In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [258]
I assigned the first place in the order of aesthetic merit and of social grandeur to simplicity, when I saw Mme Swann on foot, in a polonaise of plain cloth, a little toque on her head trimmed with a pheasant’s wing, a bunch of violets in her bosom, hastening along the Allée des Acacias as if it had been merely the shortest way back to her house, and acknowledging with a wink the greetings of the gentlemen in carriages who, recognising her figure at a distance, raised their hats to her and said to one another that there was never anyone so well turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to ostentation that I must assign the first place if, after I had compelled Françoise, who was worn out and complained that her feet were “killing” her, to stroll up and down with me for another hour, I saw at length emerging from the Porte Dauphine—figuring for me a royal dignity, the passage of a sovereign, an impression such as no real queen has ever since been able to give me, because my notion of their power has been less vague, more founded upon experience—borne along by the flight of a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as one sees them in the drawings of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an enormous coachman furred like a cossack, and by his side a diminutive groom like “the late Beaudenord’s tiger,” I saw—or rather I felt its outlines engraved upon my heart by a clean and poignant wound—a matchless victoria, built rather high, and hinting, through the extreme modernity of its appointments, at the forms of an earlier day, in the depths of which Mme Swann negligently reclined, her hair, now blonde with one grey lock, encircled with a narrow band of flowers, usually violets, from which floated down long veils, a lilac parasol in her hand, on her lips an ambiguous smile in which I read only the benign condescension of Majesty, though it was pre-eminently the provocative smile of the courtesan, which she graciously bestowed upon the men who greeted her. This smile was in reality saying, to one: “Oh yes, I remember very well; it was wonderful!” to another: “How I should have loved to! It was bad luck!” to a third: “Yes, if you like! I must just follow in the procession for a moment, then as soon as I can I’ll break away.” When strangers passed a lazy smile still played about her lips, as though in expectation or remembrance of some friend, which made people say: “What a lovely woman!” And for certain men only she had a sour, strained, shy, cold smile which meant: “Yes, you old goat, I know that you’ve got a tongue like a viper, that you can’t keep quiet for a moment. But do you suppose that I care what you say?” Coquelin passed, holding forth among a group of listening friends, and with a sweeping wave of his hand bade a theatrical good day to the people in the carriages. But I thought only of Mme Swann, and pretended not to have seen her yet, for I knew that when she reached the pigeon-shooting ground she would tell her coachmen to “break away” and to stop the carriage, so that she might come back on foot. And on days when I felt that I had the courage to pass close by her I would drag Françoise off in that direction; until the moment came when I saw Mme Swann, trailing behind her the long train of her lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be dressed, in rich finery such as no other woman wore, occasionally looking down at the handle of her parasol, and paying scant attention to the passers-by, as though her sole object was to take exercise, without thinking that she was being observed and that every head was turned towards her. Sometimes, however, when she had looked back to call her dog, she would cast, almost imperceptibly, a sweeping glance round about her.
Even those who