In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [136]
“Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn’t fail us at the last moment.”
Greatly to Mme Verdurin’s surprise, he never failed them. He would go to meet them no matter where, sometimes at restaurants on the outskirts of Paris which were little frequented as yet, since the season had not yet begun, more often at the theatre, of which Mme Verdurin was particularly fond. One evening at her house he heard her remark how useful it would be to have a special pass for first nights and gala performances, and what a nuisance it had been not having one on the day of Gambetta’s funeral. Swann, who never spoke of his brilliant connexions, but only of those not highly thought of in the Faubourg Saint-Germain whom he would have considered it snobbish to conceal, and among whom he had come to include his connexions in the official world, broke in: “I’ll see to that. You shall have it in time for the Danicheff revival. I happen to be lunching with the Prefect of Police tomorrow at the Elysée.”
“What’s that? The Elysée?” Dr Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
“Yes, at M. Grévy’s,” replied Swann, a little embarrassed at the effect which his announcement had produced.
“Are you often taken like that?” the painter asked Cottard with mock-seriousness.
As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: “Ah, good, good; that’s all right, then,” after which he would show not the least trace of emotion. But this time Swann’s last words, instead of the usual calming effect, had that of raising to fever-pitch his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head of State.
“What’s that you say? M. Grévy? You know M. Grévy?” he demanded of Swann, in the stupid and increduluous tone of a constable on duty at the palace who, when a stranger asks to see the President of the Republic, realising at once “the sort of man he is dealing with,” as the newspapers say, assures the poor lunatic that he will be admitted at once, and directs him to the reception ward of the police infirmary.
“I know him slightly; we have some friends in common” (Swann dared not add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). “Besides, he is very free with his invitations, and I assure you his luncheon-parties are not the least bit amusing. They’re very simple affairs, too, you know—never more than eight at table,” he went on, trying desperately to cut out everything that seemed to show off his relations with the President in a light too dazzling for the doctor’s eyes.
Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from M. Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into the highways and byways. And from that moment he was no longer surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was “always at the Elysée”; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to luncheon-parties which he himself admitted were a bore.
“Ah, good, good; that’s quite all right, then,” he said, in the tone of a suspicious customs official who, after hearing your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
“I can well believe you don’t find them amusing, those luncheons. Indeed, it’s very good of you to go to them,” said Mme Verdurin, who regarded the President of the Republic as a bore to be especially dreaded, since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which, if employed to captivate her “faithful,” might easily make them default. “It seems he’s as deaf as a post and eats with his fingers.”
“Upon my word! Then it can’t be much fun for you, going there.” A note of pity sounded in the doctor’s voice; and then struck by the number—only eight at table—“Are these luncheons what you would describe as ‘intimate’?” he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle curiosity as from linguistic zeal.
But so great