forth. No doubt, even to a person who knew that the deceased was Jupien’s niece, this plethora of grand marriage connexions could cause no surprise. The great thing, after all, is to have a grand marriage. Then, the casus foederis coming into play, the death of a simple little seamstress plunges all the princely families of Europe into mourning. But many young people of the rising generation, who were not familiar with the real situation, might, apart from the possibility of their mistaking Marie-Antoinette d’Oloron, Marquise de Cambremer, for a lady of the noblest birth, have been guilty of many other errors had they read this communication. Thus, supposing their excursions through France to have given them some slight familiarity with the country round Combray, when they saw that Mme L. de Méséglise and the Comte de Méséglise figured among the first of the signatories, close to the Duc de Guermantes, they might not have been at all surprised: the Méséglise way and the Guermantes way are cheek by jowl. “Old nobility of the same region, perhaps interrelated for generations,” they might have said to themselves. “Who knows? It’s perhaps a branch of the Guermantes family which bears the title of Comte de Méséglise.” As it happened, the Comte de Méséglise had no connexion with the Guermantes and was not even enrolled on the Guermantes side, but on the Cambremer side, since the Comte de Méséglise, who by a rapid advancement had remained Legrandin de Méséglise for only two years, was our old friend Legrandin. No doubt, if they had to choose between bogus titles, few could have been so disagreeable to the Guermantes as this one. They had been connected in the past with the authentic Comtes de Méséglise, of whom there survived only one female descendant, the daughter of obscure parents who had come down in the world, herself married to one of my aunt’s tenant farmers named Ménager, who had become rich and bought Mirougrain from her and now styled himself “Ménager de Mirougrain,” with the result that when it was said that his wife was born “de Méséglise” people thought that she must simply have been born at Méséglise and that she was “from Méséglise” as her husband was “from Mirougrain.”
Any other sham title would have caused less annoyance to the Guermantes family. But the aristocracy knows how to tolerate such irritations, and many others as well, the moment a marriage is at stake which is deemed advantageous, from whatever point of view. Shielded by the Duc de Guermantes, Legrandin was, to part of that generation, and would be to the whole of the generation that followed it, the real Comte de Méséglise.
Yet another mistake which any young reader not acquainted with the facts might have been led to make was that of supposing that the Baron and Baronne de Forcheville figured on the list in the capacity of parents-in-law of the Marquis de Saint-Loup, that is to say on the Guermantes side. But on this side they had no right to appear since it was Robert who was related to the Guermantes and not Gilberte. No, the Baron and Baronne de Forcheville, despite these deceptive appearances, did figure on the wife’s side, it is true, and not on the Cambremer side, not because of the Guermantes, but because of Jupien, who, the better informed reader knows, was Odette’s first cousin.
All M. de Charlus’s favour had been transferred after the marriage of his adopted daughter on to the young Marquis de Cambremer; the young man’s tastes, which were similar to those of the Baron, since they had not prevented the Baron from choosing him as a husband for Mlle d’Oloron, naturally made him appreciate him all the more when he was left a widower. This is not to say that the Marquis did not have other qualities which made him a charming companion for M. de Charlus. But even in the case of a man of real merit, it is a quality not to be despised by the person who admits him into his private life, and one that makes him particularly useful if he can also play whist. The intelligence of the young Marquis was remarkable, and, as they had already begun to say