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By Root 1413 0

” he said. “Any more than—not, of course, that my family is so distinguished—heaps of Americans who are called Montgomery, Berry, Chandos or Capel have with the families of Pembroke, Buckingham or Essex, or with the Duc de Berry.” I thought more than once of telling him, as a joke, that I knew Mme Swann, who as a courtesan had been known at one time by the name Odette de Crécy; but although the Duc d’Alençon could not have been offended if one spoke to him of Emilienne d’Alençon, I did not feel that I was on sufficiently intimate terms with M. de Crécy to carry the joke so far. “He comes of a very great family,” M. de Montsurvent said to me one day. “His patronymic is Saylor.” And he went on to say that on the wall of his old castle above Incarville, which was now almost uninhabitable and which he, although born very rich, was now too impoverished to put in repair, was still to be read the old motto of the family. I thought this motto very fine, whether applied to the impatience of a predatory race ensconced in that eyrie from which its members must have swooped down in the past, or, at the present day, to its contemplation of its own decline, awaiting the approach of death in that towering, grim retreat. It is in this double sense indeed that this motto plays upon the name Saylor, in the words: “Ne sçais l’heure.”

At Hermenonville M. de Chevregny would sometimes get in, a gentleman whose name, Brichot told us, signified like that of Mgr de Cabrières “a place where goats assemble.” He was related to the Cambremers, for which reason, and from a false appreciation of elegance, the latter often invited him to Féterne, but only when they had no other guests to dazzle. Living all the year round at Beausoleil, M. de Chevregny had remained more provincial than they. And so when he went for a few weeks to Paris, there was not a moment to waste if he was to “see everything” in the time; so much so that sometimes, a little dazed by the number of spectacles too rapidly digested, when he was asked if he had seen a particular play he would find that he was no longer absolutely sure. But this uncertainty was rare, for he had that detailed knowledge of Paris only to be found in people who seldom go there. He advised me which of the “novelties” I ought to see (“It’s well worth your while”), regarding them however solely from the point of view of the pleasant evening that they might help to spend, and so completely ignoring the aesthetic point of view as never to suspect that they might indeed occasionally constitute a “novelty” in the history of art. So it was that, speaking of everything in the same tone, he told us: “We went once to the Opéra-Comique, but the show there isn’t up to much. It’s called Pelléas et Mélisande. It’s trivial. Périer always acts well, but it’s better to see him in something else. At the Gymnase, on the other hand, they’re doing La Châtelaine. We went back to it twice; don’t miss it, whatever you do, it’s well worth seeing; besides, it’s played to perfection; there’s Frévalles, Marie Magnier, Baron fils”; and he went on to cite the names of actors of whom I had never heard, and without prefixing Monsieur, Madame or Mademoiselle like the Duc de Guermantes, who used to speak in the same ceremoniously contemptuous tone of the “songs of Mademoiselle Yvette Guilbert” and the “experiments of Monsieur Charcot.” This was not M. de Chevregny’s way: he said “Cornaglia and Dehelly” as he might have said “Voltaire and Montesquieu.” For in him, with regard to actors as to everything that was Parisian, the aristocrat’s desire to show his disdain was overcome by the provincial’s desire to appear on familiar terms with everyone.

Immediately after the first dinner-party that I had attended at La Raspelière with what was still called at Féterne “the young couple,” although M. and Mme de Cambremer were no longer, by any means, in their first youth, the old Marquise had written me one of those letters which one can pick out by their handwriting from among a thousand. She said to me: “Bring your delicious—charming—nice cousin. It