In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [146]
As a matter of fact Mme de Marsantes thought that her son would not obtain leave that week; but knowing that, even if he did, he would never dream of coming to see Mme de Villeparisis, she hoped, by making herself appear to have expected to find him there, to make his susceptible aunt forgive him for all the visits that he had failed to pay her.
“Robert here! But I haven’t even had a word from him. I don’t think I’ve seen him since Balbec.”
“He is so busy; he has so much to do,” said Mme de Marsantes.
A faint smile made Mme de Guermantes’s eyelashes quiver as she studied the circle which she was tracing on the carpet with the point of her sunshade. Whenever the Duke had been too openly unfaithful to his wife, Mme de Marsantes had always taken up the cudgels against her own brother on her sister-in-law’s behalf. The latter had a grateful and bitter memory of this support, and was not herself seriously shocked by Robert’s pranks. At this point the door opened again and Robert himself came in.
“Well, talk of the Saint!”17 said Mme de Guermantes.
Mme de Marsantes, who had her back to the door, had not seen her son come in. When she caught sight of him, her motherly bosom was convulsed with joy as by the beating of a wing, her body half rose from her seat, her face quivered and she fastened on Robert eyes that glowed with wonderment.
“What, you’ve come! How delightful! What a surprise!”
“Ah! talk of the Saint—I see,” cried the Belgian diplomat with a shout of laughter.
“Delicious, isn’t it?” the Duchess retorted curtly, for she hated puns, and had ventured this one only with a pretence of self-mockery.
“Good evening, Robert,” she said. “Well, so this is how we forget our aunt.”
They talked for a moment, doubtless about me, for as Saint-Loup was leaving her to join his mother Mme de Guermantes turned to me:
“Good evening, how are you?” was her greeting.
She showered me with the light of her azure gaze, hesitated for a moment, unfolded and stretched towards me the stem of her arm, and leaned forward her body which sprang rapidly backwards like a bush that has been pulled down to the ground and, on being released, returns to its natural position. Thus she acted under the fire of Saint-Loup’s eyes, which kept her under observation from a distance and made frantic efforts to obtain some further concession still from his aunt. Fearing that our conversation might dry up altogether, he came across to fuel it, and answered for me:
“He’s not very well just now, he gets rather tired. I think he would be a great deal better, by the way, if he saw you more often, for I don’t mind telling you that he enjoys seeing you very much.”
“Oh, but that’s very nice of him,” said Mme de Guermantes in a deliberately trite tone, as if I had brought her her coat. “I’m most flattered.”
“Look, I must go and talk to my mother for a minute; take my chair,” said Saint-Loup, thus forcing me to sit down next to his aunt.
We were both silent.
“I catch sight of you sometimes in the morning,” she said, as though she were giving me a piece of news and as though I for my part never saw her. “It’s so good for one, a walk.”
“Oriane,” said Mme de Marsantes in a low voice, “you said you were going on to Mme de Saint-Ferréol’s. Would you be so very kind as to tell her not to expect me to dinner. I shall stay at home now that I’ve got Robert. And might I ask you in passing to see that someone sends out at once for a box of the cigars Robert likes? ‘Corona,’ they’re called. I’ve none in the house.”
Robert came up to us. He had caught only the name of Mme de Saint-Ferréol.
“Who in the world is Mme de Saint-Ferréol?” he inquired in a tone of studied surprise, for he affected