In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [293]
“I fancy Mme de Villeparisis is not absolutely . . . moral,” said the Princesse de Parme, who knew that the best people did not visit the Duchess’s aunt, and, from what the Duchess herself had just been saying, that one might speak freely about her. But, Mme de Guermantes not seeming to approve of this criticism, she hastened to add: “Though, of course, intelligence carried to that degree excuses everything.”
“You take the same view of my aunt as everyone else,” replied the Duchess, “which is, on the whole, quite mistaken. It’s just what Mémé was saying to me only yesterday.” (She blushed, her eyes clouding with a memory unknown to me. I conjectured that M. de Charlus had asked her to cancel my invitation, as he had sent Robert to ask me not to go to her house. I had the impression that the blush—equally incomprehensible to me—which had tinged the Duke’s cheeks when he made some reference to his brother could not be attributed to the same cause.) “My poor aunt—she will always have the reputation of being a lady of the old school, of sparkling wit and uncontrolled passions. And really there’s no more middle-class, solemn, drab, commonplace mind in Paris. She will go down as a patron of the arts, which means to say that she was once the mistress of a great painter, though he was never able to make her understand what a picture was; and as for her private life, so far from being a depraved woman, she was so much made for marriage, so conjugal from her cradle that, not having succeeded in keeping a husband, who incidentally was a scoundrel, she has never had a love affair which she hasn’t taken just as seriously as if it were holy matrimony, with the same irritations, the same quarrels, the same fidelity. Mind you, those relationships are often the most sincere; on the whole there are more inconsolable lovers than husbands.”
“And yet, Oriane, if you take the case of your brother-in-law Palamède whom you were speaking about just now, no mistress in the world could ever dream of being mourned as that poor Mme de Charlus has been.”
“Ah!” replied the Duchess, “Your Highness must permit me to be not altogether of her opinion. People don’t all like to be mourned in the same way, each of us has his preferences.”
“Still, he has made a regular cult of her since her death. It’s true that people sometimes do for the dead what they would not have done for the living.”
“For one thing,” retorted Mme de Guermantes in a dreamy tone which belied her facetious intent, “we go to their funerals, which we never do for the living!” (M. de Guermantes gave M. de Bréauté a sly glance as though to provoke him into laughter at the Duchess’s wit.) “At the same time I frankly admit,” went on Mme de Guermantes, “that the manner in which I should like to be mourned by a man I loved would not be that adopted by my brother-in-law.”
The Duke’s face darkened. He did not like to hear his wife utter random judgments, especially about M. de Charlus. “You’re very particular. His grief set an edifying example to everyone,” he reproved her stiffly. But the Duchess had in dealing with her husband that sort of boldness which animal tamers show, or people who live with a madman and are not afraid of provoking him.
“Well, yes, if you like, I suppose it’s edifying—he goes every day to the cemetery to tell her how many people he has had to luncheon, he misses her enormously, but as he’d mourn a cousin, a grandmother, a sister. It isn’t the grief of a husband. It’s true that they were a pair of saints, which makes it all rather exceptional.” (M. de Guermantes, infuriated by his wife’s chatter, fixed on her with a terrible immobility a pair of eyes