![In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] - Marcel Proust](/cover_900356.jpg "In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] - Marcel Proust")
none of them with the least relevance to the sentiment underlying Chopin’s music, in the direction where Swann was, and, if he moved, divert accordingly the course of her magnetic smile.
“Oriane, don’t be angry with me,” resumed Mme. de Gallardon, who could never restrain herself from sacrificing her highest social ambitions, and the hope that she might one day emerge into a light that would dazzle the world, to the immediate and secret satisfaction of saying something disagreeable, “people do say about your M. Swann that he’s the sort of man one can’t have in the house; is that true?”
“Why, you, of all people, ought to know that it’s true,” replied the Princesse des Laumes, “for you must have asked him a hundred times, and he’s never been to your house once.”
And leaving her cousin mortified afresh, she broke out again into a laugh which scandalised everyone who was trying to listen to the music, but attracted the attention of Mme. de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed, out of politeness, near the piano, and caught sight of the Princess now for the first time. Mme. de Saint-Euverte was all the more delighted to see Mme. des Laumes, as she imagined her to be still at Guermantes, looking after her father-in-law, who was ill.
“My dear Princess, you here?”
“Yes, I tucked myself away in a corner, and I’ve been hearing such lovely things.”
“What, you’ve been in the room quite a time?”
“Oh, yes, quite a long time, which seemed very short; it was only long because I couldn’t see you.”
Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who declined it with:
“Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn’t matter in the least where I sit.” And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: “There now, that hassock, that’s all I want. It will make me keep my back straight. Oh! Good heavens, I’m making a noise again; they’ll be telling you to have me ‘chucked out’.”
Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every other ‘party-night’, Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him, which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told that a young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously, trying to catch her hostess’s eye so as to flash a token of her gratitude for the other’s having ‘thought of her’ in connection with so delightful an entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm than Mme. de Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she followed the flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist’s fate but the piano’s, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each fortissimo, threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to spill wax upon the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer, and, running up the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood, flung herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished, and the pianist rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn by this young woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her and the pianist which resulted from it, produced an impression that was favourable on the whole.
“Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?” asked General de Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her for a moment. “Odd, wasn’t it? Is she one of the performers?”
“No, she’s a little Mme. de Cambremer,” replied the Princess carelessly, and then, with more animation: “I am only repeating what I heard just now, myself; I haven’t the faintest notion who said it, it was some one behind me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in the country, but I don’t believe anyone knows them, really. They must be ‘country cousins’! By the way, I don’t know whether you’re particularly ‘well-up’ in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I’ve no idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose they do with themselves when they’re not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s parties? She must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs and the food. ‘Universal providers,’ you know. You must admit, they’re rather splendid, General. But can she really have the courage to hire the same ‘supers’ every week? It isn’t possible!”
“Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too,” protested the General.
“I see no objection to its being old,” the Princess answered dryly, “but whatever else it is it’s not euphonious,” she went on, isolating the word euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation to which the Guermantes set were addicted.
“You think not, eh! She’s a regular little peach, though,” said the General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. “Don’t you agree with me, Princess?”
“She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman, that’s not very nice—for I don’t suppose she’s my generation,” replied Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to Gallardon and Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was still gazing at Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards the lady, half wishing to oblige the General: “Not very nice … for her husband! I am sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract you so much; I might have introduced you to her,” said the Princess, who, if she had known the young woman, would most probably have done nothing of the sort. “And now I must say good night, because one of my friends is having a birthday party, and I must go and wish her many happy returns,” she explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the 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’
