In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [77]
“Now that I’ve given her a carriage!” gasped my aunt.
“Oh, I know nothing about it, I just thought, well, I saw her go by yesterday in a barouche, as proud as Lucifer, on her way to Roussainville market. I supposed that it must be Mme Octave who had given it to her.”
And so by degrees Françoise and my aunt, the quarry and the hunter, had reached the point of constantly trying to forestall each other’s ruses. My mother was afraid lest Françoise should develop a genuine hatred of my aunt, who did everything in her power to hurt her. However that might be, Françoise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely scrupulous attention to my aunt’s least word and gesture. When she had to ask her anything she would hesitate for a long time over how best to go about it. And when she had uttered her request, she would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the expression on her face what she thought of it and how she would reply. And so it was that—whereas an artist who, reading the memoirs of the seventeenth century, and, wishing to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, considers that he is making progress in that direction by constructing a pedigree that traces his own descent from some historic family, or by engaging in correspondence with one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, is actually turning his back on what he mistakenly seeks under identical and therefore moribund forms—an elderly provincial lady, by doing no more than yield wholeheartedly to her own irresistible eccentricities and a cruelty born of idleness, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her lunch, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon called the “mechanics” of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silences, a suggestion of good humour or of haughtiness on her features, would provide Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror as did the silence, the good humour or the haughtiness of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him in an avenue at Versailles.
One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Curé and from Eulalie, and had been left alone, afterwards, to rest, the whole family went upstairs to bid her good evening, and Mamma ventured to condole with her on the unlucky coincidence that always brought both visitors to her door at the same time.
“I hear that things worked out badly again today, Léonie,” she said kindly, “you had all your friends here at once.”
And my great-aunt interrupted with: “The more the merrier,” for, since her daughter’s illness, she felt herself in duty bound to cheer her up by always drawing her attention to the brighter side of things. But my father had begun to speak.
“I should like to take advantage,” he said, “of the whole family’s being here together to tell you a story, so as not to have to begin all over again to each of you separately. I’m afraid we are in M. Legrandin’s bad books: he would hardly say ‘How d’ye do’ to me this morning.”
I did not wait to hear the end of my father’s story, for I had been with him myself after mass when we had met M. Legrandin; instead, I went downstairs to the kitchen to ask about the menu for our dinner, which was of fresh interest to me daily, like the news