In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [379]
“On the contrary,” she replied in a gentle tone, “it’s I who have the most extraordinary news, I shan’t say the greatest or the smallest, for that quotation from Sevigne which everyone produces who knows nothing else that she ever wrote used to sicken your grandmother as much as ‘What a pretty thing hay-making is.’ We don’t deign to collect such hackneyed Sevigne. This letter is to announce the marriage of the Cambremer boy.”
“Oh!” I remarked with indifference, “to whom? But in any case the personality of the bridegroom robs this marriage of any sensational character.”
“Unless the bride’s personality supplies it.”
“And who is the bride in question?”
“Ah, if I tell you straight away, that will spoil the fun. Come on, see if you can guess,” said my mother who, seeing that we had not yet reached Turin, wished to keep something in reserve for me as meat and drink for the rest of the journey.
“But how do you expect me to know? Is it someone brilliant? If Legrandin and his sister are satisfied, we may be sure that it’s a brilliant marriage.”
“I can’t answer for Legrandin, but the person who informs me of the marriage says that Mme de Cambremer is delighted. I don’t know whether you will call it a brilliant marriage. To my mind, it suggests the days when kings used to marry shepherdesses, and in this case the shepherdess is even humbler than a shepherdess, charming as she is. It would have amazed your grandmother, but would not have displeased her.”
“But who in the world is this bride?”
“It’s Mlle d’Oloron.”
“That sounds to me tremendous and not in the least shepherdessy, but I don’t quite gather who she can be. It’s a title that used to be in the Guermantes family.”
“Precisely, and M. de Charlus conferred it, when he adopted her, upon Jupien’s niece. It’s she who’s marrying the young Cambremer.”
“Jupien’s niece! It isn’t possible!”
“It’s the reward of virtue. It’s a marriage from the last chapter of one of Mme Sand’s novels,” said my mother. (“It’s the wages of vice, a marriage from the end of a Balzac novel,” thought I.)
“After all,” I said to my mother, “it’s quite natural, when you think of it. Here are the Cambremers established in that Guermantes clan among which they never hoped to pitch their tent; what is more, the girl, adopted by M. de Charlus, will have plenty of money, which was indispensable since the Cambremers have lost theirs; and after all she’s the adopted daughter, and in the Cambremers’ eyes probably the real daughter—the natural daughter—of a person whom they regard as a Prince of the Blood. A bastard of a semi-royal house has always been regarded as a flattering alliance by the nobility of France and other countries. Indeed, without going so far back, to the Lucinges,32 only the other day, not more than six months ago, you remember the marriage of Robert’s friend and that girl whose only social qualification was that she was supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be the natural daughter of a sovereign prince.”
My mother, without abandoning the caste ethos of Combray in the light of which my grandmother ought to have been scandalised by such a marriage, being anxious above all to show the validity of her mother’s judgment, added: “Anyhow, the girl is worth her weight in gold, and your dear grandmother wouldn’t have had to draw upon her immense goodness, her infinite tolerance, to keep her from condemning young Cambremer’s choice. Do you remember how distinguished she thought the girl was, long ago, when she went into the shop to have a stitch put in her skirt? She was only a child then. And now, even if she has rather run to seed and become an old maid, she’s a different woman, a thousand times more perfect. But your grandmother saw all that at a glance. She found the little niece of a jobbing tailor more ‘noble’ than the Duc de Guermantes.”
But even more necessary than to extol my grandmother was it for my mother to decide that it was “better” for her that she had not lived to see the day. This was the culmination of her