In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [399]
27 Le chancelier Pasquier, friend of Mme de Boigne, who ran a famous salon under the July Monarchy and whose Mémoires (published in 1907) suggested those of Mme de Beausergent which the narrator’s grandmother loved to read. The Duc de Noailles was a friend and patron of Sainte-Beuve. Mme d’Arbouville was the latter’s mistress.
28 Mme de Guermantes has told this story before, at the expense of the Prince de Leon (see p. 38).
29 “The dead are sleeping peacefully” comes from Musset’s La Nuit d’Octobre, “You will make them weep … All those urchins” from Sully-Prudhomme’s Aux Tuileries, and “The very first night” from Charles Cros’s Nocturne.
30 The reference is to Phèdre, Act II, Scene 5, in which Phèdre declares her love for Hippolyte in cryptic terms: she loves him as she loved Thésée, “non point tel que l’ont vu les Enfers … mais fidèle, mais fier, et mëme un peu farouche.”
31 Roland Garros: famous French aviator.
32 An illegitimate daughter of the Duc de Berry, son of Charles X, married a Lucinge-Faucigny.
33 Sous-maîtresse: euphemism for a brothel-keeper or “madam.”
34 This passage is a little confusing. Proust never got round to marrying Gilberte to the Duc de Guermantes. In Time Regained she reappears as Saint-Loup’s widow while Oriane is still alive and married to the aged Duke.
35 Agamemnon in Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène.
36 This signature can be explained by the fact that Charles Morel was Bobby Santois in Proust’s original manuscript.
37 The widowed Gilberte, in Time Regained, appears to be the mother of an only daughter.
Addenda
*There is a brief passage inserted here in Proust’s manuscript which interrupts the thread of the narrative:
Lying is a very small matter; we live in the midst of it without giving it more than a smile, we practise it without meaning to harm anyone, but jealousy suffers because of it and sees more in it than it conceals (often one’s mistress refuses to spend the evening with one and goes to the theatre simply to prevent us from seeing that she is not looking her best), just as it often remains blind to what the truth conceals. But it can elicit nothing, for women who swear that they are not lying would refuse even with a knife at their throats to confess their true character.
*The Pléiade editors (references in these Addenda are to the 1954 edition) have relegated to their “Notes and Variants” the following isolated passage which the original editors inserted, somewhat arbitrarily, after “for so long.”
The curious thing is that, a few days before this quarrel with Albertine, I had already had one with her in Andrée’s presence. Now Andrée, in giving Albertine good advice, always appeared to be insinuating bad. “Come, don’t talk like that, hold your tongue,” she said, as though she were at the peak of happiness. Her face assumed the dry raspberry hue of those pious housekeepers who get all the servants sacked one by one. While I was heaping unjustified reproaches upon Albertine, Andrée looked as though she were sucking a lump of barley sugar with keen enjoyment. At length she was unable to restrain an affectionate laugh. “Come with me, Titine. You know I’m your dear little sister.”
I was not merely exasperated by this rather sickly exhibition; I wondered whether Andrée really felt the affection for Albertine that she pretended to feel. Seeing that Albertine, who knew Andrée far better than I did, always shrugged her shoulders when I asked her whether she was quite certain of Andrée’s affection, and always answered that nobody in the world cared for her more, I am convinced even now that Andrée’s affection was sincere. Possibly, in her wealthy but provincial family, one might find the equivalent in some of the shops in the Cathedral square, where certain sweetmeats are declared to be “the best going.” But I know that, for my part, even if I had invariably come to the opposite conclusion, I had so strong an impression that Andrée was trying to rap Albertine over the