have in the house” from being invited by various male or female Guermantes, that the latter were beginning to be afraid of quarrelling with all the people they liked, of depriving themselves throughout their lives of the society of certain newcomers they were curious about, by espousing the thunderous but unexplained grudges of a brother-in-law or cousin who expected them to abandon wife, brother, children for his sake. More intelligent than the other Guermantes, M. de Charlus realised that people were ceasing to pay attention to more than one in every two of his vetoes, and, with an eye to the future, fearing it might be he himself of whose society they deprived themselves, had begun to cut his losses, to lower, as the saying is, his sights. Furthermore, if he had the faculty of keeping up a feud with a detested person for months, for years on end—to such a one he would not have tolerated their sending an invitation, and would have fought like a street porter even against a queen, the status of the person who stood in his way ceasing to count for anything in his eyes—on the other hand, his explosions of rage were too frequent not to be somewhat fragmentary. “The imbecile, the scoundrel! We’ll put him in his place, sweep him into the gutter, where unfortunately he won’t be innocuous to the health of the town,” he would scream, even when he was alone in his own room, on reading a letter that he considered irreverent, or on recalling some remark that had been repeated to him. But a fresh outburst against a second imbecile cancelled the first, and the former victim had only to show due deference for the fit of rage that he had occasioned to be forgotten, it not having lasted long enough to establish a foundation of hatred on which to build. And so, perhaps—despite his bad temper towards me—I might have been successful when I asked him to introduce me to the Prince, had I not been so ill-inspired as to add, from a scruple of conscience, and so that he might not suppose me guilty of the indelicacy of entering the house on the off chance, counting upon him to enable me to remain there: “You are aware that I know them quite well, the Princess was very nice to me.” “Very well, if you know them, why do you need me to introduce you?” he replied in a waspish tone, and, turning his back, resumed his make-believe game with the Nuncio, the German Ambassador and another personage whom I didn’t know by sight.
Then, from the depths of those gardens where in days past the Duc d’Aiguillon used to breed rare animals, there came to my ears, through the great open doors, the sound of a nose that was sniffing up all those refinements, determined to miss none of them. The sound approached, I moved at a venture in its direction, with the result that the words “Good evening” were murmured in my ear by M. de Bréauté, not like the rusty metallic sound of a knife being sharpened on a grindstone, even less like the cry of the wild boar, devastator of tilled fields, but like the voice of a possible saviour.
Less influential than Mme de Souvré, but less deeply ingrained than she with unwillingness to oblige, far more at his ease with the Prince than was Mme d’Arpajon, entertaining some illusions, perhaps, as to my position in the Guermantes set, or perhaps knowing more about it than myself, he was, however, for the first few moments difficult to pin down, for he was turning in every direction, with quivering and distended nostrils, staring inquisitively through his monocle as though confronted with five hundred masterpieces. But, having heard my request, he received it with satisfaction, led me towards the Prince and presented me to him with a lip-smacking, ceremonious, vulgar air, as though he had been handing him a plate of cakes with a word of commendation. Whereas the Duc de Guermantes’s greeting was, when he chose, friendly, instinct with good fellowship, cordial and familiar, I found that of the Prince stiff, solemn and haughty. He barely smiled at me, addressed me gravely as “Sir.” I had often heard the Duke make fun of his cousin’s hauteur. But