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By Root 1807 0

overflow, the same old maxims according to which intellect and talent were the sole claims to social pre-eminence began once more to be trotted out in the household of the Princesse des Laumes immediately after her marriage. And in this respect, be it said in passing, the point of view which Saint-Loup upheld when he lived with Rachel, frequented the friends of Rachel, would have liked to marry Rachel, entailed—whatever the horror that it inspired in the family—less falsehood than that of the Guermantes young ladies in general, extolling the intellect, barely allowing the possibility that anyone could question the equality of mankind, all of which led, when it came to the point, to the same result as if they had professed the opposite principles, that is to say to marrying an extremely wealthy duke. Saint-Loup, on the contrary, acted in conformity with his theories, which led people to say that he was treading in evil ways. Certainly from the moral standpoint Rachel was not altogether satisfactory. But it is by no means certain that, if she had been no more virtuous but a duchess or the heiress to many millions, Mme de Marsantes would not have been in favour of the match.

However, to return to Mme des Laumes (shortly afterwards Duchesse de Guermantes, on the death of her father-in-law), it was the last agonising straw for the Courvoisiers that the theories of the young Princess, remaining thus confined to her speech, should in no way have guided her conduct; with the result that this philosophy (if one may so call it) did not impair the aristocratic elegance of the Guermantes drawing-room. No doubt all the people whom Mme de Guermantes did not invite imagined that it was because they were not clever enough, and a rich American lady who had never possessed any other book except a little old copy, never opened, of Parny’s poems, arranged because it was “of the period” on one of the tables in her small drawing-room, showed how much store she set by the things of the mind by the devouring gaze which she fastened on the Duchesse de Guermantes when that lady made her appearance at the Opéra. No doubt, too, Mme de Guermantes was sincere when she elected a person on account of his or her intelligence. When she said of a woman: “It appears she’s quite charming!” or of a man that he was the “cleverest person in the world,” she imagined herself to have no other reason for consenting to receive them than this charm or cleverness, the family genie not interposing itself at the last moment; more deeply rooted, stationed at the obscure entrance to the region in which the Guermantes exercised their judgment, this vigilant spirit precluded them from finding the man clever or the woman charming if they had no social merit, actual or potential. The man was pronounced learned, but like a dictionary, or, on the contrary, common, with the mind of a commercial traveller, the woman pretty, but with a terribly bad style, or too talkative. As for the people who had no definite position, they were simply dreadful—such snobs! M. de Bréauté, whose country house was quite close to Guermantes, mixed with no one below the rank of Highness. But he was totally indifferent to them and longed only to spend his days in museums. Accordingly Mme de Guermantes was indignant when anyone spoke of M. de Bréauté as a snob. “Babal a snob! But, my dear man, you must be mad, he’s just the opposite. He loathes smart people; he won’t let himself be introduced to anyone. Even in my house! If I invite him to meet someone he doesn’t know, he never stops grumbling when he comes.”

This was not to say that, even in practice, the Guermantes did not set altogether more store by intelligence than the Courvoisiers. In a positive sense, this difference between the Guermantes and the Courvoisiers had already begun to bear very promising fruit. Thus the Duchesse de Guermantes, enveloped moreover in a mystery which had set so many poets dreaming of her from afar, had given that ball to which I have already referred, at which the King of England had enjoyed himself more thoroughly