“What treachery!” thought Mme. de Villeparisis. “Of course that was what she was whispering about the other day to Mme. de Beaulaincourt and Mme. de Chaponay. I had no engagement,” she replied, “but I should not have come. I heard Ristori in her great days, she’s a mere wreck now. Besides I detest Carmen Sylva’s poetry. Ristori came here once, the Duchess of Aosta brought her, to recite a canto of the Inferno, by Dante. In that sort of thing she’s incomparable.”
Alix bore the blow without flinching. She remained marble. Her gaze was piercing and blank, her nose proudly arched. But the surface of one cheek was scaling. A faint, strange vegetation, green and pink, was invading her chin. Perhaps another winter would level her with the dust.
“Now, sir, if you are fond of painting, look at the portrait of Mme. de Montmorency,” Mme. de Villeparisis said to Legrandin, to stop the flow of compliments which was beginning again.
Seizing her opportunity, while his back was turned, Mme. de Guermantes pointed to him, with an ironical, questioning look at her aunt.
“It’s M. Legrandin,” murmured Mme. de Villeparisis, “he has a sister called Mme. de Cambremer, not that that conveys any more to you than it does to me.”
“What! Oh, but I know her quite well!” exclaimed Mme. de Guermantes, and put her hand over her lips. “That is to say, I don’t know her, but for some reason or other Basin, who meets the husband heaven knows where, took it into his head to tell the wretched woman she might call on me. And she did. I can’t tell you what it was like. She informed me that she had been to London, and gave me a complete catalogue of all the things in the British Museum. And this very day, the moment I leave your house, I’m going, just as you see me now, to drop a card on the monster. And don’t for a moment suppose that it’s an easy thing to do. On the pretence that she’s dying of some disease she’s always at home, it doesn’t matter whether you arrive at seven at night or nine in the morning, she’s ready for you with a dish of strawberry tarts.
“No, but seriously, you know, she is a monstrosity,” Mme. de Guermantes replied to a questioning glance from her aunt. “She’s an impossible person, she talks about ‘plumitives’ and things like that.” “What does ‘plumitive’ mean?” asked Mme. de Villeparisis. “I haven’t the slightest idea!” cried the Duchess in mock indignation. “I don’t want to know. I don’t speak that sort of language.” And seeing that her aunt really did not know what a plumitive was, to give herself the satisfaction of showing that she was a scholar as well as a purist, and to make fun of her aunt, now, after making fun of Mme. de Cambremer: “Why, of course,” she said, with a half-laugh which the last traces of her pretended ill humour kept in check, “everybody knows what it means; a plumitive is a writer, a person who holds a pen. But it’s a dreadful word. It’s enough to make your wisdom teeth drop out. Nothing will ever make me use words like that.
“And so that’s the brother, is it? I hadn’t realized that yet. But after all it’s not inconceivable. She has the same doormat docility and the same mass of information like a circulating library. She’s just as much of a flatterer as he is, and just as boring. Yes, I’m beginning to see the family likeness now quite plainly.”
“Sit down, we’re just going to take a dish of tea,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to her niece. “Help yourself; you don’t want to look at the pictures of your great-grandmothers, you know them as well as I do.”
Presently Mme. de Villeparisis sat down again at her desk and went on with her painting. The rest of the party gathered round her, and I took the opportunity to go up to Legrandin and, seeing no harm myself in his presence in Mme. de Villeparisis’s drawing-room and never dreaming how much my words would at once hurt him and make him believe that I had deliberately intended to hurt him, say: “Well, sir, I am almost excused for coming to a tea-party when I find you here too.” M. Legrandin concluded from this speech (at least this was the opinion which he expressed of me a few days later) that I was a thoroughly spiteful little wretch who delighted only in doing mischief.
“You might at least have the civility to begin by saying how d’ye do to me,” he replied, without offering me his hand and in a coarse and angry voice which I had never suspected him of possessing, a voice which bearing no traceable relation to what he ordinarily said did bear another more immediate and striking relation to something that he was feeling at the moment. What happens is that since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making its voice heard, the tones of which may inspire as much terror in the listener who receives the involuntary elliptical irresistible communication of our defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and uncouthly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty. I knew, of course, that idealism, even subjective idealism did not prevent great philosophers from still having hearty appetites or from presenting themselves with untiring perseverance for election to the Academy. But really Legrandin had no occasion to remind people so often that he belonged to another planet when all his convulsive movements of anger or affability were governed by the desire to occupy a good
