In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [212]
“Are you staying much longer in the neighbourhood, Madame?” M. de Cambremer asked Mme Cottard, an inquiry that might be interpreted as a vague intention to invite her, but which dispensed him for the moment from making any more precise commitment. “Oh, certainly, Monsieur, I regard this annual exodus as most important for the children. Say what you like, they need fresh air. I may be rather primitive on this point but I believe that no cure is as good for children as healthy air—even if someone should give me a mathematical proof to the contrary. Their little faces are already completely changed. The doctors wanted to send me to Vichy; but it’s too stuffy there, and I can look after my stomach when those big boys of mine have grown a little bigger. Besides, the Professor, with all the examining he has to do, has always got his shoulder to the wheel, and the heat tires him dreadfully. I feel that a man needs a thorough rest after he has been on the go all the year like that. Whatever happens we shall stay another month at least.”
“Ah! in that case we shall meet again.”
“In any case I shall be obliged to stay here as my husband has to go on a visit to Savoy, and won’t be finally settled here for another fortnight.”
“I like the view of the valley even more than the sea view,” Mme Verdurin went on. “You’re going to have a splendid night for your journey.”
“We ought really to find out whether the carriages are ready, if you are absolutely determined to go back to Balbec tonight,” M. Verdurin said to me, “for I see no necessity for it myself. We could drive you over tomorrow morning. It’s certain to be fine. The roads are excellent.”
I said that it was impossible. “But in any case it isn’t time to go yet,” the Mistress protested. “Leave them alone, they have heaps of time. A lot of good it will do them to arrive at the station with an hour to wait. They’re far better off here. And you, my young Mozart,” she said to Morel, not venturing to address M. de Charlus directly, “won’t you stay the night? We have some nice rooms overlooking the sea.”
“No, he can’t,” M. de Charlus replied on behalf of the absorbed card-player who had not heard. “He has a pass until midnight only. He must go back to bed like a good little boy, obedient and well-behaved,” he added in a smug, affected, insistent voice, as though he found a sadistic pleasure in employing this chaste comparison and also in letting his voice dwell, in passing, upon something that concerned Morel, in touching him, if not with his hand, with words that seemed to be tactile.
From the sermon that Brichot had addressed to me, M. de Cambremer had concluded that I was a Dreyfusard. As he himself was as anti-Dreyfusard as possible, out of courtesy to a foe he began to sing me the praises of a Jewish colonel who had always been very decent to a cousin of the Chevregnys and had secured for him the promotion he deserved. “And my cousin’s opinions were the exact opposite,” said M. de Cambremer. He omitted to mention what those opinions were, but I sensed that they were as antiquated and misshapen as his own face, opinions which a few families in certain small towns must long have entertained. “Well, you know, I call that really fine!” was M. de Cambremer’s conclusion. It is true that he was hardly employing the word “fine” in the aesthetic sense in which his wife or his mother would have applied it to different works of art. M. de Cambremer often made use of this term, when for instance he was congratulating a delicate person who had put on a little weight. “What, you’ve gained half a stone in two months? I say, that’s really fine!”
Refreshments were set out on a table. Mme Verdurin