In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [234]
belong to them, a smile which I had already seen on the faces of certain people when they said to Bergotte with a knowing air: “I’ve bought your book, it’s not bad,” one of those collective, universal smiles which, when they feel the need of them—as one makes use of railways and removal vans—individuals borrow, except a few who are extremely refined, like Swann or M. de Charlus, on whose lips I never saw that smile appear. From that moment my visit was ruined. I pretended not to have understood. A moment later it became evident that M. Verdurin was to be of the party. “But it will be too far for M. Verdurin,” I objected. “Not at all,” replied Mme Verdurin with a condescending, cheerful air, “he says it will amuse him immensely to go with you young people over a road he has travelled so many times; if necessary, he will sit beside the driver, that doesn’t frighten him, and we shall come back quietly by the train like good spouses. Look at him, he’s quite delighted.” She seemed to be speaking of an aged and famous painter full of good nature, who, younger than the youngest, takes a delight in daubing pictures to amuse his grandchildren. What added to my gloom was that Albertine seemed not to share it and to find some amusement in the thought of dashing all over the countryside with the Verdurins. As for myself, the pleasure that I had been looking forward to enjoying with her was so imperious that I refused to allow the Mistress to spoil it; I made up lies which were justified by Mme Verdurin’s irritating threats but which Albertine unfortunately contradicted. “But we have a call to make,” I said. “What call?” asked Albertine. “I’ll explain to you later, there’s no getting out of it.” “Very well, we can wait outside,” said Mme Verdurin, resigned to anything. At the last minute my anguish at being deprived of a happiness for which I had so longed gave me the courage to be impolite. I refused point-blank, whispering in Mme Verdurin’s ear that because of some trouble which had befallen Albertine and about which she wished to consult me, it was absolutely essential that I should be alone with her. The Mistress looked furious: “All right, we shan’t come,” she said to me in a voice trembling with rage. I felt her to be so angry that, so as to appear to be giving way a little: “But we might perhaps . . .” I began. “No,” she replied, more furious than ever, “when I say no, I mean no.” I supposed that I had irrevocably offended her, but she called us back at the door to urge us not to “let her down” on the following Wednesday, and not to come with that contraption, which was dangerous at night, but by the train with the little group, and she stopped the car, which was already moving downhill through the park, because the footman had forgotten to put in the back the slice of tart and the short-bread which she had had wrapped up for us. We set off again, escorted for a moment by the little houses that came running to meet us with their flowers. The face of the countryside seemed to us entirely changed, for in the topographical image that we form in our minds of separate places the notion of space is far from being the most important factor. We have said that the notion of time segregates them even further. It is not the only factor either. Certain places which we see always in isolation seem to us to have no common measure with the rest, to be almost outside the world, like those people whom we have known in exceptional periods of our life, in the army or during our childhood, and whom we do not connect with anything. During my first stay at Balbec there was a hill which Mme de Villeparisis liked to take us up because from it you saw only the sea and the woods, and which was called Beaumont. As the road that she took to approach it, and preferred to other routes because of its old trees, went uphill all the way, her carriage was obliged to go at a crawling pace and took a very long time. When we reached the top we used to get down, walk for a while, get back into the carriage, and return by the same road, without seeing a single village,