In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [270]
“What! has Oriane been here?”
“Yes, if you’d come a little sooner . . .” the Princesse d’Epinay replied, not in reproach but making it clear how much the blunderer had missed. It was her fault alone if she had not been present at the creation of the world or at Mme Carvalho’s last performance. “What do you think of Oriane’s latest? I must say I do like ‘Teaser Augustus,’ ” and the quip would be served up again cold next day at lunch before a few intimate friends invited for the purpose, and would reappear under various sauces throughout the week. Indeed Mme d’Epinay happening in the course of that week to pay her annual visit to the Princesse de Parme, seized the opportunity to ask whether Her Royal Highness had heard the pun, and repeated it to her. “Ah! Teaser Augustus,” said the Princesse de Parme, wide-eyed with an a priori admiration, which begged however for a complementary elucidation which Mme d’Epinay was not loath to furnish. “I must say Teaser Augustus pleases me enormously as a piece of ‘phrasing,’ ” she concluded. As a matter of fact the word “phrasing” was not in the least applicable to this pun, but the Princesse d’Epinay, who claimed to have assimilated her share of the Guermantes wit, had borrowed from Oriane the expressions “phrased” and “phrasing” and employed them without much discrimination. Now the Princesse de Parme, who was not at all fond of Mme d’Epinay, whom she considered plain, knew to be miserly, and believed, on the authority of the Courvoisiers, to be malicious, recognised this word “phrasing” which she had heard on Mme de Guermantes’s lips but would not herself have known how or when to apply. She concluded that it must indeed be its “phrasing” that formed the charm of “Teaser Augustus” and, without altogether forgetting her antipathy towards the plain and miserly lady, could not repress an impulse of admiration for a person endowed to such a degree with the Guermantes wit, so much so that she was on the point of inviting the Princesse d’Epinay to the Opéra. She was held in check only by the reflexion that it would be wiser perhaps to consult Mme de Guermantes first. As for Mme d’Epinay, who, unlike the Courvoisiers, was endlessly obliging towards Oriane and was genuinely fond of her, but was jealous of her exalted friends and slightly irritated by the fun which the Duchess used to make of her in front of everyone on account of her meanness, she reported on her return home how much difficulty the Princesse de Parme had had in grasping the point of “Teaser Augustus,” and declared what a snob Oriane must be to number such a goose among her friends. “I should never have been able to see much of the Princesse de Parme even if I had wanted to, because M. d’Epinay would never have allowed it on account of her immorality,” she told the friends who were dining with her, alluding to certain purely imaginary excesses on the part of the Princess. “But even if I had had a husband less strict in his views, I must say I could never have made friends with her. I don’t know how Oriane can bear to see her every other day, as she does. I go there once a year, and it’s all I can do to sit out my call.”
As for those of the Courvoisiers who happened to be at Victurnienne’s on the day of Mme de Guermantes’s visit, the arrival of the Duchess generally put them to flight owing to the exasperation they felt at the “ridiculous salaams” that were made to her there. One alone remained on the evening of “Teaser Augustus.” He did not entirely see the point, but he half-understood