In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [326]
“But I could send round for it without disturbing you,” I said obligingly.
“Will you hold your tongue, you little fool,” he replied angrily, “and not assume the grotesque air of regarding as a small matter the honour of being probably (I do not say certainly, for it will perhaps be one of my servants who hands you the volumes) received by me.”
Then, regaining possession of himself: “I do not wish to part from you on these words. No dissonance; before the eternal silence, the dominant chord!” It was for his own nerves that he seemed to dread an immediate return home after harsh words of dissension. “You would not care to come to the Bois,” he said to me in a tone that was not so much interrogative as affirmative, not, it seemed to me, because he did not wish to make me the offer, but because he was afraid that his self-esteem might meet with a refusal. “Ah, well,” he went on, still postponing our separation, “it is the moment when, as Whistler says, the bourgeois go to bed” (perhaps he wished now to appeal to my self-esteem) “and it is meet to begin to look at things. But you don’t even know who Whistler is!” I changed the subject and asked him whether the Princesse d’Iéna was an intelligent person. M. de Charlus stopped me, and, adopting the most contemptuous tone that I had yet heard him use, “Ah! there, sir,” he said, “you are alluding to an order of nomenclature with which I do not hold. There is perhaps an aristocracy among the Tahitians, but I must confess that I know nothing about it. The name which you have just pronounced did sound in my ears, strangely enough, only a few days ago. Someone asked me whether I would condescend to allow the young Duc de Guastalla to be presented to me. The request astonished me, for the Duc de Guastalla has no need of an introduction to me, for the simple reason that he is my cousin, and has known me all his life; he is the son of the Princesse de Parme, and, as a well brought-up young kinsman, he never fails to come and pay his respects to me on New Year’s Day. But, on making inquiries, I discovered that the young man in question was not my kinsman but the son of the person in whom you are interested. As there exists no princess of that title, I supposed that my friend was referring to some poor wanton sleeping under the Pont d’Iéna, who had picturesquely assumed the title of Princesse d’Iéna, as one talks about the Panther of the Batignolles, or the Steel King. But no, the reference was to a rich person who possesses some remarkable furniture which I had seen and admired at an exhibition, and which enjoys the superiority over the name of its owner of being genuine. As for this self-styled Duc de Guastalla, I supposed him to be my secretary’s stockbroker; one can procure so many things with money. But no; it was the Emperor, it appears, who amused himself by conferring on these people a title which simply was not his to bestow. It was perhaps a sign of power, or of ignorance, or of malice, but in any case, I consider that it was an exceedingly scurvy trick to play on these unwitting usurpers. However, I cannot enlighten you on the subject; my knowledge begins and ends with the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where, among all the Courvoisiers and Gallardons, you will find, if you can manage to secure an introduction, plenty of old harridans taken straight out of Balzac who will amuse you. Naturally, all that has nothing to do with the prestige of the Princesse de Guermantes, but without me and my ‘Open Sesame’ her portals are inaccessible.”
“The Princesse de Guermantes’s house is really very beautiful.”
“Oh, it’s not very beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Next to the Princess herself, of course.”
“Is the Princesse de Guermantes superior to the Duchesse de Guermantes?”
“Oh! there’s no comparison.” (It is to be observed