In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [194]
Trembling like a recruit before a bullying sergeant, Saniette replied, making his reply as exiguous as possible, so that it might have a better chance of escaping the blow: “Only once, to the Chercheuse.”
“What’s that he says?” shouted M. Verdurin, with an air of disgust and fury combined, knitting his brows as though he needed all his concentration to grasp something unintelligible. “It’s impossible to understand what you say. What have you got in your mouth?” inquired M. Verdurin, growing more and more furious, and alluding to Saniette’s speech defect.
“Poor Saniette, I won’t have him made unhappy,” said Mme Verdurin in a tone of false pity, so as to leave no one in doubt as to her husband’s rudeness.
“I was at the Ch . . . Che . . .”
“Che, che, do try to speak distinctly,” said M. Verdurin, “I can’t understand a word you say.”
Almost without exception, the faithful burst out laughing, looking like a group of cannibals in whom the sight of a wounded white man has aroused the thirst for blood. For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike. And we all of us laugh at a person whom we see being made fun of, though it does not prevent us from venerating him ten years later in a circle where he is admired. It is in the same fashion that the populace banishes or acclaims its kings.
“Come, now, it’s not his fault,” said Mme Verdurin.
“It’s not mine either, people ought not to dine out if they can’t speak properly.”
“I was at the Chercheuse d’Esprit by Favart.”
“What! It’s the Chercheuse d’Esprit that you call the Chercheuse? Why, that’s marvellous[ I might have gone on trying for a hundred years without guessing it,” cried M. Verdurin, who nevertheless would have decided immediately that you were not literary, were not artistic, were not “one of us,” if he had heard you quote the full title of certain works. For instance, one was expected to say the Malade, the Bourgeois, and anyone who added imaginaire or gentilhomme would have shown that he did not “belong,” just as in a drawing-room a person proves that he is not in society by saying “M. de Montesquiou-Fezensac” instead of “M. de Montesquiou.”
“But it isn’t so extraordinary,” said Saniette, breathless with emotion but smiling, although he was in no smiling mood.
Mme Verdurin could not contain herself: “Oh yes it is!” she exclaimed with a snigger. “You may be quite sure that nobody would ever have guessed that you meant the Chercheuse d’Esprit.”
M. Verdurin went on in a gentler tone, addressing both Saniette and Brichot: “It’s not a bad play, actually, the Chercheuse d’Esprit.”
Uttered in a serious tone, this simple remark, in which no trace of malice was to be detected, did Saniette as much good and aroused in him as much gratitude as a compliment. He was unable to utter a single word and preserved a happy silence. Brichot was more loquacious. “It’s true,” he replied to M. Verdurin, “and if it could be passed off as the work of some Sarmatian or Scandinavian author, we might put it forward as a candidate for the vacant post of masterpiece. But, be it said without any disrespect to the shade of the gentle Favart, he had not the Ibsenian temperament.” (Immediately he blushed to the roots of his hair, remembering the Norwegian philosopher, who looked unhappy because he was trying in vain to discover what vegetable the buis might be that Brichot had cited a little earlier in connexion with the name Bussière.) “However, now that Porel’s satrapy is filled by a functionary who is a Tolstoyan of rigorous observance, it may come to pass that we shall witness Anna Karenina or Resurrection beneath the Odéonian architrave.”
“I know the portrait of Favart to which you allude,” said M. de Charlus. “I have seen a very fine print of it at the Comtesse Molé’s.”
This name made a great impression upon Mme Verdurin. “Oh! so you go to Mme de Molé’s!” she exclaimed. She supposed