In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [156]
The latter was already blind with fury when M. de Charlus who, his head in the clouds, was incapable of noticing her state, decided that it was only seemly to invite the Mistress to share his joy. And it was perhaps to indulge his taste for literature rather than from an overflow of pride that this specialist in artistic entertainments said to Mme Verdurin: “Well, are you satisfied? I think you have reason to be. You see that when I take it upon myself to organise a festivity there are no half-measures. I don’t know whether your heraldic notions enable you to gauge the precise importance of the event, the weight that I have lifted, the volume of air that I have displaced for you. You have had the Queen of Naples, the brother of the King of Bavaria, the three premier peers. If Vinteuil is Muhammad, we may say that we have brought to him some of the least movable of mountains. Bear in mind that to attend your party the Queen of Naples came up from Neuilly, which is a great deal more difficult for her than it was to leave the Two Sicilies,” he added with malicious intent, notwithstanding his admiration for the Queen. “It’s a historic event. Just think that it’s perhaps the first time she has gone anywhere since the fall of Gaeta. It may well be that the history books will record as climactic dates the day of the fall of Gaeta and that of the Verdurin reception. The fan that she laid down the better to applaud Vinteuil deserves to become more famous than the fan that Mme de Metternich broke because the audience hissed Wagner.”
“In fact she left it here,” said Mme Verdurin, momentarily appeased by the memory of the Queen’s kindness to her, and she showed M. de Charlus the fan which was lying on a chair.
“Oh, how moving!” exclaimed M. de Charlus, approaching the relic with veneration. “It is all the more touching for being so hideous; the little violet is incredible!” And spasms of emotion and irony ran through him by turns. “Oh dear, I don’t know whether you feel these things as I do. Swann would positively have died of convulsions if he had seen it. I know that whatever price it fetches, I shall buy that fan at the sale of the Queen’s belongings, for she’s bound to be sold up, she hasn’t a penny,” he went on, for he never ceased to intersperse the cruellest gossip with the most sincere veneration, although they sprang from two opposing natures, which, however, were combined in him. (They might even be brought to bear alternately on the same fact. For the M. de Charlus who from his comfortable position as a rich man jeered at the poverty of the Queen was the same who was often to be heard extolling that poverty and who, when anyone spoke of Princess Murat, Queen of the Two Sicilies, would reply: “I don’t know who you mean. There is only one Queen of Naples, a sublime person who does not keep a carriage. But from her omnibus she annihilates every carriage in the street and one could kneel down in the dust on seeing her drive past.”) “I shall bequeath it to a museum. In the meantime, it must be sent back to her, so that she need not hire a cab to come and fetch it. The wisest thing, in view of the historical interest of such an object, would be to steal the fan. But that would be awkward for her—since it is probable that she does not possess another!” he added with a shout of laughter. “Anyhow, you see that for my sake she came. And that is not the only miracle I have performed. I don’t believe that anyone at the present day has the power to shift the people whom I persuaded to come. However, everyone must be given his due. Charlie and the rest of the musicians played divinely. And, my dear hostess,” he added condescendingly, “you yourself have played your part on this occasion. Your name will not go unrecorded. History has preserved that of the page who armed Joan of Arc when she set out for battle. In sum, you served as a connecting link, you made possible the fusion between Vinteuil’s music and its inspired interpreter, you had the intelligence to appreciate the cardinal importance of the whole concatenation