In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [51]
But if the thought of actors preoccupied me so, if the sight of Maubant coming out of the Théâtre-Français one afternoon had plunged me into the throes and sufferings of love, how much more did the name of a star blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more, seen through the window of a brougham passing by in the street, its horses’ headbands decked with roses, did the face of a woman whom I took to be an actress, leave me in a state of troubled excitement, impotently and painfully trying to form a picture of her private life.
I classified the most distinguished in order of talent: Sarah Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was interested in them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind. He used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to see him on certain days only, that was because on the other days ladies might come whom his family could not very well have met—so they at least thought, for my uncle, on the contrary, was only too willing to pay pretty widows (who had perhaps never been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding titles were probably no more than noms de guerre) the compliment of presenting them to my grandmother, or even of presenting to them some of the family jewels, a propensity which had already embroiled him more than once with my grandfather. Often, if the name of some actress were mentioned in conversation, I would hear my father say to my mother with a smile: “One of your uncle’s friends,” and thinking of the weary and fruitless novitiate eminent men would go through, perhaps for years on end, on the doorstep of some such lady who refused to answer their letters and had them sent packing by the hall-porter, it struck me that my uncle could have spared from such torments a youngster like me by introducing him to the actress, unapproachable by all the world, who was for him an intimate friend.
And so—on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my uncle—one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, taking advantage of the fact that my parents had had lunch earlier than usual, I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on their column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied, ran round to his house. I noticed in front of his door a carriage and pair, with red carnations on the horses’ blinkers and in the coachman’s buttonhole. As I climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a woman’s voice, and, as soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of shutting doors. The manservant seemed embarrassed when he let me in, and said that my uncle was extremely busy and probably could not see me; he went in, however, to announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard before said: “Oh, yes! Do let him come in, just for a moment; I should so enjoy it. Isn’t that his photograph there on your desk? And his mother (your niece, isn’t she?) beside it? The image of her, isn’t he? I should so like to see the little chap, just for a second.”
I could hear my uncle grumbling angrily; finally the manservant ushered me in.
On the table was the same plate of biscuits that was always there; my uncle wore the same jacket as on other days, but opposite him, in a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat, sat a young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty whether I ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush, and not daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be obliged to speak to her, I hurried across to embrace my uncle. She looked at me and smiled; my uncle said “My nephew!” without telling her my name or giving me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with my grandfather, he had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any