• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1682 0

I did not understand, and the other responded with further bows, addressed to the wall, for the Duke could not see him, but endlessly repeated nevertheless, like the purposeless smiles on the faces of people who are talking to one on the telephone; he had a falsetto voice, and saluted me afresh with the humility of a steward. And he might indeed have been a steward from Combray, so much was he in the style, provincial, antiquated and mild, of the small folk, the modest elders of those parts.

“You’ll see Oriane presently,” the Duke said to me when I entered the room. “As Swann is coming round soon with the proofs of his essay on the coinage of the Order of Malta, and, what is worse, an immense photograph he has had taken showing both sides of each of the coins, Oriane decided to get dressed first in order to be able to stay with him until it’s time to go out to dinner. We’re already so cluttered with things that we don’t know where to put them all, and I wonder where on earth we’re going to stick this photograph. But my wife’s too good-natured—she can’t resist obliging people. She thought it would be nice to ask Swann to let her see side by side on one sheet the heads of all those Grand Masters of the Order whose medals he found at Rhodes. I said Malta, didn’t I—it’s Rhodes, but it’s the same Order of St John of Jerusalem. The truth is that she’s interested in all that only because Swann makes a hobby of it. Our family is very much mixed up in the whole story; even today, my brother, whom you know, is one of the highest dignitaries in the Order of Malta. But if I’d talked to Oriane about it all she simply wouldn’t have listened to me. On the other hand, Swann’s researches into the Templars (it’s astonishing the passion people of one religion have for studying others) only had to lead him on to the history of the Knights of Rhodes, who succeeded the Templars, for Oriane at once to insist on seeing the heads of these knights. They were very small fry indeed compared with the Lusignans, Kings of Cyprus, from whom we descend in a direct line. But so far Swann hasn’t taken them up, so Oriane doesn’t care to hear anything about the Lusignans.”

I could not at once explain to the Duke why I had come. The fact was that several relatives or friends, including Mme de Silistrie and the Duchesse de Montrose, came to call on the Duchess, who was often at home before dinner, and not finding her, stayed for a short while with the Duke. The first of these ladies (the Princesse de Silistrie), simply attired, with a curt but friendly manner, was carrying a stick. I was afraid at first that she had injured herself, or was a cripple. She was on the contrary most alert. She spoke sadly to the Duke, of a first cousin of his—not on the Guermantes side, but more illustrious still, were that possible—whose health, which had been in a grave condition for some time past, had grown suddenly worse. But it was evident that the Duke, while sympathising with his cousin and repeating “Poor Mama!” (the cousin’s nickname in the family) “He’s such a good fellow,” had formed a favourable prognosis. The fact was that the Duke was looking forward to the dinner-party he was to attend, and far from bored at the prospect of the big reception at the Princesse de Guermantes’s, but above all he was to go on at one o’clock in the morning with his wife to a great supper and fancy dress ball, with a view to which a costume as Louis XI for himself, and one as Isabella of Bavaria for the Duchess, were waiting in readiness. And the Duke was determined not to be disturbed amid all these gaieties by the sufferings of the worthy Amanien d’Osmond. Two other ladies carrying sticks, Mme de Plassac and Mme de Tresmes, both daughters of the Comte de Bréquigny, came in next to pay Basin a visit, and declared that cousin Mama’s state was now beyond hope. The Duke shrugged his shoulders, and to change the subject asked whether they were going that evening to Marie-Gilbert’s. They replied that they were not, in view of the state of Amanien who was in extremis, and indeed they had excused