In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [184]
“Quite well,” said the Queen, continuing to talk to M. de Charlus so naturally and with such a casual air that Mme Verdurin doubted whether it was to herself that this “Quite well” was addressed, uttered as it was in a marvellously off-hand tone, which wrung from M. de Charlus, despite his lover’s anguish, the grateful and epicurean smile of an expert in the art of rudeness. Morel, who had watched from the distance the preparations for his presentation, now approached. The Queen offered her arm to M. de Charlus. With him, too, she was vexed, but only because he did not make a more energetic stand against vile detractors. She was crimson with shame on his behalf that the Verdurins should dare to treat him in this fashion. The unaffected civility which she had shown them a few hours earlier, and the arrogant pride with which she now confronted them, had their source in the same region of her heart. The Queen was a woman of great kindness, but she conceived of kindness first and foremost in the form of an unshakeable attachment to the people she loved, to her own family, to all the princes of her race, among whom was M. de Charlus, and, after them, to all the people of the middle classes or of the humblest populace who knew how to respect those whom she loved and were well-disposed towards them. It was as to a woman endowed with these sound instincts that she had shown kindness to Mme Verdurin. And no doubt this is a narrow conception of kindness, somewhat Tory and increasingly obsolete. But this does not mean that her kindness was any less genuine or ardent. The ancients were no less strongly attached to the human group to which they devoted themselves because it did not go beyond the limits of their city, nor are the men of today to their country, than those who in the future will love the United States of the World. In my own immediate surroundings, I had the example of my mother, whom Mme de Cambremer and Mme de Guermantes could never persuade to take part in any philanthropic undertaking, to join any patriotic ladies’ work party, to sell raffle tickets or sponsor charity shows. I do not say that she was right in acting only when her heart had first spoken, and in reserving for her own family, for her servants, for the unfortunate whom chance brought in her way, the riches of her love and generosity, but I do know that these, like those of my grandmother, were inexhaustible and exceeded by far anything that Mme de Guermantes or Mme de Cambremer ever could have done or did. The case of the Queen of Naples was altogether different, but it must be admitted that lovable people were conceived of by her not at all as in those novels of Dostoievsky which Albertine had taken from my shelves and hoarded, that is to say in the guise of wheedling parasites, thieves, drunkards, obsequious one minute, insolent the next, debauchees, even murderers. Extremes, however, meet, since the noble man, the close relative, the outraged kinsman whom the Queen sought to defend was M. de Charlus, that is to say, notwithstanding his birth and all the family ties that bound him to the Queen, a man whose virtue was hedged round by many vices. “You don’t look at all well, my dear cousin,” she said to M. de Charlus. “Lean on my arm. You may be sure that it will always support you. It is strong enough for that.” Then, raising her eyes proudly in front of her (where, Ski later told me, Mme Verdurin and Morel were standing): “You know how in the past, at Gaeta, it held the mob at bay. It will be a shield to you.” And it was thus, taking the Baron on her arm and without having allowed Morel to be presented to her, that the glorious sister of the Empress Elisabeth left the house.
It might have been assumed, in view of M. de Charlus’s ferocious temper and