In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [127]
of it hard to compensate) if such women place a passer-by in the lowest rank, it is by the same process that has made them appear to him as in the highest, that is to say instinctively, at first sight, and without possibility of appeal. Perhaps that social class which included in those days women like Lady Israels, who mixed with the women of the aristocracy, and Mme Swann, who was to get to know them later on, that intermediate class, inferior to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, since it courted the latter, but superior to everything that was not of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, possessing this peculiarity that, while already detached from the world of the merely rich, it was riches still that it represented, but riches that had become ductile, obedient to a conscious artistic purpose, malleable gold, chased with a poetic design and taught to smile; perhaps that class—in the same form, at least, and with the same charm—exists no longer. In any event, the women who were its members would not satisfy today what was the primary condition on which they reigned, since with advancing age they have lost—almost all of them—their beauty. Whereas it was from the glorious zenith of her ripe and still so fragrant summer as much as from the pinnacle of her noble wealth that Mme Swann, majestic, smiling, benign, advancing along the Avenue du Bois, saw, like Hypatia, worlds revolving beneath the slow tread of her feet. Young men as they passed looked at her anxiously, not knowing whether their vague acquaintance with her (especially since, having been introduced only once, at the most, to Swann, they were afraid that he might not remember them) was sufficient excuse for their venturing to doff their hats. And they trembled to think of the consequences as they made up their minds to do so, wondering whether this audaciously provocative and sacrilegious gesture, challenging the inviolable supremacy of a caste, would not let loose the catastrophic forces of nature or bring down upon them the vengeance of a jealous god. It provoked only, like the winding of a piece of clockwork, a series of gesticulations from little, bowing figures, who were none other than Odette’s escort, beginning with Swann himself, who raised his tall hat lined in green leather with a smiling courtesy which he had acquired in the Faubourg Saint-Germain but to which was no longer wedded the indifference that he would at one time have shown. Its place was now taken (for he had been to some extent permeated by Odette’s prejudices) at once by irritation at having to acknowledge the salute of a person who was none too well dressed and by satisfaction at his wife’s knowing so many people, a mixed sensation to which he gave expression by saying to the smart friends who walked by his side: “What, another one! Upon my word, I can’t imagine where my wife picks all these fellows up!” Meanwhile, having acknowledged with a nod the greeting of some terrified young man who had already passed out of sight though his heart was still beating furiously, Mme Swann turned to me: “Then it’s all over?” she said. “You aren’t ever coming to see Gilberte again? I’m glad you make an exception of me, and are not going to drop me completely. I like seeing you, but I also liked the influence you had over my daughter. I’m sure she’s very sorry about it, too. However, I mustn’t bully you, or you’ll make up your mind at once that you never want to set eyes on me again.” “Odette, there’s Sagan saying good-day to you,” Swann pointed out to his wife. And there indeed was the Prince, as in some grand finale at the theatre or the circus or in an old painting, wheeling his horse round so as to face her, and doffing his hat with a sweeping theatrical and, as it were, allegorical flourish in which he displayed all the chivalrous courtesy of the great nobleman bowing in token of respect for Womanhood, even if it was embodied in a woman whom it was impossible for his mother or his sister to know. And in fact at every turn, recognised in the depths of the liquid transparency and of the luminous glaze of the shadow which