In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [148]
If he, whose wife was a leader of the most exclusive set in Berlin, had solicited an introduction to the Marquise, it was not the result of any desire on his part for her acquaintance. Devoured for years past by this ambition to be elected to the Institut, he had unfortunately never been in a position to reckon above five the number of Academicians who seemed prepared to vote for him. He knew that M. de Norpois could by himself command at least a dozen votes, a number which he was capable, by skilful negotiations, of increasing still further. And so the Prince, who had known him in Russia when they were both there as ambassadors, had gone to see him and had done everything in his power to win him over. But in vain might he intensify his friendly overtures, procure for the Marquis Russian decorations, quote him in articles on foreign policy, he had been faced with a heartless ingrate, a man in whose eyes all these attentions appeared to count as nothing, who had not advanced the prospects of his candidature one inch, had not even promised him his own vote. True, M. de Norpois received him with extreme politeness, indeed begged him not to put himself out and “take the trouble to come so far out of his way,” went himself to the Prince’s residence, and when the Teutonic knight had launched his: “I should very much like to be your colleague,” replied in a tone of deep emotion: “Ah! I should be most happy!” And no doubt a simpleton, a Dr Cottard, would have said to himself: “Well, here he is in my house; it was he who insisted on coming because he regards me as a more important person than himself; he tells me he’d be happy to see me in the Academy; words do have some meaning after all, damn it, so if he doesn’t offer to vote for me it’s probably because it hasn’t occurred to him. He lays so much stress on influence that he must imagine the plums fall into my lap, that I have all the support I need and that’s why he doesn’t offer me his; but I’ve only to corner him here, just the two of us, and say to him: ‘Very well, vote for me,’ and he’ll be obliged to do it.”
But Prince von Faffenheim was no simpleton. He was what Dr Cottard would have called “a shrewd diplomat” and he knew that M. de Norpois was a no less shrewd one and a man who would have realised without needing to be told that he could confer a favour on a candidate by voting for him. The Prince, in his ambassadorial missions and as Foreign Minister, had conducted, on his country’s behalf instead of, as in the present instance, his own, many of those conversations in which one knows beforehand just how far one is prepared to go and at what point one will decline to commit oneself. He was not unaware that in diplomatic parlance to talk means to offer. And it was for this reason that he had arranged for M. de Norpois to receive the Order of Saint Andrew. But if he had had to report to his Government the conversation which he had subsequently had with M. de Norpois, he would have stated in his dispatch: “I realised that I had taken the wrong tack.” For as soon as he had returned to the subject of the Institut, M. de Norpois had repeated:
“I should like nothing better; nothing could be better for my colleagues. They ought, I consider, to feel genuinely honoured that you should have thought of them. It’s a really interesting candidature, a little outside our normal practice. As you know, the Academy is very hide-bound; it takes fright at anything that smacks of novelty. Personally, I deplore this. How often have I not had occasion to say as much to my colleagues! I cannot be sure, God forgive me, that I did not even once let the term ‘stick-in-the-mud’ escape my lips,” he added with a scandalised smile in an undertone, almost