In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [145]
In the country, Mme de Marsantes was adored for the good that she did, but principally because the purity of a blood-line into which for many generations there had flowed only what was greatest in the history of France had rid her manner of everything that the lower orders call “airs” and had endowed her with perfect simplicity. She never shrank from embracing a poor woman who was in trouble, and would tell her to come up to the house for a cartload of wood. She was, people said, the perfect Christian. She was determined to find an immensely rich wife for Robert. Being a great lady means playing the great lady, that is to say, to a certain extent, playing at simplicity. It is a pastime which costs a great deal of money, all the more because simplicity charms people only on condition that they know that you are capable of not living simply, that is to say that you are very rich. Someone said to me afterwards, when I mentioned that I had seen her: “You saw of course that she must have been lovely as a young woman.” But true beauty is so individual, so novel always, that one does not recognise it as beauty. I said to myself that afternoon only that she had a tiny nose, very blue eyes, a long neck and a sad expression.
“By the way,” said Mme de Villeparisis to the Duchesse de Guermantes, “I’m expecting a woman at any moment whom you don’t wish to know. I thought I’d better warn you, to avoid any unpleasantness. But you needn’t be afraid, I shall never have her here again, only I was obliged to let her come today. It’s Swann’s wife.”
Mme Swann, seeing the dimensions that the Dreyfus case had begun to assume, and fearing that her husband’s racial origin might be used against herself, had besought him never again to allude to the prisoner’s innocence. When he was not present she went further and professed the most ardent nationalism; in doing which she was only following the example of Mme Verdurin, in whom a latent bourgeois anti-semitism had awakened and grown to a positive fury. Mme Swann had won by this attitude the privilege of membership in several of the anti-semitic leagues of society women that were beginning to be formed and had succeeded in establishing relations with various members of the aristocracy. It may seem strange that, so far from following their example, the Duchesse de Guermantes, so close a friend of Swann, had on the contrary always resisted the desire which he had not concealed from her to introduce his wife to her. But we shall see in due course that this was an effect of the peculiar character of the Duchess, who held that she was not “bound to” do such and such a thing, and laid down with despotic force what had been decided by her social “free will,” which was extremely arbitrary.
“Thank you for warning me,” said the Duchess. “It would indeed be most disagreeable. But as I know her by sight I shall be able to get away in time.”
“I assure you, Oriane, she is really quite nice; an excellent woman,” said Mme de Marsantes.
“I have no doubt she is, but I feel no need to assure myself of it in person.”
“Have you been invited to Lady Israels’s?” Mme de Villeparisis asked the Duchess, to change the subject.
“Why, thank heaven, I don’t know the woman,” replied Mme de Guermantes. “You must ask Marie-Aynard. She knows her. I never could make out why.”
“I did indeed know her at one time,” said Mme de Marsantes. “I confess my sins. But I have decided not to know her any more. It seems she’s one of the very worst of them, and makes no attempt to conceal it. Besides, we have all been too trusting, too hospitable. I shall never go near anyone of that race again. While we closed our doors to old country cousins, people of our own flesh and blood, we threw them open to Jews. And now we see what thanks we get from them. But alas, I’ve no right to speak; I