Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [163]
To which Swann answered: “Why, I’m not in the least afraid of the Duchess (if it’s the La Trémoïlles you’re speaking of). I can assure you that everyone likes going to her house. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she’s at all ‘profound’ ” (he pronounced “profound” as if it was a ridiculous word, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard, so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable warmth) “but I’m quite sincere when I say that she’s intelligent, while her husband is positively a man of letters. They’re charming people.”
Whereupon Mme Verdurin, realising that this one infidel would prevent her “little nucleus” from achieving complete unanimity, was unable to restrain herself, in her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish his words were causing her, from screaming at him from the depths of her tortured heart: “You may think so if you wish, but at least you needn’t say so to us.”
“It all depends on what you call intelligence.” Forcheville felt that it was his turn to be brilliant. “Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean by intelligence.”
“There,” cried Odette, “that’s the sort of big subject I’m always asking him to talk to me about, and he never will.”
“Oh, but …” protested Swann.
“Oh, but nonsense!” said Odette.
“A water-butt?” asked the doctor.
“In your opinion,” pursued Forcheville, “does intelligence mean the gift of the gab—you know, glib society talk?”
“Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away,” said Mme Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped eating. And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, “It doesn’t matter, you can take your time about it. I only reminded you because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back.”
“There is,” began Brichot, hammering out each syllable, “a rather curious definition of intelligence by that gentle old anarchist Fénelon …”
“Just listen to this!” Mme Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the doctor. “He’s going to give us Fénelon’s definition of intelligence. Most interesting. It’s not often you get a chance of hearing that!”
But Brichot was keeping Fénelon’s definition until Swann had given his. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of recreancy, spoiled the brilliant dialectical contest which Mme Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
“You see, it’s just the same as with me!” said Odette peevishly. “I’m not at all sorry to see that I’m not the only one he doesn’t find quite up to his level.”
“Are these de La Trémouailles whom Mme Verdurin has shown us to be so undesirable,” inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, “descended from the couple whom that worthy old snob Mme de Sévigné said she was delighted to know because it was so good for her peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her case probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart, and always on the look-out for ‘copy.’ And in the journal which she used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme de La Trémouaille, kept well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the foreign politics.”
“No, no, I don’t think they’re the same family,” hazarded Mme Verdurin.
Saniette, who ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the butler had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally to tell them, with a nervous laugh, the story of a dinner he had once had with the Duc de La Trémoïlle, from which it transpired that the Duke did not know that George Sand was the pseudonym