In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [343]
Another person in whom the process of forgetting, as far as Albertine was concerned, was probably more rapid at this time, and indirectly enabled me to register a little later a new advance which that process had made in myself (and this is my memory of my second stage before finally forgetting), was Andrée. I can scarcely indeed but cite this forgetting of Albertine as, if not the sole cause, if not even the principal cause, at any rate a conditioning and necessary cause of a conversation which occurred between Andrée and myself about six months after the conversation I have already reported, and in which her words were very different from those that she had used on the former occasion. I remember that it was in my room because at that moment I found pleasure in having semi-carnal relations with her, by reason of the collective aspect which my love for the girls of the little band had originally had and now assumed once more, a love that had long been undivided among them and only for a while associated exclusively with Albertine’s person, during the months that had preceded and followed her death.
We were in my room for another reason as well which enables me to date this conversation quite accurately. This was that I had been banished from the rest of the apartment because it was Mamma’s “at home” day. After some hesitation she had gone to lunch with Mme Sazerat, thinking that, since the latter always contrived, even at Combray, to invite one to meet boring people, she would be able without sacrificing any pleasure to return home in good time. And she had indeed returned in time and without regrets, Mme Sazerat having had nobody but the most deadly people who were in any case chilled by the special voice that she adopted when she had company, what Mamma called her Wednesday voice. My mother was none the less fond of her, and sympathised with her ill-fortune—the result of the indiscretions of her father who had been ruined by the Duchesse de X—which compelled her to live all the year round at Combray, with a few weeks at her cousin’s house in Paris and a long “pleasure-trip” every ten years.
I remember that the day before this, after months of entreaty from me, and because the Princess was always begging her to come, Mamma had gone to call on the Princesse de Parme, who paid no calls herself and at whose house people as a rule contented themselves with signing their names, but who had insisted on my mother’s coming to see her, since the rules of etiquette forbade Her Highness to come to us. My mother had come home thoroughly cross: “You sent me on a wild goose chase,” she told me. “The Princesse de Parme barely greeted me. She turned back to the ladies she was talking to without paying any attention to me, and after ten minutes, as she hadn’t addressed a word to me, I came away without her even offering me her hand. I was extremely annoyed. However, on the doorstep, as I was leaving, I met the Duchesse de Guermantes who was very kind and spoke to me a great deal about you. What a strange idea of yours to talk to her about Albertine! She told me that you’d said to her that her death had been a great blow to you.” (I had in fact said this to the Duchess, but I didn’t even recall it, and I had hardly made a point of it. But the most heedless of people often give remarkable attention to words we let slip, words which seem quite natural to us, and which excite their curiosity profoundly.) “I shall never go near the Princesse de Parme again. You’ve made me make a fool of myself.”
The next day, which was my mother’s “at home,” Andrée came to see me. She did not have much time, as she had to go and call for Gisele with whom she was very anxious to dine. “I know her faults, but she’s after all my best friend and the person for whom I feel most affection,” she told me. And she even appeared to be slightly alarmed at the thought that I might ask her to let me