In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [248]
The other reason for the amiability shown me by the Princesse de Parme was a more special one, yet in no way dictated by a mysterious liking for me. But for the moment I did not have time to get to the bottom of it. For already the Duke, who seemed in a hurry to complete the round of introductions, had led me off to another of the flower-maidens. On hearing her name I told her that I had passed by her country house, not far from Balbec. “Oh, I should have been so pleased to show you round it,” she said to me almost in a whisper as though to emphasise her modesty, but in a heartfelt tone filled with regret for the loss of an opportunity to enjoy a quite exceptional pleasure; and she added with a meaning look: “I do hope you will come again some day. But I must say that what would interest you even more would be my aunt Brancas’s place. It was built by Mansard and it’s the jewel of the province.” It was not only she herself who would have been glad to show me over her house, but her aunt Brancas would have been no less delighted to do me the honours of hers, or so I was assured by this lady who evidently thought that, especially at a time when the land showed a tendency to pass into the hands of financiers who had no idea how to live, it was important that the great should keep up the lofty traditions of lordly hospitality, by speeches which did not commit them to anything. It was also because she sought, like everyone in her world, to say the things that would give most pleasure to the person she was addressing, to give him the highest idea of himself, to make him think that he flattered people by writing to them, that he honoured those who entertained him, that everyone was longing to know him. The desire to give other people this comforting idea of themselves does, it is true, sometimes exist even among the middle classes. We find there that amiable disposition, in the form of an individual quality compensating for some other defect, not alas in the most trusty male friends but at any rate in the most agreeable female companions. But there it flourishes only in isolation. In an important section of the aristocracy, on the other hand, this characteristic has ceased to be individual; cultivated by upbringing, sustained by the idea of a personal grandeur that need fear no humiliation, that knows no rival, is aware that by being gracious it can make people happy and delights in doing so, it has become the generic feature of a class. And even those whom personal defects of too incompatible a kind prevent from keeping it in their hearts bear the unconscious trace of it in their vocabulary or their gesticulation.
“She’s a very kind woman,” said the Duc de Guermantes of the Princesse de Parme, “and she knows how to play the grande dame better than anyone.”
While I was being introduced to the ladies, one of the gentlemen of the party had been showing various signs of agitation: this was Comte Hannibal de Bréauté-Consalvi. Having arrived late, he had not had time to investigate the composition of the party, and when I entered the room, seeing in me a guest who was not one of the Duchess’s regular circle and must therefore have some quite extraordinary claim to admission, installed his monocle beneath the groined arch of his eyebrow, thinking that this would help him, far more than to see me, to discern what manner of man I was. He knew that Mme de Guermantes had (the priceless appanage of truly superior women) what was called a “salon,” that is to say added occasionally to the people of her own set some celebrity