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By Root 1733 0

salon of the Princesse des Laumes who were compromising themselves by visiting M. Grévy). But what was rather remarkable was the genuine improvement in Legrandin’s character. For a long time past—ever since the days when I used to go as a child to spend my holidays at Combray—he had been surreptitiously cultivating relations with the aristocracy, productive at the most of an isolated invitation to a sterile house party. All of a sudden, his nephew’s marriage having supervened to join up these scattered fragments, Legrandin stepped into a social position to which, retroactively, his former relations with people who had known him only in private but had known him well, gave a sort of solidity. Ladies to whom people offered to introduce him revealed that for the last twenty years he had stayed with them in the country for a fortnight annually, and that it was he who had given them the beautiful old barometer in the small drawing-room. It also transpired that he had been photographed in “groups” which included dukes who were now related to him. But as soon as he had acquired this social position, he ceased to take advantage of it. This was not merely because, now that people knew that he was received everywhere, he no longer derived any pleasure from being invited, but because, of the two vices that had long struggled for mastery in him, the less natural, snobbishness, was now giving way to another that was less artificial, since it did at least show a sort of return, however circuitous, towards nature. No doubt the two are not incompatible, and a nocturnal prowl may be undertaken immediately after leaving a duchess’s party. But the dampening effect of age discouraged Legrandin from combining too many pleasures, from venturing out except well advisedly, and also made his enjoyment of the pleasures of nature fairly platonic, consisting chiefly in friendships, in time-consuming conversations, which, making him spend almost all his time among the people, left him very little for the life of society.

Mme de Cambremer herself became almost indifferent to the friendly overtures of the Duchesse de Guermantes. The latter, obliged to see something of the Marquise, had noticed, as happens whenever we come to see more of our fellow creatures, that is to say as combinations of good qualities which we eventually discover and defects to which we eventually grow accustomed, that Mme de Cambremer was a woman endowed with an intelligence and culture which were little to my taste but which appeared remarkable to the Duchess. And so she often went to see Mme de Cambremer in the late afternoon and paid her long visits. But the fabulous charm which her hostess imagined to exist in the Duchesse de Guermantes vanished as soon as she found herself sought after by her, and she received her out of politeness rather than pleasure.

A more striking change manifested itself in Gilberte, a change at once symmetrical with and different from that which occurred in Swann after his marriage. It is true that during the first few months Gilberte had been happy to open her doors to the most select society. It was doubtless only because of the inheritance that she invited the intimate friends to whom her mother was attached, but on certain days only when there was no one but themselves, segregated from the fashionable people, as though the contact of Mme Bontemps or Mme Cottard with the Princesse de Guermantes or the Princesse de Parme might, like that of two unstable powders, have produced irreparable catastrophes. Nevertheless the Bontemps, the Cottards and such, although disappointed to find themselves dining among themselves, were proud to be able to say: “We dined with the Marquise de Saint-Loup,” all the more so because she sometimes went so far as to invite with them Mme de Marsantes, who showed herself emphatically the “great lady” with her tortoiseshell and ostrich-feather fan—also in the interests of the legacy. She merely made a point of paying tribute from time to time to the discreet people whom one never sees except when they are invited, a word to