“Promise me that you won’t come ‘tomorrow.’ Please for ‘her sake.’ At any rate, you won’t go ‘all the way.’ It’s what she would have wished.”
But there was nothing for it; he was always the first to arrive “at the house,” by reason of which he had been given, among another set, the nickname (unknown to us) of “No flowers by request.” And before attending everything he had always “attended to everything,” which entitled him to the formula: “We don’t know how to thank you.”
“What’s that?” came in a loud voice from my grandfather, who had grown rather deaf and had failed to catch something which our cousin had just said to my father.
“Nothing,” answered the cousin. “I was just saying that I’d heard from Combray this morning. The weather is appalling down there, and here we’ve got too much sun.”
“Yet the barometer is very low,” put in my father.
“Where did you say the weather was bad?” asked my grandfather.
“At Combray.”
“Ah! I’m not surprised; whenever it’s bad here it’s fine at Combray, and vice versa. Good gracious! Talking of Combray, has anyone remembered to tell Legrandin?”
“Yes, don’t worry about that, it’s been done,” said my cousin, whose cheeks, bronzed by an irrepressible growth of beard, dimpled faintly with the satisfaction of having “remembered” it.
At this point my father hurried from the room. I supposed that a sudden change, for better or worse, had occurred. It was simply that Dr. Dieulafoy had just arrived. My father went to receive him in the drawing-room, like the actor who is to come next on the stage. We had sent for him not to cure but to certify, in almost a legal capacity. Dr. Dieulafoy might indeed be a great physician, a marvellous professor; to these several parts, in which he excelled, he added a third, in which he remained for forty years without a rival, a part as original as that of the arguer, the scaramouch or the noble father, which consisted in coming to certify an agony or a death. The mere sound of his name foreshadowed the dignity with which he would sustain the part, and when the servant announced: “M. Dieulafoy,” one imagined oneself at a play by Molière. To the dignity of his attitude was added, without being conspicuous, the suppleness of a perfect figure. A face in itself too good-looking was toned down by the convention due to distressing circumstances. In the sable majesty of his frock coat the Professor entered the room, melancholy without affectation, uttered not the least word of condolence, which might have been thought insincere, nor was he guilty of the slightest infringement of the rules of tact. At the foot of a deathbed it was he and not the Duc de Guermantes who was the great gentleman. Having examined my grandmother, but not so as to tire her, and with an excess of reserve which was an act of courtesy to the doctor who was treating the case, he murmured a few words to my father, bowed respectfully to my mother to whom I felt that my father had positively to restrain himself from saying: “Professor Dieulafoy.” But already our visitor had turned away, not wishing to seem to be soliciting an introduction, and left the room in the most polished manner conceivable, simply taking with him the sealed envelope that was slipped into his hand. He had not appeared to see it, and we ourselves were left wondering for a moment whether we had really given it to him, such a conjurer’s nimbleness had he put into the act of making it vanish without thereby losing anything of the gravity—which was increased rather—of the great consultant in his long frock coat with its silken lapels, and his handsome head full of a noble commiseration. The slowness and vivacity of his movements showed that, even if he had a hundred other visits to pay and patients waiting, he refused to appear hurried. For he was the embodiment of tact, intelligence and kindness. That eminent man is no longer with us. Other physicians, other professors may have rivalled, may indeed have surpassed him. But the “capacity” in which his knowledge, his physical endowments, his distinguished manners made him triumph exists no longer for want of any successor capable of taking his place. Mamma had not even noticed M. Dieulafoy, everything that was not my grandmother having no existence for her. I remember (and here I anticipate) that at the cemetery, where we saw her, like a supernatural apparition, go up timidly to the grave and seem to be gazing in the wake of a flying form that was already far away, my father having remarked to her: “Old Norpois came to the house and to the church and on here; he gave up a most important committee meeting to come; you ought really to say a word to him, he’ll be so gratified if you do,” my mother, when the Ambassador stood before her and bowed, could do no more than gently incline a face that showed no tears. A couple of days earlier—to anticipate once again before returning to where we were just now by the bed on which my grandmother lay dying—while they were watching by the body, Françoise, who, not disbelieving entirely in ghosts, was terrified by the least sound, had said: “I believe
