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By Root 1963 0

to the wind for the sake of a more striking and enjoyable triumph. Had she not, within the last few years, brought together Princesse Mathilde and the Duc d’Aumale, who had written to the Princess’s own brother the famous letter: “In my family all the men are brave and the women chaste”? And inasmuch as princes remain princely even at those moments when they appear anxious to forget that they are, the Duc d’Aumale and the Princesse Mathilde had enjoyed themselves so greatly at Mme de Guermantes’s that they had afterwards exchanged visits, with that faculty for forgetting the past which Louis XVIII showed when he appointed as a minister Fouché, who had voted the death of his brother. Mme de Guermantes was now nursing a similar project of arranging a reconciliation between the Princesse Murat and the Queen of Naples. In the meantime, the Princesse de Parme appeared as embarrassed as might have been the heirsapparent to the thrones of the Netherlands and Belgium, styled respectively Prince of Orange and Duke of Brabant, had one offered to present to them M. de Mailly-Nesle, Prince d’Orange, and M. de Charlus, Duc de Brabant. But, before anything further could happen, the Duchess, in whom Swann and M. de Charlus between them (albeit the latter was resolute in ignoring the Iénas’ existence) had with great difficulty succeeded in inculcating a taste for the Empire style, exclaimed:

“Honestly, Ma’am, I can’t tell you how beautiful you’ll find it! I must confess that the Empire style has always had a fascination for me. But at the Iénas’ it really is hallucinating. That sort of—what shall I say—reflux from the Egyptian expedition, and then, too, the sort of upsurge into our own times from Antiquity, all those things invading our houses, the Sphinxes crouching at the feet of the armchairs, the snakes coiled round candelabra, a huge Muse who holds out a little torch for you to play cards under, or has quietly climbed on to the mantelpiece and is leaning against your clock; and then all the Pompeian lamps, the little boat-shaped beds which look as if they had been found floating on the Nile so that you expect to see Moses climb out of them, the classical chariots galloping along the bedside tables . . .”

“They’re not very comfortable to sit in, those Empire chairs,” the Princess ventured.

“No,” the Duchess agreed, “but I love,” she at once added, stressing the point with a smile, “I love being uncomfortable on those mahogany seats covered with ruby velvet or green silk. I love that discomfort of warriors who understand nothing but the curule chair and weave their fasces and stack their laurels in the middle of their main living-room. I can assure you that at the Iénas’ one doesn’t stop to think for a moment of how comfortable one is, when one sees in front of one a great strapping wench of a Victory painted in fresco on the wall. My husband is going to say that I’m a very bad royalist, but I’m terribly wrong-thinking, you know, I can assure you that in those people’s house one comes to love all the big N’s and all the Napoleonic bees. Good heavens, after all, since we hadn’t been exactly surfeited with glory for a good many years under our kings, those warriors who brought home so many crowns that they stuck them even on the arms of the chairs, I must say I think it’s all rather fetching! Your Highness really must.”

“Why, my dear, if you think so,” said the Princess, “but it seems to me that it won’t be easy.”

“But Your Highness will find that it will all go quite smoothly. They are very kind people, and no fools. We took Mme de Chevreuse there,” added the Duchess, knowing the force of this example, “and she was enchanted. The son is really very pleasant . . . I’m going to tell you something that’s not quite proper,” she went on, “but he has a bedroom, and more especially a bed, in which I should love to sleep—without him! What is even less proper is that I went to see him once when he was ill and lying in it. By his side, on the frame of the bed, there was a sculpted Siren, stretched out at full length, absolutely ravishing,