Everyone had gathered round Mme. de Villeparisis to watch her painting.
“Those flowers are a truly celestial pink,” said Legrandin, “I should say sky-pink. For there is such a thing as sky-pink just as there is sky-blue. But,” he lowered his voice in the hope that he would not be heard by anyone but the Marquise, “I think I shall still give my vote to the silky, living flesh tint of your rendering of them. You leave Pisanello and Van Huysun a long way behind, with their laborious, dead herbals.”
An artist, however modest, is always willing to hear himself preferred to his rivals, and tries only to see that justice is done them.
“What makes you think that is that they painted the flowers of their period, which we don’t have now, but they did it with great skill.”
“Ah! The flowers of their period! That is a most ingenious theory,” exclaimed Legrandin.
“I see you’re painting some fine cherry blossoms—or are they mayflowers?” began the historian of the Fronde, not without hesitation as to the flower, but with a note of confidence in his voice, for he was beginning to forget the incident of the hats.
“No; they’re apple blossom,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes, addressing her aunt.
“Ah! I see you’re a good countrywoman like me; you can tell one flower from another.”
“Why yes, so they are! But I thought the season.for apple blossom was over now,” said the historian, seeking wildly to cover his mistake.
“Oh dear, no; far from it, it’s not out yet; the trees won’t be in blossom for another fortnight, not for three weeks perhaps,” said the librarian who, since he helped with the management of Mme. de Villeparisis’s estates, was better informed upon country matters.
“At least three weeks,” put in the Duchess; “even round Paris, where they’re very far forward. Down in Normandy, don’t you know, at his father’s place,” she went on, pointing to the young Duc de Châtellerault, “where they have some splendid apple trees close to the seashore, like a Japanese screen, they’re never really pink until after the twentieth of May.”
“I never see them,” said the young Duke, “because they give me hay fever. Such a bore.”
“Hay fever? I never heard of that before,” said the historian.
“It’s the fashionable complaint just now,” the librarian informed him.
“That all depends, you won’t get it at all, probably, if it’s a good year for apples. You know Le Normand’s saying: ‘When it’s a good year for apples … ,’ ” put in M. d’Argencourt who, not being really French, was always trying to give himself a Parisian air.
“You’re quite right,” Mme. de Villeparisis told her niece, “these are from the South. It was a florist who sent them round and asked me to accept them as a present. You’re surprised, I dare say, Monsieur Valmère,” she turned to the librarian, “that a florist should make me a present of apple blossom. Well, I may be an old woman, but I’m not quite on the shelf yet, I have still a few friends,” she went on with a smile that might have been taken as a sign of her simple nature but meant rather, I could not help feeling, that she thought it effective to pride herself on the friendship of a mere florist when she moved in such distinguished circles.
Bloch rose and went over to look at the flowers which Mme. de Villeparisis was painting.
“Never mind, Marquise,” said the historian, sitting down again, “even though we should have another of those Revolutions which have stained so many pages of our history with blood—and, upon my soul, in these days one can never tell,” he added, with a circular and circumspect glance, as though to make sure that there was no “disaffected” person in the room, though he had not the least suspicion that there actually was, “with a talent like yours and your five languages you would be certain to get on all right.” The historian of the Fronde was feeling quite refreshed, for he had forgotten his insomnia. But he suddenly remembered that he had not slept for the last six nights, whereupon a crushing weariness, born of his mind, paralysed his limbs, made him bow his shoulders, and his melancholy face began to droop like an old man’s.
Bloch tried to express his admiration in an appropriate gesture, but only succeeded in knocking over with his elbow the glass containing the spray of apple blossom, and all the water was spilled on the carpet.
“Really, you have the fingers of a fairy,” went on (to the Marquise) the historian who, having his back turned, to me at that moment, had not noticed Bloch’s clumsiness.
But Bloch took this for a sneer at himself, and to cover his shame in insolence retorted: “It’s not of the slightest importance; I’m not wet.”
Mme. de Villeparisis rang the bell and a footman came to wipe the carpet and pick up the fragments of glass. She invited the two young men to her theatricals, and also Mme. de Guermantes, with the injunction:
“Remember to tell Gisèle and Berthe” (the Duchesses d’Auberjon and de Portefin) “to be here a little before two to help me,” as she might have told the hired waiters to come early to arrange the tables.
She treated her princely relatives, as she treated M. de Norpois, without any of the little courtesies which she showed to the historian, Cottard, Bloch and myself, and they seemed to have no interest for her beyond the possibility of serving them up as food for our social curiosity. This was because she knew that she need not put herself out to entertain people for whom she was not a more or less brilliant woman but the touchy old sister—who needed and received tactful handling—of their father or uncle. There would have been no object in her trying to shine before them, she could never have deceived them as to the strength and weakness of her position, for they knew (none so well) her whole history and respected the illustrious race from
