In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [335]
This friendly attitude on the part of the Duke and Duchess meant that from now on, if the occasion arose, they would have said to her “your poor father,” but this would no longer do, since it was just about this time that Forcheville adopted the girl. She addressed him as “Father,” charmed all the dowagers by her politeness and distinction, and it was generally acknowledged that, if Forcheville had behaved admirably towards her, the child was very good-hearted and more than recompensed him. True, since she was able at times and anxious to show a great deal of naturalness and ease, she had reintroduced herself to me and had spoken to me about her real father. But this was an exception and no one now dared utter the name Swann in her presence.
As it happened, on entering the drawing-room I had caught sight of two sketches by Elstir which formerly had been banished to a little room upstairs where I had seen them only by chance. Elstir was now in fashion. Mme de Guermantes could not forgive herself for having given so many of his pictures away to her cousin, not because they were in fashion, but because she now appreciated them. For fashion is composed of the collective infatuation of a number of people of whom the Guermantes are typical. But she could not think of buying other pictures by him, for they had now begun to fetch madly high prices. She was determined to have something at least by Elstir in her drawing-room and had brought down these two drawings which, she declared, she “preferred to his paintings.”
Gilberte recognised the technique. “They look like Elstirs,” she said. “Why, yes,” replied the Duchess without thinking, “in fact it was your fa … some friends of ours who made us buy them. They’re admirable. To my mind, they’re superior to his paintings.”
Not having heard this conversation, I went up to one of the drawings to examine it, and exclaimed: “Why, this is the Elstir that …” I saw Mme de Guermantes’s desperate signals. “Ah, yes, the Elstir that I admired upstairs. It looks much better here than in that passage. Talking of Elstir, I mentioned him yesterday in an article in the Figaro. Did you happen to read it?”
“You’ve written an article in the Figaro!” exclaimed M. de Guermantes with the same violence as if he had exclaimed: “Why, she’s my cousin.”
“Yes, yesterday.”
“In the Figaro, are you sure? I can’t believe it. Because we each of us get our Figaro, and if one of us had missed it, the other would certainly have noticed it. That’s so, isn’t Oriane, there was nothing.”
The Duke sent for the Figaro and only yielded to the evidence of his own eyes, as though up till then the probability had been that I had made a mistake as to the newspaper for which I had written.
“What’s that? I don’t understand. So you’ve written an article in the Figaro!” said the Duchess, making an obvious effort in speaking of something that did not interest her. “Come, Basin, you can read it afterwards.”
“No, the Duke looks so nice like that with his great beard dangling over the paper,” said Gilberte. “I shall read it as soon as I get home.”
“Yes, he wears a beard now that everybody else is clean-shaven,” said the Duchess. “He never does anything that other people do. When we were first married, he shaved not only his beard but his moustache as well. The peasants who didn’t know him by sight thought that he couldn’t be French. At that time he was called the Prince des Laumes.”
“Is there still a Prince des Laumes?” asked Gilberte, who was interested in everything that concerned the people who had refused to acknowledge her existence during all those years.
“Why, no,” the Duchess replied with a melancholy, caressing gaze.
“Such a charming title! One of the finest titles in France!” said