In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [70]
Gilberte’s features remained contracted in a frown throughout luncheon, after which she retired to her room. Then suddenly, without hesitating and as though she had never at any point hesitated over her course of action: “Two o’clock!” she exclaimed, “You know the concert begins at half-past.” And she told her governess to make haste.
“But,” I reminded her, “won’t your father be cross with you?”
“Not the least little bit!”
“Surely he was afraid it would look odd, because of the anniversary.”
“What do I care what people think? I think it’s perfectly absurd to worry about other people in matters of sentiment. We feel things for ourselves, not for the public. Mademoiselle has very few pleasures, and she’s been looking forward to going to this concert. I’m not going to deprive her of it just to satisfy public opinion.”
“But, Gilberte,” I protested, taking her by the arm, “it’s not to satisfy public opinion, it’s to please your father.”
“You’re not going to start scolding me, I hope,” she said sharply, plucking her arm away.
A favour still more precious than their taking me with them to the Zoo or a concert, the Swanns did not exclude me even from their friendship with Bergotte, which had been at the root of the attraction that I had found in them when, before I had even seen Gilberte, I reflected that her intimacy with that godlike elder would have made her, for me, the most enthralling of friends, had not the disdain that I was bound to inspire in her forbidden me to hope that she would ever take me, in his company, to visit the towns that he loved. And then, one day, Mme Swann invited me to a big luncheon-party. I did not know who the guests were to be. On my arrival I was disconcerted, as I crossed the hall, by an alarming incident. Mme Swann seldom missed an opportunity of adopting any of those customs which are thought fashionable for a season, and then, failing to catch on, are presently abandoned (as, for instance, many years before, she had had her hansom cab, or had printed in English upon a card inviting people to luncheon the words To meet, followed by the name of some more or less important personage). Often enough these usages implied nothing mysterious and required no initiation. For instance, a minor innovation of those days, imported from England: Odette had made her husband have some visiting cards printed on which the name Charles Swann was preceded by “Mr.” After the first visit that I paid her, Mme Swann had left at my door one of these “pasteboards,” as she called them. No one had ever left a card on me before, and I felt at once so much pride, emotion and gratitude that, scraping together all the money I possessed, I ordered a superb basket of camellias and sent it round to Mme Swann. I implored my father to go and leave a card on her, but first, quickly, to have some printed on which his name should bear the prefix “Mr.” He complied with neither of my requests. I was in despair for some days, and then asked myself whether he might not after all have been right. But this use of “Mr.,” if it meant nothing, was at least intelligible. Not so with another that was revealed to me on the occasion of this luncheon-party, but revealed without any indication of its purport. At the moment when I was about to step from the hall into the drawing-room, the butler handed me a thin, oblong envelope upon which my name was inscribed. In my surprise I thanked him; but I eyed the envelope with misgivings. I no more knew what I was expected to do with it than a foreigner knows what to do with one of those