Meanwhile, as she sat down to table, the Princesse de Parme remembered that she had thought of inviting Mme d’Heudicourt to the Opéra, and, wishing to be assured that this would not in any way offend Mme de Guermantes, was preparing to sound her.
At this moment M. de Grouchy entered, his train having been held up for an hour owing to a derailment. He made what excuses he could. His wife, had she been a Courvoisier, would have died of shame. But Mme de Grouchy was not a Guermantes for nothing. As her husband was apologising for being late, “I see,” she broke in, “that even in little things arriving late is a tradition in your family.”
“Sit down, Grouchy, and don’t let them fluster you,” said the Duke. “Although I move with the times, I must admit that the Battle of Waterloo had its points, since it brought about the Restoration of the Bourbons, and, better still, in a way that made them unpopular. But you seem to be a regular Nimrod!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I did get quite a good bag. I shall take the liberty of sending the Duchess six brace of pheasant tomorrow.”
An idea seemed to flicker in the eyes of Mme de Guermantes. She insisted that M. de Grouchy must not give himself the trouble of sending the pheasants. And making a sign to the betrothed footman with whom I had exchanged a few words on my way from the Elstir room, “Poullein,” she told him, “you will go tomorrow and fetch M. le Comte’s pheasants and bring them straight back—you won’t mind, will you, Grouchy, if I make a few little presents. Basin and I can’t eat a dozen pheasants by ourselves.”
“But the day after tomorrow will be soon enough,” said M. de Grouchy.
“No, tomorrow suits me better,” the Duchess insisted.
Poullein had turned pale; he would miss his rendezvous with his sweetheart. This was quite enough for the diversion of the Duchess, who liked to appear to be taking a human interest in everyone.
“I know it’s your day off,” she went on to Poullein, “all you’ve got to do is change with Georges; he can take tomorrow off and stay in the day after.”
But the day after, Poullein’s sweetheart would not be free. He had no interest in going out then. As soon as he had left the room, everyone complimented the Duchess on her kindness towards her servants.
“But I only behave towards them as I’d like people to behave to me.”
“That’s just it. They can say they’ve found a good place with you all right.”
“Oh, nothing so very wonderful. But I think they all like me. That one is a little irritating because he’s in love. He thinks it incumbent on him to go about with a long face.”
At this point Poullein reappeared.
“You’re quite right,” said M. de Grouchy, “he doesn’t look very cheerful. With those fellows one has to be kind but not too kind.”
“I admit I’m not a very dreadful mistress. He’ll have nothing to do all day but call for your pheasants, sit in the house doing nothing and eat his share of them.”
“There are plenty of people who would be glad to be in his place,” said M. de Grouchy, for envy makes men blind.
“Oriane,” began the Princesse de Parme, “I had a visit the other day from your cousin d’Heudicourt; of course she’s a highly intelligent woman; she’s a Guermantes—need I say more?—but they tell me she has a spiteful tongue.”
The Duke fastened on his wife a slow gaze of feigned stupefaction. Mme de Guermantes began to laugh. Gradually the Princess became aware of their pantomime.
“But . . . do you mean to say . . . you don’t agree with me?” she stammered with growing uneasiness.
“Really, Ma’am, it’s too good of you to pay any attention to Basin’s faces. Now, Basin, you’re not to hint nasty things about our cousins.”
“Does he think she’s too malicious?” inquired the Princess briskly.
“Oh, dear me, no!” replied the Duchess. “I don’t know who told Your Highness that she was malicious. On the contrary, she’s an excellent creature who never spoke ill of anyone, or did any harm to anyone.”
“Ah!” sighed Mme de Parme, greatly relieved. “I must say I’d never noticed it either. But I know it’s often difficult not to be a bit malicious when one has a great deal of wit . . .”
“Ah! now that is a quality of which she has even less.”
“Less wit?” asked the stupefied Princess.
“Come now, Oriane,” broke in the Duke in a plaintive tone, casting to right and left of him a glance of amusement, “you heard the Princess tell you that she was a superior woman.”
“But isn’t she?”
“Superior in chest measurement, at any rate.”
“Don’t listen to him, Ma’am, he’s having you on; she’s as stupid as a (h’m) goose,” came in a loud and husky voice from Mme de Guermantes, who, a great deal more “old world” even than the Duke when she wasn’t trying, often deliberately sought to be, but in a manner entirely different from the deliquescent, lace jabot style of her husband and in reality far more subtle, with a sort of almost peasant pronunciation which had a harsh and delicious flavour of the soil. “But she’s the best woman in the world. Besides, I don’t really know that one can call it stupidity when it’s carried to such a point as that. I don’t believe I ever met anyone quite like her; she’s a case for a specialist, there’s something pathological about her, she’s a sort of ‘natural’ or cretin or ‘mooncalf,’ like the people you see in melodramas, or in L’Arlésienne. I always ask myself, when she comes here, whether the moment may not have arrived at which her intelligence is going to dawn, which makes me a little nervous always.”
The Princess marvelled at these expressions, but remained astonished by the verdict. “She repeated to me—and so did Mme d’Epinay—your remark about ‘Teaser Augustus.’ It’s delicious,” she put in.
M. de Guermantes explained the joke to me. I wanted to tell him that his brother, who pretended not to know me, was expecting me that very evening at eleven o’clock. But I had not asked Robert whether I might mention this assignation, and as the fact that M. de Charlus had practically fixed it with me himself directly contradicted what he had told the Duchess, I judged it more tactful to say nothing.
“‘Teaser Augustus’ isn’t bad,” said M. de Guermantes, “but Mme d’Heudicourt probably didn’t tell you a far wittier remark Oriane made to her the other day in reply to an invitation to luncheon.”
“Oh, no! Do tell me!”
“Now, Basin, you keep quiet. In the first place, it was a stupid remark, and it will make the Princess think me inferior even to my nitwit of a cousin. Though I don’t know why I should call her my cousin. She’s one of Basin’s cousins. Still, I believe she is related to me in some sort of way.”
“Oh!” cried the Princesse de Parme at the idea that she could possibly think Mme de Guermantes stupid, and protesting desperately that nothing could ever make the Duchess fall from the place she held in her estimation.
“Besides, we’ve already deprived her of the qualities of the mind, and since the remark in question tends to deny certain qualities of the heart, it seems to me inopportune to repeat it.”
“‘Deny her!’ ‘Inopportune!’ How well she expresses herself!” said the Duke with a pretence of irony, to win admiration for the Duchess.
“Now, then, Basin, you’re not to make fun of your wife.”
“I should explain to your Royal Highness,” went on the Duke, “that Oriane’s cousin may be superior, good, stout, anything you like to mention, but she is not exactly—what shall I say—lavish.”
“Yes, I know, she’s terribly close-fisted,” broke in the Princess.
“I should not have ventured to use the expression, but you have hit on exactly the right word. It’s reflected in her house-keeping, and especially in the cooking, which is excellent, but strictly rationed.”
“Which gives rise to some quite amusing scenes,” M. de Bréauté interrupted him. “For instance, my dear Basin, I was down at Heudicourt one day when you were expected, Oriane and yourself.
They had made the most sumptuous preparations when a footman brought in a telegram during the afternoon to say that you weren’t coming.”
“That doesn’t surprise me!” said the Duchess, who not only was difficult to get, but liked people to know as much.
“Your cousin read the telegram, was duly distressed, then immediately, without missing a trick, telling herself that there was no point in going to unnecessary expense for so unimportant a gentleman as myself, called the footman back: ‘Tell the cook not to put on the chicken!’ she shouted after him. And that evening I heard her asking the butler: ‘Well? What about the beef that was left over yesterday? Aren’t you going to let us have that?’ ”
“All the same, one must admit that the fare you get there is of the very best,” said the Duke, who fancied that in using this expression he was showing himself to be very old school. “I don’t know any house where one eats better.”
“Or less,” put in the Duchess.
“It’s quite wholesome and quite adequate for what you would call a vulgar yokel like myself,” went on the Duke. “One doesn’t outrun one’s appetite.”
“Oh, if it’s to be taken as a cure, that’s another matter. It’s certainly more healthy than sumptuous. Not that it’s as good as all that,” added Mme de Guermantes, who was not at all pleased that the title of “best table in Paris” should be awarded to any but her own. “With my cousin it’s just the same as with those costive authors who turn out a one-act play or a sonnet every fifteen years. The sort of thing people call little masterpieces, trifles that are perfect gems, in fact what I loathe most in the world. The cooking at Zénaïde’s is not bad, but you would think it more ordinary if she was less parsimonious. There are some things her cook does quite well, and others he doesn’t bring off. I’ve had some thoroughly bad dinners there, as in most houses, only they’ve done me less harm there because the stomach is, after all, more sensitive to quantity than to quality.”
“Well, to get on with the story,” the Duke concluded, “Zénaïde insisted that Oriane should go to luncheon there, and as my wife is not very fond of going out anywhere she resisted, wanted to be sure that under the pretence of a quiet meal she was not being trapped into some great junket, and tried in vain to find out who else would be of the party. ‘You must come,’ Zénaïde insisted, boasting of all the good things there would be to eat. ‘You’re going to have a purée of chestnuts, I need say no more than that, and there will be seven little bouchées à la reine.’ ‘Seven little bouchées!’ cried Oriane, ‘that means that we shall be at least eight!’ ”
There was silence for a few seconds, and then the Princess, having seen the point, let her laughter explode like a peal of thunder. “Ah! ‘Then we shall be eight’—it’s exquisite. How very well phrased!” she said, having by a supreme effort recalled the expression she had heard used by Mme d’Epinay, which this time was more appropriate.
“Oriane, that was very charming of the Princess, she said your remark was well phrased.”
“But, my dear, you’re telling me nothing new. I know how clever the Princess is,” replied Mme de Guermantes, who readily appreciated a remark when it was uttered at once by a royal personage and in praise of her own wit. “I’m very proud that Ma’am should appreciate my humble phrasings. I don’t remember, though, that I ever did say such a thing, and if I did, it must have been to flatter my cousin, for if she had ordered seven ‘mouthfuls,’ the mouths, if I may so express myself, would have been a round dozen if not more.”
During this time the Comtesse d’Arpajon, who, before dinner, had told me that her aunt would have been so happy to show me round her house in Normandy, was saying to me over the Prince d’Agrigente’s head that where she would most like to entertain me was in the Côte d’Or, because there, at Pont-le-Duc, she would be at home.
“The archives of the château would interest you. There are some absolutely fascinating correspondences between all the most prominent people of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I’ve spent many wonderful hours there, living in the past,” she declared, and I remembered that M. de Guermantes had told me that she was extremely well up in literature.
“She owns all M. de Bornier’s manuscripts,” went on the Princess, speaking of Mme d’Heudicourt, and anxious to make the most of the good reasons she might have for befriending that lady.
“She must have dreamed it, I don’t believe she ever even knew him,” said the Duchess.
“What is especially interesting is that these correspondences are with people of different countries,” went on the Comtesse d’Arpajon who, allied to the principal ducal and even reigning families of Europe, was always glad to remind people of the fact.
“Surely, Oriane,” said M. de Guermantes, meaningly, “you can’t have forgotten that dinner-party where you had M. de Bornier sitting next to you!” “But, Basin,” the Duchess interrupted him, “if you mean to inform me that I knew M. de Bornier, why of course I did, he even called upon me several times, but I could never bring myself to invite him to the house because I should always have been obliged to have it disinfected afterwards with formol. As for the dinner you mean, I remember it only too well, but it was certainly not at Zénaïde’s, who never set eyes on Bornier in her life and would probably think if you spoke to her of La Fille de Roland that you meant a Bonaparte princess who is said to be engaged to the son of the King of Greece;25 no, it was at the Austrian Embassy. Dear Hoyos imagined he was giving me a great treat by planting that pestiferous academician on the chair next to mine. I quite thought I had a squadron of mounted police sitting beside me. I was obliged to stop my nose as best I could all through dinner; I didn’t dare breathe until the gruyère came round.”
M. de Guermantes, having achieved his secret objective, made a furtive examination of his guests’ faces to judge the effect of the Duchess’s pleasantry.
“As a matter of fact I find that old correspondences have a peculiar charm,” the lady who was well up in literature and had such fascinating letters in her château went on, in spite of the intervening head of the Prince d’Agrigente. “Have you noticed how often a writer’s letters are superior to the rest of his work? What’s the name of that author who wrote Salammbô?”
I should have liked not to have to reply in order not to prolong this conversation, but I felt it would be disobliging to the Prince d’Agrigente, who had pretended to know perfectly well who Salammbô was by and out of pure politeness to be leaving it to me to say, but who was now in a painful quandary.
“Flaubert,” I ended up by saying, but the vigorous signs of assent that came from the Prince’s head smothered the sound of my reply, so that my interlocutress was not exactly sure whether I had said Paul Bert or Fulbert, names which she did not find entirely satisfactory.
“In any case,” she went on, “how intriguing his correspondence is, and how superior to his books! It explains him, in fact, because one sees from everything he says about the difficulty he has in writing a book that he wasn’t a real writer, a gifted man.”
“Talking of correspondence, I must say I find Gambetta’s admirable,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes, to show that she was not afraid to be found taking an interest in a proletarian and a radical. M. de Bréauté, who fully appreciated the brilliance of this feat of daring, gazed round him with an eye at once tipsy and affectionate, after which he wiped his monocle.
“Gad, it’s infernally dull, that Fille de Roland,” said M. de Guermantes (who was still on the subject of M. de Bornier), with the satisfaction which he derived from the sense of his own superiority over a work which had bored him so much, and perhaps also from the suave mari magno feeling one has in the middle of a good dinner, when one recalls such terrible evenings in the past. “Still, there were some quite good lines in it, and a patriotic feeling.”
I made a remark that implied that I had no admiration for M. de Bornier.
“Ah! have you got something against him?” the Duke asked with genuine curio
sity, for he always imagined when anyone spoke ill of a man that it must be on account of a personal resentment, just as to speak well of a woman marked the beginning of a love affair. “You’ve obviously got a grudge against him. What did he do to you? You must tell us. Why yes, there must be some skeleton in the cupboard or you wouldn’t run him down. It’s long-winded, La Fille de Roland, but it’s quite strong in parts.”
The Guermantes Way Page 60
