In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [343]
“Well, he’ll come and see you specially,” declared the Duke, to whom his wife was obliged to yield. “You can spend three hours in front of it, if that amuses you,” he added sarcastically. “But where are you going to stick a toy that size?”
“In my room, of course. I want to have it before my eyes.”
“Oh, just as you please; if it’s in your room, there’s a chance I shall never see it,” said the Duke, oblivious of the revelation he was thus blindly making of the negative character of his conjugal relations.
“Make sure you undo it with the greatest care,” Mme de Guermantes told the servant, underlining her instructions out of deference to Swann. “And don’t crumple the envelope, either.”
“Even the envelope has to be respected!” the Duke murmured to me, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “But, Swann,” he added, “what amazes me, a poor prosaic husband, is how you managed to find an envelope that size. Where on earth did you dig it up?”
“Oh, at the photographer’s; they’re always sending out things like that. But the man is an oaf, for I see he’s written on it ‘La Duchesse de Guermantes,’ without putting ‘Madame.’ ”
“I forgive him,” said the Duchess carelessly; then, seeming to be struck by a sudden idea which amused her, repressed a faint smile; but at once returning to Swann: “Well, you don’t say whether you’re coming to Italy with us?”
“Madame, I’m very much afraid that it won’t be possible.”
“Indeed! Mme de Montmorency is more fortunate. You went with her to Venice and Vicenza. She told me that with you one saw things one would never see otherwise, things no one had ever thought of mentioning before, that you showed her things she’d never dreamed of, and that even in the well-known things she was able to appreciate details which without you she might have passed by a dozen times without ever noticing. She’s certainly been more highly favoured than we are to be . . . You will take the big envelope which contained M. Swann’s photograph,” she said to the servant, “and you will hand it in, from me, the corner turned down, this evening at half past ten at Mme la Comtesse Molé’s.”
Swann burst out laughing.
“I should like to know, all the same,” Mme de Guermantes asked him, “how you can tell ten months in advance that a thing will be impossible.”
“My dear Duchess, I’ll tell you if you insist, but, first of all, you can see that I’m very ill.”
“Yes, my little Charles, I don’t think you look at all well. I’m not pleased with your colour. But I’m not asking you to come with us next week, I’m asking you to come in ten months’ time. In ten months one has time to get oneself cured, you know.”
At this point a footman came in to say that the carriage was at the door. “Come, Oriane, to horse,” said the Duke, already pawing the ground with impatience as though he were himself one of the horses that stood waiting outside.
“Very well, give me in one word the reason why you can’t come to Italy,” the Duchess put it to Swann as she rose to say good-bye to us.
“But, my dear lady, it’s because I shall then have been dead for several months. According to the doctors I’ve consulted, by the end of the year the thing I’ve got—which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment—won’t in any case leave me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate,” replied Swann with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out.
“What’s that you say?” cried the Duchess, stopping for a moment on her way to the carriage and raising her beautiful, melancholy blue eyes, now clouded by uncertainty. Placed for the first time in her life between two duties