In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [17]
“What’s that?” cried my father, annoyed at the bad impression which this admission of my failure to appreciate the performance must make on M. de Norpois, “How can you possibly say that you didn’t enjoy it? Why, your grandmother has been telling us that you sat there hanging on every word that Berma uttered, with your eyes starting out of your head; that everyone else in the theatre seemed quite bored beside you.”
“Oh, yes, I listened as hard as I could, trying to find out what it was that was supposed to be so wonderful about her. Of course, she’s frightfully good . . .”
“If she is frightfully good, what more do you want?”
“One of the things that have undoubtedly contributed to the success of Mme Berma,” said M. de Norpois, turning with application towards my mother, so as not to leave her out of the conversation, and in conscientious fulfilment of his duty of politeness to the lady of the house, “is the perfect taste that she shows in her choice of roles, which always assures her of complete success, and success of the right sort. She hardly ever appears in anything trivial. Look how she has thrown herself into the part of Phèdre. And then, she brings the same good taste to the choice of her costumes, and to her acting. In spite of her frequent and lucrative tours in England and America, the vulgarity—I will not say of John Bull, which would be unjust, at any rate as regards the England of the Victorian era—but of Uncle Sam has not infected her. No loud colours, no rant. And then that admirable voice, which serves her so well and upon which she plays so ravishingly—I should almost be tempted to describe it as a musical instrument!”
My interest in Berma’s acting had continued to grow ever since the fall of the curtain because it was no longer compressed within the limits of reality; but I felt the need to find explanations for it; moreover it had been concentrated with equal intensity, while Berma was on the stage, upon everything that she offered, in the indivisibility of a living whole, to my eyes and ears; it had made no attempt to separate or discriminate; accordingly it welcomed the discovery of a reasonable cause for itself in these tributes paid to the simplicity, to the good taste of the actress, it drew them to itself by its power of absorption, seized upon them as the optimism of a drunken man seizes upon the actions of his neighbour, in each of which he finds an excuse for maudlin emotion. “It’s true!” I told myself, “what a beautiful voice, what an absence of shrillness, what simple costumes, what intelligence to have chosen Phèdre! No, I have not been disappointed!”
The cold spiced beef with carrots made its appearance, couched by the Michelangelo of our kitchen upon enormous crystals of aspic, like transparent blocks of quartz.
“You have a first-rate cook, Madame,” said M. de Norpois, “and that is no small matter. I myself, who have had, when abroad, to maintain a certain style in housekeeping, I know how difficult it often is to find a perfect chef. This is a positive banquet that you have set before us!”
And indeed Françoise, in the excitement of her ambition to make a success, for so distinguished a guest, of a dinner the preparation of which had been sown with difficulties worthy of her powers, had put herself out as she no longer did when we were alone, and had recaptured her incomparable Combray manner.
“That is a thing you don’t get in a chophouse, not even in the best of them: a spiced beef in which the aspic doesn’t taste of glue and the beef has caught the flavour of the carrots. It