day, in conversation with her, to the base arguments which she herself produced in favour of the invitation, and tried to make them irresistible. “Make up your mind to it once and for all,” Cottard repeated, “and you’ll get a reduction of the rent, they’ll pay the gardener, you’ll have the use of the meadow. That will be well worth a boring evening. I’m thinking only of you,” he added, though his heart had leapt once when, in Mme Verdurin’s carriage, he had passed old Mme de Cambremer’s on the road, and he felt humiliated in front of the railway employees when he found himself standing beside the Marquis at the station. For their part, the Cambremers, living much too far outside the social “swim” ever to suspect that certain ladies of fashion now spoke of Mme Verdurin with a certain respect, imagined that she was a person who could know none but Bohemians, was perhaps not even legally married, and so far as people of “birth” were concerned would never meet any but themselves. They had resigned themselves to the thought of dining with her only in order to be on good terms with a tenant who, they hoped, would return again for many seasons, especially since they had learned, during the previous month, that she had recently inherited all those millions. It was in silence and without any vulgar pleasantries that they prepared themselves for the fatal day. The faithful had given up hope of its ever coming, so often had Mme Verdurin already fixed in their hearing a date that was invariably postponed. These false alarms were intended not merely to make a show of the boredom that she felt at the thought of this dinner-party, but to keep in suspense those members of the little group who were staying in the neighbourhood and were sometimes inclined to default. Not that the Mistress guessed that the “great day” was as delightful a prospect to them as to herself, but in order that, having persuaded them that this dinner-party was for her the most terrible of chores, she might appeal to their devotedness. “You’re not going to leave me all alone with those freaks! We must assemble in full force to stand the boredom. Naturally we shan’t be able to talk about any of the things that interest us. It will be a Wednesday spoiled, but what is one to do!”
“Actually,” Brichot observed for my benefit, “I fancy that Mme Verdurin, who is highly intelligent and takes infinite pains in the elaboration of her Wednesdays, was by no means anxious to entertain these squireens of ancient lineage but small wit. She could not bring herself to invite the dowager Marquise, but has resigned herself to having the son and daughter-in-law.”
“Ah! we are to see the young Marquise de Cambremer?” said Cottard with a smile into which he felt called upon to introduce a tinge of lecherous gallantry, although he had no idea whether Mme de Cambremer was goodlooking or not. But the title of Marquise conjured up in his mind images of glamour and dalliance.
“Ah! I know her,” said Ski, who had met her once when he was out for a drive with Mme Verdurin.
“Not in the biblical sense of the word, I trust,” said the doctor, darting a sly glance through his eyeglass; this was one of his favourite pleasantries.
“She is intelligent,” Ski informed me. “Naturally,” he went on, seeing that I said nothing, and dwelling with a smile upon each word, “she is intelligent and at the same time she is not, she lacks education, she is frivolous, but she has an instinct for pretty things. She may say nothing, but she will never say anything silly. And besides, her colouring is charming. She would be fun to paint,” he added, half shutting his eyes as though he saw her posing in front of him.
As my opinion of her was quite the opposite of what Ski was expressing with so many qualifications, I observed merely that she was the sister of a very distinguished engineer, M. Legrandin.
“There, you see, you are going to be introduced to a pretty woman,” Brichot said to me, “and one never knows what may come of that. Cleopatra was not even a great lady, she was the little woman, the thoughtless, dreadful