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By Root 1459 0

just recalled, Mme de Vaugoubert personified the acquired or predestined type, the immortal example of which is the Princess Palatine, never out of a riding habit, who, having borrowed from her husband more than his virility, embracing the defects of the men who do not care for women, reports in her gossipy letters the mutual relations of all the great noblemen of the court of Louis XIV. One of the reasons which enhance still further the masculine air of women like Mme de Vaugoubert is that the neglect which they receive from their husbands, and the shame that they feel at such neglect, gradually dry up everything that is womanly in them. They end by acquiring both the good and the bad qualities which their husbands lack. The more frivolous, effeminate, indiscreet their husbands are, the more they grow into the charmless effigies of the virtues which their husbands ought to practise.

Traces of opprobrium, boredom, indignation, tarnished the regular features of Mme de Vaugoubert. Alas, I felt that she was considering me with interest and curiosity as one of those young men who appealed to M. de Vaugoubert and whom she herself would so much have liked to be now that her ageing husband showed a preference for youth. She was gazing at me with the close attention shown by provincial ladies who from an illustrated catalogue copy the tailor-made dress so becoming to the charming person in the picture (actually the same person on every page, but deceptively multiplied into different creatures, thanks to the differences of pose and the variety of attire). The instinctive attraction which urged Mme de Vaugoubert towards me was so strong that she went as far as to seize me by the arm so that I might take her to get a glass of orangeade. But I extricated myself on the pretext that I must presently be going, and had not yet been introduced to our host.

The distance between me and the garden door where he stood talking to a group of people was not very great. But it alarmed me more than if, in order to cross it, I had had to expose myself to a continuous hail of fire.

A number of women from whom I felt that I might be able to secure an introduction were in the garden, where, while feigning an ecstatic admiration, they were at a loss for something to do. Parties of this sort are as a rule premature. They have little reality until the following day, when they occupy the attention of the people who were not invited. A real writer, devoid of the foolish self-esteem of so many literary people, when he reads an article by a critic who has always expressed the greatest admiration for his works and sees the names of various inferior writers mentioned but not his own, has no time to stop and consider what might be to him a matter for astonishment; his books are calling him. But a society woman has nothing to do and, on seeing in the Figaro: “Last night the Prince and Princesse de Guermantes gave a large party,” etc., exclaims: “What! Only three days ago I talked to Marie-Gilbert for an hour, and she never said a word about it!” and racks her brain to discover how she can have offended the Guermantes. It must be said that, so far as the Princess’s parties were concerned, the astonishment was sometimes as great among those who were invited as among those who were not. For they would burst forth at the moment when one least expected them, and mobilised people whose existence Mme de Guermantes had forgotten for years. And almost all society people are so insignificant that others of their sort adopt, in judging them, only the measure of their social success, cherish them if they are invited, detest them if they are omitted. As to the latter, if it was the fact that the Princess did not invite them even though they were her friends, that was often due to her fear of annoying “Palamède,” who had excommunicated them. And so I might be certain that she had not spoken of me to M. de Charlus, for otherwise I should not have found myself there. He meanwhile was posted between the house and the garden, beside the German Ambassador, leaning upon the balustrade