In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (13 page)

Gilberte's parents, who for so long had prevented me from seeing her,
now—when I entered the dark hall in which hovered perpetually, more
formidable and more to be desired than, at Versailles of old, the
apparition of the King, the possibility of my encountering them, in
which too, invariably, after butting into an enormous hat–stand with
seven branches, like the Candlestick in Holy Writ, I would begin
bowing confusedly before a footman, seated among the skirts of his
long grey coat upon the wood–box, whom in the dim light I had mistaken
for Mme. Swann—Gilberte's parents, if one of them happened to be
passing at the moment of my arrival, so far from seeming annoyed would
come and shake hands with a smile, and say:

"How d'e do?" (They both pronounced it in the same clipped way, which,
you may well imagine, once I was back at home, I made an incessant and
delightful practice of copying.) "Does Gilberte know you're here? She
does? Then I'll leave you to her."

Better still, the tea–parties themselves to which Gilberte invited her
friends, parties which for so long had seemed to me the most
insurmountable of the barriers heaped up between her and myself,
became now an opportunity for uniting us of which she would inform me
in a few lines, written (because I was still a comparative stranger)
upon sheets that were always different. One was adorned with a poodle
embossed in blue, above a fantastic inscription in English with an
exclamation mark after it; another was stamped with an anchor, or with
the monogram G. S. preposterously elongated in a rectangle which ran
from top to bottom of the page, or else with the name Gilberte, now
traced across one corner in letters of gold which imitated my friend's
signature and ended in a flourish, beneath an open umbrella printed in
black, now enclosed in a monogram in the shape of a Chinaman's hat,
which contained all the letters of the word in capitals without its
being possible to make out a single one of them. At last, as the
series of different writing–papers which Gilberte possessed, numerous
as it might be, was not unlimited, after a certain number of weeks I
saw reappear the sheet that bore (like the first letter she had
written me) the motto
Per viam rectam
, and over it the man's head in
a helmet, set in a medallion of tarnished silver. And each of them was
chosen, on one day rather than another, by virtue of a certain ritual,
as I then supposed, but more probably, as I now think, because she
tried to remember which of them she had already used, so as never
to send the same one twice to any of her correspondents, of those at
least whom she took special pains to please, save at the longest
possible intervals. As, on account of the different times of their
lessons, some of the friends whom Gilberte used to invite to her
parties were obliged to leave just as the rest were arriving, while I
was still on the stairs I could hear escaping from the hall a murmur
of voices which, such was the emotion aroused in me by the imposing
ceremony in which I was to take part, long before I had reached the
landing, broke all the bonds that still held me to my past life, so
that I did not even remember that I was to take off my muffler as soon
as I felt too hot, and to keep an eye on the clock so as not to be
late in getting home. That staircase, besides, all of wood, as they
were built about that time in certain houses, in keeping with that
Henri II style which had for so long been Odette's ideal though she
was shortly to lose interest in it, and furnished with a placard, to
which there was no equivalent at home, on which one read the words:
"NOTICE. The lift must not be taken downstairs," seemed to me a thing
so marvellous that I told my parents that it was an ancient staircase
brought from ever so far away by M. Swann. My regard for the truth was
so great that I should not have hesitated to give them this
information even if I had known it to be false, for it alone could
enable them to feel for the dignity of the Swanns' staircase the same
respect that I felt myself. It was just as, when one is talking to
some ignorant person who cannot understand in what the genius of a
great physician consists, it is as well not to admit that he does not
know how to cure a cold in the head. But since I had no power of
observation, since, as a general rule, I never knew either the name or
the nature of things that were before my eyes, and could understand
only that when they were connected with the Swanns they must be
extraordinary, I was by no means certain that in notifying my parents
of the artistic value and remote origin of the staircase I was guilty
of falsehood. It did not seem certain; but it must have seemed
probable, for I felt myself turn very red when my father interrupted
me with: "I know those houses; I have been in one; they are all alike;
Swann just has several floors in one; it was Berlier built them all."
He added that he had thought of taking a flat in one of them, but that
he had changed his mind, finding that they were not conveniently
arranged, and that the landings were too dark. So he said; but I felt
instinctively that my mind must make the sacrifices necessary to the
glory of the Swanns and to my own happiness, and by a stroke of
internal authority, in spite of what I had just heard, I banished for
ever from my memory, as a good Catholic banishes Renan's
Vie de
Jésus
, the destroying thought that their house was just an ordinary
flat in which we ourselves might have been living.

Meanwhile on those tea–party days, pulling myself up the staircase
step by step, reason and memory already cast off like outer garments,
and myself no more now than the sport of the basest reflexes, I would
arrive in the zone in which the scent of Mme. Swann greeted my
nostrils. I felt that I could already behold the majesty of the
chocolate cake, encircled by plates heaped with little cakes, and by
tiny napkins of grey damask with figures on them, as required by
convention but peculiar to the Swanns. But this unalterable and
governed whole seemed, like Kant's necessary universe, to depend on a
supreme act of free will. For when we were all together in Gilberte's
little sitting–room, suddenly she would look at the clock and exclaim:

"I say! It's getting a long time since luncheon, and we aren't having
dinner till eight. I feel as if I could eat something. What do you
say?"

And she would make us go into the dining–room, as sombre as the
interior of an Asiatic Temple painted by Rembrandt, in which an
architectural cake, as gracious and sociable as it was imposing,
seemed to be enthroned there in any event, in case the fancy seized
Gilberte to discrown it of its chocolate battlements and to hew down
the steep brown slopes of its ramparts, baked in the oven like the
bastions of the palace of Darius. Better still, in proceeding to the
demolition of that Babylonitish pastry, Gilberte did not consider only
her own hunger; she inquired also after mine, while she extracted for
me from the crumbling monument a whole glazed slab jewelled with
scarlet fruits, in the oriental style. She asked me even at what
o'clock my parents were dining, as if I still knew, as if the
disturbance that governed me had allowed to persist the sensation of
satiety or of hunger, the notion of dinner or the picture of my family
in my empty memory and paralysed stomach. Alas, its paralysis was but
momentary. The cakes that I took without noticing them, a time would
come when I should have to digest them. But that time was still
remote. Meanwhile Gilberte was making 'my' tea. I went on drinking it
indefinitely, whereas a single cup would keep me awake for twenty–four
hours. Which explains why my mother used always to say: "What a
nuisance it is; he can never go to the Swarms' without coming home
ill." But was I aware even, when I was at the Swanns', that it was tea
that I was drinking? Had I known, I should have taken it just the
same, for even supposing that I had recovered for a moment the sense
of the present, that would not have restored to me the memory of the
past or the apprehension of the future. My imagination was incapable
of reaching to the distant tune in which I might have the idea of
going to bed, and the need to sleep.

Gilberte's girl friends were not all plunged in that state of
intoxication in which it is impossible to make up one's mind. Some of
them refused tea! Then Gilberte would say, using a phrase highly
fashionable that year: "I can see I'm not having much of a success
with my tea!" And to destroy more completely any idea of ceremony, she
would disarrange the chairs that were drawn up round the table, with:
"We look just like a wedding breakfast. Good lord, what fools servants
are!"

She nibbled her cake, perched sideways upon a cross–legged seat placed
at an angle to the table. And then, just as though she could have had
all those cakes at her disposal without having first asked leave of
her mother, when Mme. Swann, whose 'day' coincided as a rule with
Gilberte's tea–parties, had shewn one of her visitors to the door, and
came sweeping in, a moment later, dressed sometimes in blue velvet,
more often in a black satin gown draped with white lace, she would say
with an air of astonishment: "I say, that looks good, what you've
got there. It makes me quite hungry to see you all eating cake."

"But, Mamma, do! We invite you!" Gilberte would answer.

"Thank you, no, my precious; what would my visitors say? I've still
got Mme. Trombert and Mme. Cottard and Mme. Bontemps; you know dear
Mme. Bontemps never pays very short visits, and she has only just
come. What would all those good people say if I never went back to
them? If no one else calls, I'll come in again and have a chat with
you (which will be far more amusing) after they've all gone. I really
think I've earned a little rest; I have had forty–five different
people to–day, and forty–two of them told me about Gérôme's picture!
But you must come alone one of these days," she turned to me, "and
take 'your' tea with Gilberte. She will make it for you just as you
like it, as you have it in your own little 'studio,'" she went on,
flying off to her visitors, as if it had been something as familiar to
me as my own habits (such as the habit that I should have had of
taking tea, had I ever taken it; as for my 'studio,' I was uncertain
whether I had one or not) that I had come to seek in this mysterious
world. "When can you come? To–morrow? We will make you 'toast' every
bit as good as you get at Colombin's. No? You are horrid!"—for, since
she also had begun to form a salon, she had borrowed Mme. Verdurin's
mannerisms, and notably her tone of petulant autocracy. 'Toast' being
as incomprehensible to me as 'Colombin's,' this further promise could
not add to my temptation. It will appear stranger still, now that
everyone uses such expressions—and perhaps even at Combray they are
creeping in—that I had not at first understood of whom Mme. Swann was
speaking when I heard her sing the praises of our old 'nurse.' I did
not know any English; I gathered, however, as she went on that the
word was intended to denote Françoise. I who, in the Champs–Elysées,
had been so terrified of the bad impression that she must make, I now
learned from Mme. Swann that it was all the things that Gilberte had
told them about my 'nurse' that had attracted her husband and her to
me. "One feels that she is so devoted to you; she must be nice!" (At
once my opinion of Françoise was diametrically changed. By the same
token, to have a governess equipped with a waterproof and a feather in
her hat no longer appeared quite so essential.) Finally I learned from
some words which Mme. Swann let fall with regard to Mme. Blatin
(whose good nature she recognised but dreaded her visits) that
personal relations with that lady would have been of less value to me
than I had supposed, and would not in any way have improved my
standing with the Swanns.

If I had now begun to explore, with tremors of reverence and joy the
faery domain which, against all probability, had opened to me its
hitherto locked approaches, this was still only in my capacity as a
friend of Gilberte. The kingdom into which I was received was itself
contained within another, more mysterious still, in which Swann and
his wife led their supernatural existence and towards which they made
their way, after taking my hand in theirs, when they crossed the hall
at the same moment as myself but in the other direction. But soon I
was to penetrate also to the heart of the Sanctuary. For instance,
Gilberte might be out when I called, but M. or Mme. Swann was at home.
They would ask who had rung, and on being told that it was myself
would send out to ask me to come in for a moment and talk to them,
desiring me to use in one way or another, and with this or that object
in view, my influence over their daughter. I reminded myself of that
letter, so complete, so convincing, which I had written to Swann only
the other day, and which he had not deigned even to acknowledge. I
marvelled at the impotence of the mind, the reason and the heart to
effect the least conversion, to solve a single one of those
difficulties which, in the sequel, life, without one's so much as
knowing what steps it has taken, so easily unravels. My new position
as the friend of Gilberte, endowed with an excellent influence over
her, entitling me now to enjoy the same favours as if, having had as a
companion at some school where they had always put me at the head of
my class the son of a king, I had owed to that accident the right of
informal entry into the palace and to audiences in the throne–room,
Swann, with an infinite benevolence and as though he were not
over–burdened with glorious occupations, would make me go into his
library and there let me for an hour on end respond in stammered
monosyllables, timid silences broken by brief and incoherent bursts of
courage, to utterances of which my emotion prevented me from
understanding a single word; would shew me works of art and books
which he thought likely to interest me, things as to which I had no
doubt, before seeing them, that they infinitely surpassed in beauty
anything that the Louvre possessed or the National Library, but at
which I found it impossible to look. At such moments I should have
been grateful to Swann's butler, had he demanded from me my watch, my
tie–pin, my boots, and made me sign a deed acknowledging him as my
heir: in the admirable words of a popular expression of which, as of
the most famous epics, we do not know who was the author, although,
like those epics, and with all deference to Wolff and his theory, it
most certainly had an author, one of those inventive, modest souls
such as we come across every year, who light upon such gems as
'putting a name to a face,' though their own names they never let us
learn, I did not know what I was doing. All the greater was my
astonishment, when my visit was prolonged, at finding to what a zero
of realisation, to what an absence of happy ending those hours spent
in the enchanted dwelling led me. But my disappointment arose neither
from the inadequacy of the works of art that were shewn to me nor from
the impossibility of fixing upon them my distracted gaze. For it was
not the intrinsic beauty of the objects themselves that made it
miraculous for me to be sitting in Swann's library, it was the
attachment to those objects—which might have been the ugliest in the
world—of the particular feeling, melancholy and voluptuous, which I
had for so many years localised in that room and which still
impregnated it; similarly the multitude of mirrors, of silver–backed
brushes, of altars to Saint Anthony of Padua, carved and painted by
the most eminent artists, her friends, counted for nothing in the
feeling of my own unworthiness and of her regal benevolence which was
aroused in me when Mme. Swann received me for a moment in her own
room, in which three beautiful and impressive creatures, her principal
and second and third maids, smilingly prepared for her the most
marvellous toilets, and towards which, on the order conveyed to me by
the footman in knee–breeches that Madame wished to say a few words to
me, I would make my way along the tortuous path of a corridor all
embalmed, far and near, by the precious essences which exhaled without
ceasing from her dressing–room a fragrance exquisitely sweet.