the flimsiness of his fantasy about the antiquity of Chevreuse and the fits of rage he almost displayed to the chancellor for building Chaulnes. But in the end, they were both dukes, and very justly attached to the prerogatives of their rank; and since they knew that I myself was more punctilious about ducal prerogatives than anyone at court, they had come to find me because I was moreover a special friend of M. the Duc d’Orléans, and had never had in mind anything but the good of this prince, and had never abandoned him when the intrigues of La Maintenon and the Maréchal de Villeroy left him alone in the Palais Royal. I tried to reason with M. the Duc d’Orléans, I represented to him the insult he was showing not only to dukes, who would all feel wounded in the person of the Duc de Gramont, but to common sense, by letting Prince Murat, like the Ducs de la Tremoïlle earlier, under the empty pretext of being a foreign prince and because his grandfather, so well-known for his bravura, was King of Naples for a few years, take during the parvulo at Saint-Cloud the hand he would make a point not to demand later on at Versailles, at Marly, and that it would serve as a vehicle to being called Highness, since we know where these ridiculous and base ways of princery lead when they are not nipped in the bud. We have seen the effect of this in Messieurs de Turenne and de Vendôme. More authority and a more extensive knowledge were necessary than M. the Duc d’Orléans possessed. Never however was a case simpler, clearer, or easier to explain, more impossible, more abominable to contradict. On one hand, a man who cannot go back more than two generations without getting lost in a night where nothing of note appears; on the other, the head of an illustrious family known for a thousand years, father and son of two Marshals of France, never having admitted any but the greatest alliances. The Le Moine affair itself did not involve interests so vital for France.

  During the same period of time, Delaire married a Rohan and rather oddly took the name of Comte de Cambacérès. The Marquis d’Albuféra, who was a good friend of mine as was his mother, filed a number of complaints that, despite the minuscule and, as we will see later on, well-deserved esteem the King had for him, remained without effect. So now he is one of those fine Comtes de Cambacérès (not to mention the Vicomte Vigier, whom we imagine still back in Les Bains where he arose), like the counts de Montgomery and de Brye, whom ignorant Frenchmen think of as descended from G. de Montgomery, so famous for his duel under Henri II, and as belonging to the de Briey family, which included my friend the Comtesse de Briey, who has often figured in these Memoirs and who jokingly called the new Comtes de Brye, who at least were gentlemen of good stock although of lower lineage, les non brils.6

  Another, greater marriage delayed the arrival of the King of England, one that concerned more than just this country. Mlle Asquith, who was probably the most intelligent of anyone, and was like one of those beautiful figures painted in fresco that one sees in Italy, married Prince Antoine Bibesco, who had been the idol of the people who lived where he resided. He was a good friend of Morand, envoy from the King to their Catholic Majesties; he will often be discussed in the course of these Memoirs, as a good friend of my own. This marriage made a great stir, and was applauded everywhere. A few poorly educated Englishmen alas believed that Mlle Asquith was not contracting a good enough marriage. She could indeed lay claim to anything, but they did not know that these Bibescos are related to the Noailles, the Montesquious, the Chimays, and the Bauffremonts who are of Capetian stock and could with great reason claim the crown of France, as I have often said.

  Not a single duke, or any titled gentleman, went to that parvulo at Saint-Cloud, aside from me, who came because Mme de Saint-Simon was lady-in-waiting to Mme the Duchesse de Bourgogne, and consented under sheer compulsion, and at risk for any refusal, and out of necessity to obey the King, but with all the suffering and tears we have seen and the endless entreaties of M. the Duc and Mme the Duchesse d’Orléans; the Ducs de Villeroy and de La Rochefoucauld, present because they were unable to console themselves at counting for so little, one might even say for nothing, and wanting to cook up one last little stew of rumors, who used this as an occasion to pay court to the Regent; the chancellor too was there, needing advice, of which he got none that day; at times, Artagnan, Captain of the Guard, would come in, to say that the King was served, or a little later, with the fruit, bringing dog biscuits for the pointers; finally when he proclaimed that the music had begun, by which he fervently hoped to win favorable regard, which yet eluded him.

  He was of the house of Montesquiou; one of his sisters had been a lady’s maid to the Queen, had gotten ahead nicely, and had married the Duc de Gesvres. He had asked his cousin Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac to come to this parvulo at Saint-Cloud. Who replied, however, with the admirable apothegm that he was descended from the ancient counts of Fezensac, who were known before Philippe-Auguste, and that he did not see why a hundred years—it was Prince Murat he meant—should have precedence over a thousand years. He was the son of T. de Montesquiou who was well-known to my father and about whom I have spoken in another place, and he had a face and demeanor that gave a powerful sense of what he was and where he came from, his body always slim, and that’s an
understatement, as if tilted backwards; he could bend forward, actually, when the whim took him, with great affability and with bows of all kinds, but returned quite quickly to his natural position which was all pride, hauteur, intransigence not to bend before anyone and not to yield on anything, to the point of walking always straight ahead without bothering about the way, jostling someone without seeming to see him, or if he wanted to annoy someone, showing that he did see him, that he was in his way, with a great crowd always around him of people of high quality and wit to whom he sometimes bowed right and left, but most often left them, as they say, by the wayside, without seeing them, both eyes fixed in front of him, speaking very loudly, and very well, to those of his acquaintance who laughed at all the funny things he said, and with great reason, as I have said, for he was as witty as can be imagined, with graces that were his alone and that all those who approached him tried, often without wanting to, sometimes even without suspecting they were doing so, to copy and assume, but not one person ever managed to succeed, or do anything but let appear in their thoughts, in their discourse, and in the very air almost, his writing and the sound of his voice, both of which were very singular and very beautiful, like a varnish of his that was recognized immediately and that showed by its light and indelible surface that it was just as difficult not to try to imitate him as it was to manage to do so.