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By Root 1934 0

than anywhere else, for she had had the idea, which would never have occurred to the Courvoisier mind, of inviting, and the audacity, from which the Courvoisier courage would have recoiled, to invite, apart from the personages already mentioned, the musician Gaston Lemaire and the dramatist Grandmougin. But it was chiefly from the negative point of view that intellectuality made itself felt. If the necessary coefficient of cleverness and charm declined steadily as the rank of the person who sought an invitation from the Duchesse de Guermantes became more exalted, vanishing to zero when it came to the principal crowned heads of Europe, conversely the further they fell below this royal level the higher the coefficient rose. For instance, at the Princesse de Parme’s receptions there were a number of people whom Her Royal Highness invited because she had known them as children, or because they were related to some duchess, or attached to the person of some sovereign, they themselves being quite possibly ugly, boring or stupid. Now, in the case of a Courvoisier reasons such as “a favourite of the Princesse de Parme,” or “a half-sister of the Duchesse d’Arpajon on the mother’s side,” or “spends three months every year with the Queen of Spain,” would have been sufficient to make her invite such people to her house, but Mme de Guermantes, who had politely acknowledged their greetings for ten years at the Princesse de Parme’s, had never once allowed them to cross her threshold, considering that the same rule applied to a drawing-room in a social as in a physical sense, where it only needed a few pieces of furniture which had no particular beauty, but were left there to fill the room and as a sign of the owner’s wealth, to render it hideous. Such a drawing-room resembled a book in which the author cannot refrain from the use of language advertising his own learning, brilliance, fluency. Like a book, like a house, the quality of a “salon,” Mme de Guermantes rightly thought, is based on the corner-stone of sacrifice.

Many of the friends of the Princesse de Parme, with whom the Duchesse de Guermantes had confined herself for years past to the same conventional greeting, or to returning their cards, without ever inviting them to her house or going to theirs, complained discreetly of these omissions to Her Highness who, on days when M. de Guermantes came by himself to see her, dropped a hint of it to him. But the wily nobleman, a bad husband to the Duchess in so far as he kept mistresses, but her most tried and trusty friend in everything that concerned the proper functioning of her salon (and her own wit, which formed its chief attraction), replied: “But does my wife know her? Indeed! Oh, well, I dare say she ought to have. But the truth is, Ma’am, that Oriane doesn’t care for women’s conversations. She lives surrounded by a court of superior minds—I’m not her husband, I’m only the senior valet. Except for quite a small number, who are all of them very witty indeed, women bore her. Surely, Ma’am, Your Highness with all her fine judgment is not going to tell me that the Marquise de Souvré has any wit. Yes, I quite understand, Your Highness receives her out of kindness. Besides, Your Highness knows her. You tell me that Oriane has met her; it’s quite possible, but once or twice at the most, I assure you. And then, I must explain to Your Highness, it’s really a little my fault as well. My wife is very easily tired, and she’s so anxious to be friendly always that if I allowed her she would never stop going to see people. Only yesterday evening, although she had a temperature, she was afraid of hurting the Duchesse de Bourbon’s feelings by not going to see her. I had to show my teeth, I can tell you; I positively forbade them to bring the carriage round. Do you know, Ma’am, I’ve a very good mind not to mention to Oriane that you’ve spoken to me about Mme de Souvré. Oriane is so devoted to Your Highness that she’ll go round at once to invite Mme de Souvré to the house; that will mean another call to be paid, it will oblige us to make friends