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By Root 1743 0

big drawing-room on the ground floor, when she saw from a distance, like the first glow of an innocuous fire, or the scouting party of an unexpected invasion, making her way slowly across the courtyard in a diagonal course, the Duchess wearing a ravishing hat and holding atilt a sunshade redolent with a summer fragrance. “Why, here comes Oriane,” she would say, like an “On guard!” intended to convey a prudent warning to her visitors, so that they should have time to beat an orderly retreat, to evacuate the rooms without panic. Half of those present dared not remain, and rose at once to go. “But no, why? Sit down again, I insist on keeping you a little longer,” the Princess would say in an airy, off-hand manner (to show herself the great lady) but in a voice that suddenly rang false. “But you may want to talk to each other.” “Really, you’re in a hurry? Oh, very well, I shall come and see you,” the lady of the house would reply to those whom she would just as soon see leave. The Duke and Duchess would give a very civil greeting to people whom they had seen there regularly for years though without coming to know them any better, while these in return barely said good-day to them, from discretion. Scarcely had they left the room before the Duke would begin asking good-naturedly who they were, so as to appear to be taking an interest in the intrinsic quality of people whom he never saw in his own house owing to the malevolence of fate or the state of Oriane’s nerves which the company of women was bad for:

“Tell me, who was that little woman in the pink hat?”

“Why, my dear cousin, you’ve seen her hundreds of times, she’s the Vicomtesse de Tours, who was a Lamarzelle.”

“But, do you know, she’s very pretty, and she has a witty look. If it weren’t for a little flaw in her upper lip she’d be a regular charmer. If there’s a Vicomte de Tours, he can’t have any too bad a time. Oriane, do you know who her eyebrows and the way her hair grows reminded me of? Your cousin Hedwige de Ligne.”

The Duchesse de Guermantes, who languished whenever people spoke of the beauty of any woman other than herself, let the subject drop. She had reckoned without the weakness of her husband for letting it be seen that he knew all about the people who did not come to his house, whereby he believed that he showed himself to be more “serious” than his wife.

“But,” he would suddenly resume with emphasis, “you mentioned the name Lamarzelle. I remember, when I was in the Chamber, hearing a really remarkable speech made . . .”

“That was the uncle of the young woman you saw just now.”

“Indeed! What talent! No, my dear girl,” he assured the Vicomtesse d’Egremont, whom Mme de Guermantes could not endure but who, refusing to stir from the Princesse d’Epinay’s drawing-room where she willingly stooped to the role of parlour-maid (though it did not prevent her from slapping her own on returning home), stayed there, tearful and abashed, but nevertheless stayed, when the ducal couple were there, taking their cloaks, trying to make herself useful, discreetly offering to withdraw into the next room, “you’re not to make tea for us, let’s just sit and talk quietly, we’re simple, homely souls. Besides,” he went on, turning to the Princesse d’Epinay (leaving the Egremont lady blushing, humble, ambitious and full of zeal), “we can only spare you a quarter of an hour.”

This quarter of an hour would be entirely taken up with a sort of exhibition of the witty things which the Duchess had said during the previous week, and to which she herself would certainly have refrained from alluding had not her husband, with great adroitness, by appearing to be rebuking her with reference to the incidents that had provoked them, obliged her as though against her will to repeat them.

The Princesse d’Epinay, who was fond of her cousin and knew that she had a weakness for compliments, would go into ecstasies over her hat, her sunshade, her wit. “Talk to her as much as you like about her clothes,” the Duke would say in the surly tone which he had adopted and now tempered with a mocking smile