In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [402]
he was careful not to give his name in hotels, and the waiters, ignorant at this distance of celebrated Parisian liaisons, and moreover seeing this old gentleman, even when he had gone out without her, invariably coming back to dine alone with the old lady, assumed that they were M. and Mme de Villeparisis. The matrimonial character of their relationship, which had been greatly accentuated by the carelessness of old age and travel, manifested itself at once in the fact that on sitting down to table M. de Norpois evinced none of those courtesies one shows towards a woman who is not one’s wife, any more than she herself made any effort for him. More lively than Mme de Villeparisis, he related to her with a familiarity that surprised me what he had learned that day from a foreign ambassador he had been to see. She let a fair proportion of his words go by without answering, either from fatigue, or lack of interest, or deafness and a desire to conceal it. From time to time she addressed a few words to him in a faint voice, as though overcome with exhaustion. It was obvious that she now lived almost exclusively for him, and had long since lost touch with the social world—from which, with considerable volubility and in a rather loud voice (perhaps to enable her to hear him), he brought her the latest news—for she put to him, in a low-pitched, weary voice, questions that seemed strange on the lips of a person who, even though excluded from it for a long time, nevertheless belonged to the highest society. After a long silence […] asked: “So this Bisaccia you […] this afternoon, is he one of Sosthène’s sons?” “Yes, of course, he’s the one who became Duc de Bisaccia when Arnaud took the name Doudeauville. He’s charming; he’s a bit like Carnot’s youngest son, only better-looking.” And once more there was silence. What seemed most of all to be preoccupying the old woman, whose charming eyes in that ruined face no one could have identified through the mists which the distance from Paris and the remoteness of age accumulated round her, was a war over Morocco. In spite of what the foreign ambassador had said to M. de Norpois, she did not seem reassured. “Ah, but you always see the black side,” said M. de Norpois with some asperity. “I admit that Emperor William is often unfortunate in his choice of words and gestures. But the fact that certain things must be taken seriously doesn’t mean that they should be taken tragically. It would be a case of Jupiter making mad those he wishes to destroy; for war is in nobody’s interest, least of all Germany’s. They’re perfectly aware in the Wilhelmstrasse that Morocco isn’t worth the blood of a single Pomeranian grenadier. You’re alarming yourself about trifles.” And again there was silence, prolonged indefinitely by Mme de Villeparisis, whose beauty, which was said to have been so striking, had been as thoroughly effaced as the frescoes that had decorated the ceiling of this magnificent hall with its broad red pillars, and whose personality was as well concealed, if not from the eyes of Parisians who might perhaps have identified her, at least from the hotel’s Venetian staff, as if she had been wearing a carnival mask as in the old days in Venice. M. de Norpois addressed an occasional reproof to a waiter who had failed to bring something he had ordered. I noticed that he enjoyed good food as much as at the time when he used to dine with my family, and Mme de Villeparisis was as finicky as she had been at Balbec. “No no, don’t ask them for a soufflé,” M. de Norpois said, “they’ve no idea what it is. They’ll bring you something that bears not the slightest resemblance to a soufflé. In any case it’s your own fault, since you won’t hear of Italian cooking.” Mme de Villeparisis did not answer; then after a while, in a plaintive voice, as sad and faint as the murmur of the wind, she wailed: “No one knows how to make anything any more. I don’t know whether you remember, in the old days at my mother’s house, they used to bring off to perfection a dish called a crime renversée. Perhaps we could ask for one