In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [177]
Françoise annoyed me by refusing to share in our joy. She was in a state of great excitement because there had been a terrible scene between the lovesick footman and the tale-bearing porter. It had required the Duchess herself, in her benevolence, to intervene, restore a semblance of calm, and forgive the footman. For she was a kind mistress, and it would have been the ideal “place” if only she didn’t listen to “tittle-tattle.”
During the last few days people had begun to hear of my grandmother’s illness and to ask after her. Saint-Loup had written to me: “I do not wish to take advantage of a time when your dear grandmother is unwell to convey to you what is far more than mere reproach on a matter with which she has no concern. But I should not be speaking the truth were I to say to you, if only by preterition, that I shall ever forget the perfidy of your conduct, or that there can ever be any forgiveness for so scoundrelly a betrayal.” But some other friends, supposing that my grandmother was not seriously ill, or not knowing that she was ill at all, had asked me to meet them next day in the Champs-Elysées, to go with them from there to pay a call together, ending up with a dinner in the country, the thought of which appealed to me. I had no longer any reason to forgo these two pleasures. When my grandmother had been told that it was now imperative, if she was to obey Dr du Boulbon’s orders, that she should go out as much as possible, she had herself at once suggested the Champs-Elysées. It would be easy for me to escort her there; and, while she sat reading, to arrange with my friends where I should meet them later; and I should still be in time, if I made haste, to take the train with them to Ville d’Avray. When the time came, my grandmother did not want to go out, saying that she felt tired. But my mother, acting on du Boulbon’s instructions, had the strength of mind to be firm and to command obedience. She was almost in tears at the thought that my grandmother was going to relapse again into her nervous weakness and might not recover from it. Never had there been such a fine, warm day for an outing. The sun as it moved through the sky interposed here and there in the broken solidity of the balcony its insubstantial muslins, and gave to the freestone ledge a warm epidermis, an ill-defined halo of gold. As Françoise had not had time to send a “wire” to her daughter, she left us immediately after lunch. She considered it kind enough of her as it was to call first at Jupien’s to get a stitch put in the cape which my grandmother was going to wear. Returning at that moment from my morning walk, I accompanied her into the shop. “Is it your young master who brings you here,” Jupien asked Françoise, “is it you who have brought him to see me, or is it a fair wind and Dame Fortune that brings you both?” For all his want of education, Jupien respected the laws of syntax as instinctively as M. de Guermantes, in spite of every effort, broke them. With Françoise gone and the cape mended, it was time for my grandmother to get ready. Having obstinately refused to let Mamma stay in the room with her, left to herself she took an endlessly long time over her dressing, and now that I knew that she was not ill, with that strange indifference which we feel towards our relations so long as they are alive, and which makes us put everyone else before them, I thought it very selfish of her to take so long and to risk making me late when she knew that I had an appointment with my friends and was dining at Ville d’Avray. In my impatience I finally went downstairs without waiting for her, after I had twice been told that she was just ready. At last she joined me, without apologising to me as she generally did for having kept