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By Root 1716 0

the literature that sprang from Mérimée and Meilhac. The first of these influences attracted me more than the second, did more to console me for the disappointments of my pilgrimage to and arrival in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so different from what I had imagined it to be; but even the second I preferred to the last. For, while Mme de Guermantes was almost involuntarily Guermantes, her Pailleronism,28 her taste for the younger Dumas were self-conscious and deliberate. As this taste was the opposite of my own, she furnished my mind with literature when she talked to me of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and never seemed to me so stupidly Faubourg Saint-Germain as when she talked literature.

Moved by this last quotation, Mme d’Arpajon exclaimed: “‘These relics of the heart, they also have their dust!’—Monsieur, you must write that down for me on my fan,” she said to M. de Guermantes.

“Poor woman, I feel sorry for her!” said the Princesse de Parme to Mme de Guermantes.

“No, really, Ma’am, you mustn’t be soft-hearted, she has only got what she deserves.”

“But—you’ll forgive my saying this to you—she does really love him all the same!”

“Oh, not at all; she isn’t capable of it; she thinks she loves him just as she thought just now she was quoting Victor Hugo when she was reciting a line from Musset. Look,” the Duchess went on in a melancholy tone, “nobody would be more touched than myself by a true feeling. But let me give you an example. Only yesterday she made a terrible scene with Basin. Your Highness thinks perhaps that it was because he’s in love with other women, because he no longer loves her; not in the least, it was because he won’t put her sons up for the Jockey. Is that the behaviour of a woman in love? No! I will go further,” Mme de Guermantes added with precision, “she is a person of rare insensitivity.”

Meanwhile it was with an eye sparkling with satisfaction that M. de Guermantes had listened to his wife talking about Victor Hugo “point-blank” and quoting those few lines. The Duchess might frequently irritate him, but at moments such as this he was proud of her. “Oriane is really extraordinary. She can talk about anything, she has read everything. She couldn’t possibly have guessed that the conversation this evening would turn on Victor Hugo. Whatever subject you take her on at, she’s ready for you, she can hold her own with the most learned scholars. This young man must be quite captivated.”

“But do let’s change the subject,” Mme de Guermantes added, “because she’s dreadfully susceptible . . . You must think me very old-fashioned,” she went on, turning to me, “I know that nowadays it’s considered a weakness to care for ideas in poetry, poetry with some thought in it.”

“Old-fashioned?” asked the Princesse de Parme, quivering with the slight shock produced by this new wave which she had not expected, although she knew that the Duchess’s conversation always held in store for her those continuous and delightful thrills, that breath-catching panic, that wholesome exhaustion after which her thoughts instinctively turned to the necessity of taking a footbath in a dressing cabin and a brisk walk to “restore her circulation.”

“For my part, no, Oriane,” said Mme de Brissac, “I don’t in the least object to Victor Hugo’s having ideas, quite the contrary, but I do object to his seeking them in everything that’s monstrous. It was he who accustomed us to ugliness in literature. There’s quite enough ugliness in life already. Why can’t we be allowed at least to forget it while we’re reading? A distressing spectacle from which we should turn away in real life, that’s what attracts Victor Hugo.”

“Victor Hugo is not so realistic as Zola though, surely?” asked the Princesse de Parme.

The name of Zola did not stir a muscle on the face of M. de Beautreillis. The General’s anti-Dreyfusism was too deep-rooted for him to seek to give expression to it. And his benign silence when anyone broached these topics touched the layman’s heart as a proof of the same delicacy that a priest shows in avoiding any reference to your religious