In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [16]
“Monsieur Norpois, indeed! Oh, that really is good! Just wait a little! This individual will be calling you Citizen Norpois next?” exclaimed M. de Guermantes, turning to the Baron. He was at last able to vent his spleen against Jupien who addressed him as “Monsieur” instead of “Monsieur le Duc.”
One day when M. de Guermantes required some information upon a matter of which my father had professional knowledge, he had introduced himself to him with great courtesy. After that, he had often some neighbourly service to ask of my father and, as soon as he saw him coming downstairs, his mind occupied with his work and anxious to avoid any interruption, the Duke, leaving his stable-boys, would come up to him in the courtyard, straighten the collar of his greatcoat with the obliging deftness inherited from a line of royal body-servants, take him by the hand, and, holding it in his own, stroking it even, to prove to him, with the shamelessness of a courtesan, that he did not begrudge him the privilege of contact with the ducal flesh, would steer him, extremely irked and thinking only how he might escape, through the carriage entrance out into the street. He had given us a sweeping bow one day when he had passed us as he was setting out in the carriage with his wife; he was bound to have told her my name, but what likelihood was there of her remembering it, or my face either? And besides, what a feeble recommendation to be pointed out simply as being one of her tenants! Another, more valuable, would have been to meet the Duchess at the house of Mme de Villeparisis, who, as it happened, had sent word by my grandmother that I was to go and see her, and, remembering that I had been intending to go in for literature, had added that I should meet several authors there. But my father felt that I was still a little young to go into society, and as the state of my health continued to cause him disquiet he was reluctant to allow me unnecessary occasions for renewed outings.
As one of Mme de Guermantes’s footmen was in the habit of gossiping with Françoise, I picked up the names of several of the houses which she frequented, but formed no impression of any of them: the moment they were a part of her life, of that life which I saw only through the veil of her name, were they not inconceivable?
“Tonight there’s a big party with a shadow-theatre show at the Princesse de Parme’s,” said the footman, “but we shan’t be going, because at five o’clock Madame is taking the train to Chantilly, to spend a few days with the Duc d’Aumale; but it’ll be the lady’s-maid and valet that go with her. I’m to stay here. She won’t be at all pleased, the Princesse de Parme won’t, that’s four times already she’s written to Madame la Duchesse.”
“Then you won’t be going down to Guermantes Castle this year?”
“It’s the first time we shan’t be going there: it’s because of Monsieur le Duc’s rheumatics, the doctor says he’s not to go there till the radiators are in, but we’ve been there every year till now, right on to January. If the radiators aren’t ready, perhaps Madame will go for a few days to Cannes to the Duchesse de Guise, but nothing’s settled yet.”
“And do you ever go to the theatre?”
“We go now and then to the Opéra, usually on the evenings when the Princesse de Parme has her box, that’s once a week. It seems it’s a fine show they give there, plays, operas, everything. Madame refused to rent a box herself, but we go all the same to the boxes Madame’s friends take, now one, now another, often the Princesse de Guermantes, the Duke’s cousin’s lady. She’s sister to the Duke of Bavaria . . . And so you’ve got to run upstairs again now, have you?” went on the footman, who, though identified with the Guermantes,