In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [143]
“I think she’s asleep,” said Bloch to the archivist who, feeling that he had the support of the Marquise, assumed an air of indignation. “Good-bye, Madame,” shouted Bloch.
The old lady made the slight movement with her lips of a dying woman who wants to open her mouth but whose eyes betray no hint of recognition. Then she turned, overflowing with restored vitality, towards M. d’Argencourt, while Bloch took himself off, convinced that she must be “soft” in the head. Full of curiosity and anxious to clear up such a strange incident, he came to see her again a few days later. She received him in the most friendly fashion, because she was a good-natured woman, because the archivist was not there, because she was keen on the little play which Bloch was to put on in her house, and finally because she had staged the appropriate grande dame act which was universally admired and commented upon that very evening in various drawing-rooms, but in a version that had already ceased to bear the slightest relation to the truth.
“You were speaking just now of The Seven Princesses, Duchess. You know (not that it’s anything to be proud of) that the author of that—what shall I call it?—that object is a compatriot of mine,” said M. d’Argencourt with an irony blended with the satisfaction of knowing more than anyone else in the room about the author of a work which had been under discussion. “Yes, he’s a Belgian, by nationality,” he went on.
“Indeed? No, we don’t accuse you of any responsibility for The Seven Princesses. Fortunately for yourself and your compatriots you are not like the author of that absurdity. I know several charming Belgians, yourself, your King, who is a little shy but full of wit, my Ligne cousins, and heaps of others, but none of you, I’m happy to say, speak the same language as the author of The Seven Princesses. Besides, if you want to know, it’s not worth talking about, because really there is absolutely nothing in it. You know the sort of people who are always trying to seem obscure, and don’t even mind making themselves ridiculous to conceal the fact that they haven’t an idea in their heads. If there was anything behind it all, I may tell you that I’m not in the least afraid of a little daring,” she added in a serious tone, “provided there’s a little thought. I don’t know if you’ve seen Borelli’s play. Some people seem to have been shocked by it, but I must say, even if they stone me through the streets for saying it,” she went on, without stopping to think that she ran no very great risk of such a punishment, “I found it immensely interesting. But The Seven Princesses! One of them may have a fondness for my nephew, but I can’t carry family feeling quite . . .”
The Duchess broke off abruptly, for a lady came in who was the Comtesse de Marsantes, Robert’s mother. Mme de Marsantes was regarded in the Faubourg Saint-Germain as a superior being, of a goodness and resignation that were positively angelic. So I had been told, and had had no particular reason to feel surprised, not knowing at the time that she was the sister of the Duc de Guermantes. Later, I was always taken aback when I learned, in that society, that melancholy, pure, self-sacrificing women, venerated like ideal saints in stained-glass windows, had flowered from the same genealogical stem as brothers who were brutal, debauched and vile. Brothers and sisters, when they are identical