In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [97]
attend all the most insignificant social gatherings in the neighbourhood. Certainly, rather than travel such a distance to listen, in the stifling heat of a tiny drawing-room, to a singer who generally had no voice and whom in her capacity as the lady bountiful of the countryside and as a renowned musician she would afterwards be compelled to congratulate with exaggerated warmth, Mme de Cambremer would have preferred to go for a drive or to remain in her marvellous gardens at Féterne, at the foot of which the drowsy waters of a little bay float in to die amid the flowers. But she knew that the probability of her coming had been announced by the host, whether he was a noble or a freeman of Maineville-la-Teinturière or of Chattoncourt-l’Orgueilleux. And if Mme de Cambremer had driven out that afternoon without making a formal appearance at the party, one or other of the guests who had come from one of the little places that lined the coast might have seen or heard the Marquise’s barouche, thus depriving her of the excuse that she had not been able to get away from Féterne. Moreover, for all that these hosts had often seen Mme de Cambremer appear at concerts given in houses which they considered were no place for her, the slight depreciation which in their eyes the position of the too obliging Marquise suffered thereby vanished as soon as it was they who were entertaining her, and it was with feverish anxiety that they would ask themselves whether or not they were going to see her at their little party. What an assuagement of the doubts and fears of days if, after the first song had been sung by the daughter of the house or by some amateur on holiday in the neighbourhood, one of the guests announced (an infallible sign that the Marquise was coming to the party) that he had seen the famous barouche and pair drawn up outside the watchmaker’s or the chemist’s! Thereupon Mme de Cambremer (who indeed would arrive before long, followed by her daughter-in-law and the guests who were staying with her at the moment and whom she had asked permission, joyfully granted, to bring) shone once more with undiminished lustre in the eyes of the host and hostess, for whom the hoped-for reward of her coming had perhaps been the determining if unavowed cause of the decision they had made a month earlier to burden themselves with the trouble and expense of an afternoon party. Seeing the Marquise present at their gathering, they remembered no longer her readiness to attend those given by their less qualified neighbours, but the antiquity of her family, the splendour of her house, the rudeness of her daughter-in-law, née Legrandin, who by her arrogance emphasised the slightly insipid good-nature of the dowager. Already they could see in their mind’s eye, in the social column of the Gaulois, the paragraph which they would concoct themselves in the family circle, with all the doors shut and barred, about “the little corner of Brittany where they have a good time, the ultra-select party from which the guests could hardly tear themselves away, promising their charming host and hostess that they would soon pay them another visit.” Day after day they would watch for the newspaper to arrive, worried that they had not yet seen any notice in it of their party, and afraid lest they should have had Mme de Cambremer for their other guests alone and not for the whole reading public. At length the blessed day would arrive: “The season is exceptionally brilliant this year at Balbec. Small afternoon concerts are the fashion . . .” Heaven be praised, Mme de Cambremer’s name had been spelt correctly, and “mentioned at random” but at the head of the list. All that remained would be to appear annoyed at this journalistic indiscretion which might get them into difficulties with people whom they had not been able to invite, and to ask hypocritically in Mme de Cambremer’s hearing who could have been so treacherous as to send the notice, upon which the Marquise, every inch the lady bountiful, would say: “I can understand your being annoyed, but I must say I’m only too delighted