In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [285]
When the child appears, the family circle
Applauds with loud cries . .
“Mme d’Arpajon is very fond of poetry,” said the Princesse de Parme to her hostess, impressed by the ardent tone in which the speech had been delivered.
“No, she doesn’t understand the first thing about it,” replied Mme de Guermantes in an undertone, taking advantage of the fact that Mme d’Arpajon, who was dealing with an objection raised by General de Beautreillis, was too intent upon what she herself was saying to hear what was being murmured by the Duchess. “She has become literary since she’s been forsaken. I may tell your Highness that it’s I who have to bear the brunt of it because it’s to me that she comes to complain whenever Basin hasn’t been to see her, which is practically every day. But it isn’t my fault, after all, if she bores him, and I can’t force him to go to her, although I’d rather he were a little more faithful, because then I shouldn’t see quite so much of her myself. But she drives him mad and I’m not surprised. She isn’t a bad sort, but she’s boring to a degree you can’t imagine. She gives me such a headache every day that I’m obliged to take a pyramidon tablet whenever she comes. And all this because Basin took it into his head for a year or so to go to bed with her. And on top of that to have a footman who’s in love with a little tart and goes about with a long face if I don’t ask the young person to leave her profitable pavement for half an hour and come to tea with me! Oh! life is really too tedious!” the Duchess languorously concluded.
Mme d’Arpajon bored M. de Guermantes principally because he had recently become the lover of another woman, whom I discovered to be the Marquise de Surgisle-Duc. As it happened, the footman who had been deprived of his day off was at that moment waiting at table. And it struck me that, still disconsolate, he was doing it with some lack of composure, for I noticed that in handing the dish to M. de Châtellerault he performed his task so awkwardly that the young Duke’s elbow came in contact several times with his. The young Duke showed no sign of annoyance with the blushing footman, but on the contrary looked up at him with a smile in his clear blue eyes. This good humour seemed to me to betoken kindness on the guest’s part. But the insistency of his smile led me to think that, aware of the servant’s discomfiture, what he felt was perhaps a malicious amusement.
“But, my dear, you know you’re not revealing any new discovery when you tell us about Victor Hugo,” went on the Duchess, this time addressing Mme d’Arpajon whom she had just seen turn round with a worried look. “You mustn’t expect to launch that young genius. Everybody knows that he has talent. What is utterly detestable is the Victor Hugo of the last stage, the Légende des Siècles, I forget all their names. But in the Feuilles d’Automne, the Chants du Crépuscule, there’s much of a poet, a true poet. Even in the Contemplations,” went on the Duchess, whom none of her listeners dared to contradict, and with good reason, “there are still some quite pretty things. But I confess that I prefer not to venture further than the Crépuscule! And then in the finer poems of Victor Hugo, and there really are some, one frequently comes across an idea, even a profound idea.”
And with just the right shade of feeling, bringing out the sorrowful thought with the full force of her intonation, projecting it somewhere beyond her voice, and fixing straight in front of her a charming, dreamy gaze, the Duchess slowly recited:
“Sorrow is a fruit, God does not cause it to