In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [341]
“But really, Basin, you don’t mean to tell me that a person who was honorary commandant of every regiment in her country, who people thought would become engaged to the King of Sweden . . .”
“Oh, Oriane, that’s too much; anyone would think you didn’t know that the King of Sweden’s grandfather was tilling the soil at Pau when we had been ruling the roost for nine hundred years throughout the whole of Europe.”
“That doesn’t alter the fact that if somebody were to say in the street: ‘Hallo, there’s the King of Sweden,’ everyone would at once rush to see him as far as the Place de la Concorde, and if he said: ‘There’s M. de Guermantes,’ nobody would know who it was.”
“What an argument!”
“Besides, I can’t understand how, once the title of Duke of Brabant has passed to the Belgian royal family, you can continue to claim it.”
The footman returned with the Comtesse Molé’s card, or rather what she had left in place of a card. On the pretext that she did not have one with her, she had taken from her pocket a letter addressed to herself, and keeping the contents had handed in the envelope which bore the inscription: “La Comtesse Molé.” As the envelope was rather large, following the fashion in note-paper which prevailed that year, this “card” was almost twice the size of an ordinary visiting card.
“That’s what people call Mme Molé’s ‘simplicity,’ ” said the Duchess sarcastically. “She wants to make us think that she had no cards on her to show her originality. But we know all about that, don’t we, my little Charles, we’re quite old enough and quite original enough ourselves to see through the tricks of a little lady who has only been going about for four years. She is charming, but she doesn’t seem to me, all the same, to have the weight to imagine that she can stun the world with so little effort as merely by leaving an envelope instead of a card and leaving it at ten o’clock in the morning. Her old mother mouse will show her that she knows a thing or two about that.”
Swann could not help smiling at the thought that the Duchess, who was, as it happened, a trifle jealous of Mme Molé’s success, would find it quite in accordance with the “Guermantes wit” to make some insolent retort to her visitor.
“So far as the title of Duc de Brabant is concerned, I’ve told you a hundred times, Oriane . . .” the Duke continued, but the Duchess, without listening, cut him short.
“But, my dear Charles, I’m longing to see your photograph.”
“Ah! Extinctor draconis latrator Anubis,” said Swann.
“Yes, it was so charming what you said about that apropos of San Giorgio at Venice. But I don’t understand why Anubis?”
“What’s the one like who was an ancestor of Babal?” asked M. de Guermantes.
“You want to see his bauble,” said his wife drily, to show that she herself despised the pun. “I want to see them all,” she added.
“I’ll tell you what, Charles, let’s go downstairs till the carriage comes,” said the Duke. “You can pay your call on us in the hall, because my wife won’t let us have any peace until she’s seen your photograph. I’m less impatient, I must say,” he added complacently. “I’m not easily stirred myself, but she would see us all dead rather than miss it.”
“I entirely agree with you, Basin,” said the Duchess, “let’s go into the hall; we shall at least know why we have come down from your study, whereas we shall never know how we have come down from the Counts of Brabant.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times how the title came into the House of Hesse,” said the Duke (while we were going downstairs to look at the photograph, and I thought of those that Swann used