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By Root 1932 0

carriage. Besides, this cousin (a nephew of my great-aunt) aroused in me an antipathy as strong as the esteem which he deserved and generally enjoyed. He was always in the offing on such occasions, and was so assiduous in his attentions to the dying that their mourning families, on the pretext that he was delicate, despite his robust appearance, his bass voice and bristling beard, invariably besought him, with the customary euphemisms, not to come to the cemetery. I could tell already that Mamma, who thought of others in the midst of the most crushing grief, would soon be saying to him in different terms what he was in the habit of hearing said on all such occasions:

“Promise me that you won’t come ‘tomorrow.’ Please, for ‘her sake.’ At any rate, you won’t go ‘all the way.’ It’s what she would have wished.”

But it was no use; he was always the first to arrive “at the house,” by reason of which he had been given, in another circle, the nickname (unknown to us) of “No flowers by request.” And before attending “everything” he had always “attended to everything,” which entitled him to the formula: “You, we don’t even thank you.”

“What’s that?” came in a loud voice from my grandfather, who had grown rather deaf and had failed to catch something which our cousin had just said to my father.

“Nothing,” answered the cousin. “I was just saying that I’d heard from Combray this morning. The weather is appalling down there, and here we’ve got almost too much sun.”

“And yet the barometer is very low,” put in my father.

“Where did you say the weather was bad?” asked my grandfather.

“At Combray.”

“Ah! I’m not surprised; whenever the weather’s bad here it’s fine at Combray, and vice versa. Good gracious! Talking of Combray, has anyone remembered to tell Legrandin?”

“Yes, don’t worry about that, it’s been done,” said my cousin, whose cheeks, bronzed by an irrepressible growth of beard, dimpled slightly with the satisfaction of having thought of it.

At this point my father hurried from the room. I supposed that a sudden change, for better or worse, had occurred. It was simply that Dr Dieulafoy had just arrived. My father went to receive him in the drawing-room, like the actor who is next to appear on the stage. He had been sent for not to cure but to certify, almost in a legal capacity. Dr Dieulafoy may indeed have been a great physician, a marvellous teacher; to the several roles in which he excelled, he added another, in which he remained for forty years without a rival, a role as original as that of the confidant, the clown or the noble father, which consisted in coming to certify that a patient was in extremis. His name alone presaged the dignity with which he would sustain the part, and when the servant announced: “M. Dieulafoy,” one thought one was in a Molière play. To the dignity of his bearing was added, without being conspicuous, the litheness of a perfect figure. His exaggerated good looks were tempered by a decorum suited to distressing circumstances. In the sable majesty of his frock-coat the Professor would enter the room, melancholy without affectation, uttering not one word of condolence that could have been construed as insincere, nor being guilty of the slightest infringement of the rules of tact. At the foot of a deathbed it was he and not the Duc de Guermantes who was the great nobleman. Having examined my grandmother without tiring her, and with an excess of reserve which was an act of courtesy to the doctor in charge of the case, he murmured a few words to my father, and bowed respectfully to my mother, to whom I felt that my father had positively to restrain himself from saying: “Professor Dieulafoy.” But already the latter had turned away, not wishing to seem intrusive, and made a perfect exit, simply accepting the sealed envelope that was slipped into his hand. He did not appear to have seen it, and we ourselves were left wondering for a moment whether we had really given it to him, with such a conjurer’s dexterity had he made it vanish without sacrificing one iota of the gravity—which was if anything accentuated