In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [219]
indeed, you know quite well he does. He likes putting on a show of brusqueness, but he can’t do without you. It’s always the first thing he asks me: ‘Is Saniette coming? I do so enjoy seeing him.’ ” “I never said anything of the sort,” said M. Verdurin to Saniette with a feigned frankness which seemed perfectly to reconcile what the Mistress had just said with the manner in which he treated Saniette. Then, looking at his watch, doubtless so as not to prolong the leave-taking in the damp night air, he warned the coachmen not to lose any time, but to be careful when going down the hill, and assured us that we should be in plenty of time for our train. The latter was to set down the faithful, one at one station, another at a second, and so on, ending with myself, for no one else was going as far as Balbec, and beginning with the Cambremers, who, in order not to bring their horses all the way up to La Raspelière at night took the train with us at Douville-Féterne. For the station nearest to them was not this one, which, being already at some distance from the village, was further still from the château, but La Sogne. On arriving at the station of Douville-Féterne, M. de Cambremer made a point of “crossing the palm,” as Françoise used to say, of the Verdurins’ coachman (the nice, sensitive coachman, with the melancholy thoughts), for M. de Cambremer was generous, in that respect “taking after his mamma.” But, possibly because his “papa’s side” intervened at this point, in the process of giving he had qualms about the possibility of an error—either on his part, if, for instance, in the dark, he were to give a sou instead of a franc, or on the part of the recipient who might not notice the size of the present that was being given him. And so he drew attention to it: “It is a franc I’m giving you, isn’t it?” he said to the coachman, turning the coin until it gleamed in the lamplight, and so that the faithful might report his action to Mme Verdurin. “Isn’t it? Twenty sous is right, as it’s only a short drive.” He and Mme de Cambremer left us at La Sogne. “I shall tell my sister,” he repeated to me once more, “about your spasms. I’m sure she’ll be interested.” I understood that he meant: “will be pleased.” As for his wife, she employed, in saying good-bye to me, two abbreviations which even in writing, used to shock me at that time in a letter, although one has grown accustomed to them since, but which, when spoken, seem to me still, even today, insufferably pedantic in their deliberate carelessness, in their studied familiarity: “Delighted to have met you,” she said; “greetings to Saint-Loup, if you see him.” In making this speech, Mme de Cambremer pronounced the name “Saint-Loupe.” I never discovered who had pronounced it thus in her hearing, or what had led her to suppose that it ought to be so pronounced. However that may be, for some weeks afterwards she continued to say “Saint-Loupe,” and a man who had a great admiration for her and echoed her in every way did the same. If other people said “Saint-Lou,” they would insist, would say emphatically “Saint-Loupe,” either to teach the others a lesson indirectly, or to distinguish themselves from them. But no doubt women of greater social prestige than Mme de Cambremer told her, or gave her indirectly to understand, that this was not the correct pronunciation, and that what she regarded as a sign of originality was a solecism which would make people think her little conversant with the usages of society, for shortly afterwards Mme de Cambremet was again saying “Saint-Lou,” and her admirer similarly ceased to hold out, either because she had admonished him, or because he had noticed that she no longer sounded the final consonant and had said to himself that if a woman of such distinction, energy and ambition had yielded, it must have been on good grounds. The worst of her admirers was her husband, Mme de Cambremer loved to tease other people in a way that was often highly impertinent. As soon as she began to attack me, or anyone else, in this fashion, M. de Cambremer would start watching