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By Root 1960 0

conscientiousness and generosity, there was a sort of conventional and unexpected zeal; and it was further than to her own childhood, it was to the infancy of her race that she had reverted. Very different from myself, who had looked for nothing more than a physical alleviation, which I had finally secured, Albertine seemed to feel that it would indicate a certain coarseness on her part were she to think that this material pleasure could be unaccompanied by a moral sentiment or was to be regarded as terminating anything. She, who had earlier been in so great a hurry, now, doubtless because she felt that kisses implied love and that love took precedence over all other duties, said when I reminded her of her dinner:

“Oh, but that doesn’t matter in the least. I’ve got plenty of time.”

She seemed embarrassed at the idea of getting up and going immediately after what had happened, embarrassed from a sense of propriety, just as Françoise when, without feeling thirsty, she had felt herself bound to accept with a seemly gaiety the glass of wine which Jupien offered her, would never have dared to leave him as soon as the last drops were drained, however urgent the call of duty. Albertine—and this was perhaps, with another which the reader will learn in due course, one of the reasons which had made me unconsciously desire her—was one of the incarnations of the little French peasant whose type may be seen in stone at Saint-André-des-Champs. As in Françoise, who presently, however, was to become her deadly enemy, I recognised in her a courtesy towards the host and the stranger, a sense of propriety, a respect for the bedside.

Françoise, who after the death of my aunt felt obliged to speak only in a doleful tone, would, in the months that preceded her daughter’s marriage, have been quite shocked if the girl had not taken her lover’s arm when the young couple walked out together. Albertine lying motionless beside me said:

“What nice hair you have; what nice eyes—you’re sweet.”

When, after pointing out to her that it was getting late, I added: “You don’t believe me?”, she replied, what was perhaps true, but only since the minute before and for the next few hours:

“I always believe you.”

She spoke to me of myself, my family, my social background. She said: “Oh, I know your parents know some very nice people. You’re a friend of Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage.” For a moment these names conveyed absolutely nothing to me. But suddenly I remembered that I had indeed played as a child in the Champs-Elysées with Robert Forestier, whom I had never seen since. As for Suzanne Delage, she was the great-niece of Mme Blandais, and I had once been due to go to a dancing lesson, and even to take a small part in a play in her parents’ house. But the fear of getting a fit of giggles and a nose-bleed had at the last moment prevented me, so that I had never set eyes on her. I had at the most a vague idea that I had once heard that the Swanns’ feather-hatted governess had at one time been with the Delages, but perhaps it was only a sister of this governess, or a friend. I protested to Albertine that Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage occupied a very small place in my life. “That may be; but your mothers are friends, I can place you by that. I often pass Suzanne Delage in the Avenue de Messine. I admire her style.” Our mothers were acquainted only in the imagination of Mme Bontemps, who having heard that I had at one time played with Robert Forestier, to whom, it appeared, I used to recite poetry, had concluded from that that we were bound by family ties. She could never, I gathered, hear my mother’s name mentioned without observing: “Oh yes, she belongs to the Delage-Forestier set,” giving my parents a good mark which they had done nothing to deserve.

Quite apart from this, Albertine’s social notions were fatuous in the extreme. She regarded the Simonnets with a double “n” as inferior not only to the Simonets with a single “n” but to everyone in the world. That someone else should bear the same name as yourself without belonging to your family