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By Root 1859 0

care, how her face changed as soon as one named, in connexion with one of these, let us say her sister-in-law. “Oh, she’s charming!” the Duchess would say in an assured and judicious tone. The only reason she gave was that this lady had declined to be introduced to the Marquise de Chaussegros and the Princesse de Silistrie. She did not add that the lady had also refused to be introduced to herself, the Duchesse de Guermantes. This had nevertheless been the case, and ever since, the mind of the Duchess had been at work trying to unravel the motives of a woman who was so hard to know. She was dying to be invited to her house. People in society are so accustomed to being sought after that the person who shuns them seems to them a phoenix and at once monopolises their attention.

Was the real motive in the mind of Mme de Guermantes for thus inviting me (now that I was no longer in love with her) that I did not seek the society of her relatives, although apparently sought after by them? I cannot say. In any case, having made up her mind to invite me, she was anxious to do me the honours of her house to the fullest extent and to keep away those of her friends whose presence might have dissuaded me from coming again, those whom she knew to be boring. I had not known to what to attribute her change of direction, when I had seen her diverge from her stellar path, come to sit down beside me, and invite me to dinner, the effect of unexplained causes: for want of a special sense to enlighten us in this respect, we imagine the people we know only slightly—as was my case with the Duchesse de Guermantes—as thinking of us only at the rare moments in which they set eyes on us. Whereas in fact this ideal oblivion in which we picture them as holding us is purely arbitrary. So much so that while in the silence of solitude, reminiscent of a clear and starlit night, we imagine the various queens of society pursuing their course in the heavens at an infinite distance, we cannot help an involuntary start of dismay or pleasure if there falls upon us from that starry height, like a meteorite engraved with our name which we supposed to be unknown on Venus or Cassiopeia, an invitation to dinner or a piece of wicked gossip.

Perhaps from time to time when, following the example of the Persian princes who, according to the Book of Esther, made their scribes read out to them the registers in which were enrolled the names of those of their subjects who had shown zeal in their service, Mme de Guermantes consulted her list of the well-disposed, she had said to herself, on coming to my name: “A man we must ask to dine some day.” But other thoughts had distracted her until the moment she caught sight of me sitting alone like Mordecai at the palace gate; and, the sight of me having refreshed her memory, she wished, like Ahasuerus, to lavish her gifts upon me.

(Beset by surging cares, a Prince’s mind

Towards fresh matters ever is inclined)

I must however add that a surprise of a totally different sort was to follow the one which I had had on hearing Mme de Guermantes ask me to dine with her. Since I had felt that it would show great modesty on my part, and gratitude also, not to conceal this initial surprise but rather to exaggerate my expression of the delight that it gave me, Mme de Guermantes, who was getting ready to go on to another, final party, had said to me, almost as a justification and for fear of my not being quite certain who she was since I appeared so astonished at being invited to dine with her: “You know I’m the aunt of Robert de Saint-Loup who is very fond of you, and besides, we’ve already met each other here.” In replying that I was aware of this I added that I also knew M. de Charlus, “who had been very kind to me at Balbec and in Paris.” Mme de Guermantes appeared surprised and her eyes seemed to turn, as though for a verification of this statement, to some much earlier page of her internal register. “What, so you know Palamède, do you?” This name took on a considerable charm on the lips of Mme de Guermantes because of the instinctive