In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [115]
The historian made a low bow, as I did too, and since he seemed to suppose that some friendly remark ought to follow this salute, his eyes brightened and he was preparing to open his mouth when he was chilled by the demeanour of Mme de Guermantes, who had taken advantage of the independence of her torso to throw it forward with an exaggerated politeness and bring it neatly back to a position of rest without letting face or eyes appear to have noticed that anyone was standing before them; after breathing a little sigh she contented herself with manifesting the nullity of the impression that had been made on her by the sight of the historian and myself by performing certain movements of her nostrils with a precision that testified to the absolute inertia of her unoccupied attention.
The importunate visitor entered the room, making straight for Mme de Villeparisis with an ingenuous, fervent air: it was Legrandin.
“Thank you so very much for letting me come and see you,” he began, laying stress on the word “very.” “It is a pleasure of a quality altogether rare and subtle that you confer on an old solitary. I assure you that its repercussion . . .”
He stopped short on catching sight of me.
“I was just showing this gentleman a fine portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, the wife of the author of the Maxims; it’s a family heirloom.”
Mme de Guermantes meanwhile had greeted Alix, with apologies for not having been able, that year as in every previous year, to go and see her. “I hear all about you from Madeleine,” she added.
“She was at luncheon with me today,” said the Marquise of the Quai Malaquais, with the satisfying reflexion that Mme de Villeparisis could never say the same.
Meanwhile I had been talking to Bloch, and fearing, from what I had been told of his father’s change of attitude towards him, that he might be envying my life, I said to him that his must be happier. My remark was prompted simply by a desire to be friendly. But such friendliness readily convinces those who cherish a high opinion of themselves of their own good fortune, or gives them a desire to convince other people of it. “Yes, I do lead a delightful existence,” Bloch assured me with a beatific smile. “I have three great friends—I do not wish for one more—and an adorable mistress; I am infinitely happy. Rare is the mortal to whom Father Zeus accords so much felicity.” I fancy that he was anxious principally to congratulate himself and to make me envious. Perhaps, too, his optimism reflected a desire to be original. It was evident that he did not wish to reply with the usual banalities—“Oh, it was nothing, really,” and so forth—when, to my question: “Was it nice?” apropos of an afternoon dance at his house to which I had been prevented from going, he replied in a level, careless tone, as if the dance had been given by someone else: “Why, yes, it was very nice, couldn’t have been more successful. In fact it was really enchanting.”
“What you have just told us interests me enormously,” said Legrandin to Mme de Villeparisis, “for I was saying to myself only the other day that you showed a marked resemblance to him in the agile sharpness of your turn of phrase, in a quality which I will describe by two contradictory terms, concise rapidity and immortal instantaneousness. I should have liked this afternoon to take down all the things you say; but I shall remember them. They are, in a phrase which comes, I think, from Joubert, congenial to the memory. You have never read Joubert? Oh! he would have admired you so! I will take the liberty this very evening of sending you his works: it will be a privilege to make you a present of his mind. He had not your force. But he had a similar gracefulness.”
I had wanted to go and greet Legrandin at once, but he kept as far away from me as he could, no doubt in the hope that I might not overhear the stream of flattery which, with a remarkable preciosity of expression, he kept