In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [137]
“No, it was the War Minister’s wife; at least, that’s the talk of the coffee-houses,” went on the Duke, who liked to flavour his conversation with certain expressions which he imagined to be of the old school. “Personally, of course, as everyone knows, I take just the opposite view to my cousin Gilbert. I’m not feudal like him, I’d go about with a negro if he was a friend of mine, and I shouldn’t care two straws what anybody thought; still, after all you must agree with me that when one goes by the name of Saint-Loup one doesn’t amuse oneself by flying in the face of public opinion, which has more sense than Voltaire or even my nephew. Nor does one go in for what I may be allowed to call these acrobatics of conscience a week before one comes up for a club. It really is a bit stiff! No, it’s probably that little tart of his who worked him up to it. I expect she told him he would be classed among the ‘intellectuals.’ The intellectuals, that’s the shibboleth of those gentlemen. It’s given rise, by the way, to a rather amusing pun, though a very naughty one.”
And the Duke murmured, lowering his voice, for his wife’s and M. d’Argencourt’s benefit, “Mater Semita,” which had already made its way into the Jockey Club, for, of all the flying seeds in the world, that to which are attached the most solid wings, enabling it to be disseminated at the greatest distance from its point of origin, is still a joke.
“We might ask this gentleman, who has a nerudite air, to explain it to us,” he went on, pointing to the historian. “But it’s better not to repeat it, especially as there’s not a vestige of truth in the suggestion. I’m not so ambitious as my cousin Mirepoix, who claims that she can trace the descent of her family before Christ to the Tribe of Levi, and I’ll guarantee to prove that there has never been a drop of Jewish blood in our family. Still it’s no good shutting our eyes to the fact that my dear nephew’s charming views are liable to make a considerable stir in Landerneau. Especially as Fezensac is ill just now, and Duras will be running the election; you know how he likes to draw the longbow,” concluded the Duke, who had never succeeded in learning the exact meaning of certain phrases, and supposed drawing the longbow to mean making complications.
“In any case, if this man Dreyfus is innocent,” the Duchess broke in, “he hasn’t done much to prove it. What idiotic, turgid letters he writes from his island! I don’t know whether M. Esterhazy is any better, but at least he has more of a knack of phrase-making, a different tone altogether. That can’t be very welcome to the supporters of M. Dreyfus. What a pity for them that they can’t swap innocents.”
Everyone burst out laughing. “Did you hear what Oriane said?” the Duc de Guermantes inquired eagerly of Mme de Villeparisis. “Yes, I thought it most amusing.” This was not enough for the Duke: “Well, I don’t know, I can’t say that I thought it amusing; or rather it doesn’t make the slightest difference to me whether a thing is amusing or not. I set no store by wit.” M. d’Argencourt protested. “He doesn’t believe a word he says,” murmured the Duchess. “It’s probably because I’ve been a Member of Parliament, where I’ve listened to brilliant speeches that meant absolutely nothing. I learned there to value logic more than anything else. That’s probably why I wasn’t re-elected. Amusing things leave me cold.” “Basin, don’t play the humbug like that, my sweet, you know quite well that no one admires wit more than you do.” “Please let me finish. It’s precisely because I’m unmoved by a certain type of humour that I appreciate my wife’s wit. For you will find it based, as a rule, upon sound observation. She reasons like a man; she expresses herself like a writer.”
Meanwhile Bloch was trying to pin M. de Norpois down on Colonel Picquart.