In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (33 page)

But, as time went on, every refusal to see her disturbed me less. And
as she became less dear to me, my painful memories were no longer
strong enough to destroy by their incessant return the growing
pleasure which I found in thinking of Florence, or of Venice. I
regretted, at such moments, that I had abandoned the idea of
diplomacy, and had condemned myself to a sedentary existence, in order
not to be separated from a girl whom I should not see again and had
already almost forgotten. We construct our house of life to suit
another person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that
person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, a
prisoner within the walls which were intended only for her. If Venice
seemed to my parents to be a long way off, and its climate
treacherous, it was at least quite easy for me to go, without tiring
myself, and settle down at Balbec. But to do that I should have had to
leave Paris, to forego those visits thanks to which, infrequent as
they were, I might sometimes hear Mme. Swann telling me about her
daughter. Besides, I was beginning to find in them various pleasures
in which Gilberte had no part.

When spring drew round, and with it the cold weather, during an icy
Lent and the hailstorms of Holy Week, as Mme. Swann began to find it
cold in the house, I used often to see her entertaining her guests in
her furs, her shivering hands and shoulders hidden beneath the
gleaming white carpet of an immense rectangular muff and a cape, both
of ermine, which she had not taken off on coming in from her drive,
and which suggested the last patches of the snows of winter, more
persistent than the rest, which neither the heat of the fire nor the
advancing season had succeeded in melting. And the whole truth about
these glacial but already flowering weeks was suggested to me in this
drawing–room, which soon I should be entering no more, by other more
intoxicating forms of whiteness, that for example of the guelder–roses
clustering, at the summits of their tall bare stalks, like the
rectilinear trees in pre–Raphaelite paintings, their balls of blossom,
divided yet composite, white as annunciating angels and breathing a
fragrance as of lemons. For the mistress of Tansonville knew that
April, even an ice–bound April, was not barren of flowers, that
winter, spring, summer are not held apart by barriers as hermetic as
might be supposed by the town–dweller who, until the first hot day,
imagines the world as containing nothing but houses that stand naked
in the rain. That Mme. Swann was content with the consignments
furnished by her Combray gardener, that she did not, by the
intervention of her own 'special' florist, fill up the gaps left by an
insufficiently powerful magic with subsidies borrowed from a
precocious Mediterranean shore, I do not for a moment suggest, nor did
it worry me at the time. It was enough to fill me with longing for
country scenes that, overhanging the loose snowdrifts of the muff in
which Mme. Swann kept her hands, the guelder–rose snow–balls (which
served very possibly in the mind of my hostess no other purpose than
to compose, on the advice of Bergotte, a 'Symphony in White' with her
furniture and her garments) reminded me that what the Good Friday
music in Parsifal symbolised was a natural miracle which one could see
performed every year, if one had the sense to look for it, and,
assisted by the acid and heady perfume of the other kinds of blossom,
which, although their names were unknown to me, had brought me so
often to a standstill to gaze at them on my walks round Combray, made
Mme. Swann's drawing–room as virginal, as candidly 'in bloom,' without
the least vestige of greenery, as overladen with genuine scents of
flowers as was the little lane by Tansonville.

But it was still more than I could endure that these memories should
be recalled to me. There was a risk of their reviving what little
remained of my love for Gilberte. Besides, albeit I no longer felt the
least distress during these visits to Mme. Swann, I extended the
intervals between them and endeavoured to see as little of her as
possible. At most, since I continued not to go out of Paris, I allowed
myself an occasional walk with her. Fine weather had come at last, and
the sun was hot. As I knew that before luncheon Mme. Swann used to go
out every day for an hour, and would stroll for a little in the Avenue
du Bois, near the Etoile—a spot which, at that time, because of the
people who used to collect there to gaze at the 'swells' whom they
knew only by name, was known as the 'Shabby–Genteel Club'—I persuaded
my parents, on Sundays (for on weekdays I was busy all morning), to
let me postpone my luncheon until long after theirs, until a quarter
past one, and go for a walk before it. During May, that year, I never
missed a Sunday, for Gilberte had gone to stay with friends in the
country. I used to reach the Arc de Triomphe about noon. I kept watch
at the entrance to the Avenue, never taking my eyes off the corner of
the side–street along which Mme. Swann, who had only a few yards to
walk, would come from her house. As by this time many of the people
who had been strolling there were going home to luncheon, those who
remained were few in number and, for the most part, fashionably
dressed. Suddenly, on the gravelled path, unhurrying, cool, luxuriant,
Mme. Swann appeared, displaying around her a toilet which was never
twice the same, but which I remember as being typically mauve; then
she hoisted and unfurled at the end of its long stalk, just at the
moment when her radiance was most complete, the silken banner of a
wide parasol of a shade that matched the showering petals of her gown.
A whole troop of people escorted her; Swann himself, four or five
fellows from the Club, who had been to call upon her that morning or
whom she had met in the street: and their black or grey agglomeration,
obedient to her every gesture, performing the almost mechanical
movements of a lifeless setting in which Odette was framed, gave to
this woman, in whose eyes alone was there any intensity, the air of
looking out in front of her, from among all those men, as from a
window behind which she had taken her stand, and made her emerge
there, frail but fearless, in the nudity of her delicate colours, like
the apparition of a creature of a different species, of an unknown
race, and of almost martial strength, by virtue of which she seemed by
herself a match for all her multiple escort. Smiling, rejoicing in the
fine weather, in the sunshine which had not yet become trying, with
the air of calm assurance of a creator who has accomplished his task
and takes no thought for anything besides; certain that her
clothes—even though the vulgar herd should fail to appreciate
them—were the smartest anywhere to be seen, she wore them for herself
and for her friends, naturally, without exaggerated attention to them
but also without absolute detachment; not preventing the little bows
of ribbon upon her bodice and skirt from floating buoyantly upon the
air before her, like separate creatures of whose presence there she
was not unconscious, but was indulgent enough to let them play if they
chose, keeping their own rhythm, provided that they accompanied her
where she led the way; and even upon her mauve parasol, which, as
often as not, she had not yet 'put up' when she appeared on the scene,
she let fall now and then, as though upon a bunch of Parma violets, a
gaze happy and so kindly that, when it was fastened no longer upon her
friends but on some inanimate object, her eyes still seemed to smile.
She thus kept open, she made her garments occupy that interval of
smartness, of which the men with whom she was on the most familiar
terms respected both the existence and its necessity, not without
shewing a certain deference, as of profane visitors to a shrine, an
admission of their own ignorance, an interval over which they
recognised that their friend had (as we recognise that a sick man has
over the special precautions that he has to take, or a mother over her
children's education) a competent jurisdiction. No less than by the
court which encircled her and seemed not to observe' the passers–by,
Mme. Swann by the lateness of her appearance there at once suggested
those rooms in which she had spent so long, so leisurely a morning and
to which she must presently return for luncheon; she seemed to
indicate their proximity by the unhurrying ease of her progress, like
the turn that one takes up and down one's own garden; of those rooms
one would have said that she was carrying about her still the cool,
the indoor shade. But for that very reason the sight of her gave me
only a stronger sensation of open air and warmth. All the more
because, being assured in my own mind that, in accordance with the
liturgy, with the ritual in which Mme. Swann was so profoundly versed,
her clothes were connected with the time of year and of day by a bond
both inevitable and unique, I felt that the flowers upon the stiff
straw brim of her hat, the baby–ribbons upon her dress, had been even
more naturally born of the month of May than the flowers in gardens
and in woods; and to learn what latest change there was in weather or
season I had not to raise my eyes higher than to her parasol, open and
outstretched like another, a nearer sky, round, clement, mobile, blue.
For these rites, if they were of sovereign importance, subjugated
their glory (and, consequently, Mme. Swann her own) in condescending
obedience to the day, the spring, the sun, none of which struck me as
being sufficiently flattered that so elegant a woman had been
graciously pleased not to ignore their existence, and had chosen on
their account a gown of a brighter, of a thinner fabric, suggesting to
me, by the opening of its collar and sleeves, the moist warmness of
the throat and wrists that they exposed,—in a word, had taken for
them all the pains that a great personage takes who, having gaily
condescended to pay a visit to common folk in the country, whom
everyone, even the most plebeian, knows, yet makes a point of donning,
for the occasion, suitable attire. On her arrival I would greet Mme.
Swann, she stop me and say (in English) 'Good morning,' and smile. We
would walk a little way together. And I learned then that these canons
according to which she dressed, it was for her own satisfaction that
she obeyed them, as though yielding to a Superior Wisdom of which she
herself was High Priestess: for if it should happen that, feeling too
warm, she threw open or even took off altogether and gave me to carry
the jacket which she had intended to keep buttoned up, I would
discover in the blouse beneath it a thousand details of execution
which had had every chance of remaining there unperceived, like those
parts of an orchestral score to which the composer has devoted
infinite labour albeit they may never reach the ears of the public: or
in the sleeves of the jacket that lay folded across my arm I would
see, I would drink in slowly, for my own pleasure or from affection
for its wearer, some exquisite detail, a deliciously tinted strip, a
lining of mauve satinette which, ordinarily concealed from every eye,
was yet just as delicately fashioned as the outer parts, like those
gothic carvings on a cathedral, hidden on the inside of a balustrade
eighty feet from the ground, as perfect as are the bas–reliefs over
the main porch, and yet never seen by any living man until, happening
to pass that way upon his travels, an artist obtains leave to climb up
there among them, to stroll in the open air, sweeping the whole town
with a comprehensive gaze, between the soaring towers.

What enhanced this impression that Mme. Swann was walking in the
Avenue as though along the paths of her own garden, was—for people
ignorant of her habit of 'taking exercise'—that she had come there on
foot, without any carriage following, she whom, once May had begun,
they were accustomed to see, behind the most brilliant 'turn–out,' the
smartest liveries in Paris, gently and majestically seated, like a
goddess, in the balmy air of an immense victoria on eight springs. On
foot Mme. Swann had the appearance—especially as her pace began to
slacken in the heat of the sun—of having yielded to curiosity, of
committing an 'exclusive' breach of all the rules of her code, like
those Crowned Heads who, without consulting anyone, accompanied by the
slightly scandalised admiration of a suite which dares not venture any
criticism, step out of their boxes during a gala performance and visit
the lobby of the theatre, mingling for a moment or two with the rest
of the audience. So between Mme. Swann and themselves the crowd felt
that there existed those barriers of a certain kind of opulence which
seem to them the most insurmountable that there are. The Faubourg
Saint–Germain may have its barriers also, but these are less 'telling'
to the eyes and imagination of the 'shabby–genteel.' These latter,
when in the presence of a real personage, more simple, more easily
mistaken for the wife of a small professional or business man, less
remote from the people, will not feel the same sense of their own
inequality, almost of their unworthiness, as dismays them when they
encounter Mme. Swann. Of course women of that sort are not themselves
dazzled, as the crowd are, by the brilliance of their apparel, they
have ceased to pay any attention to it, but only because they have
grown used to it, that is to say have come to look upon it more and
more as natural and necessary, to judge their fellow creatures
according as they are more or less initiated into these luxurious
ways: so that (the grandeur which they allow themselves to display or
discover in others being wholly material, easily verified, slowly
acquired, the lack of it hard to compensate) if such women place a
passer–by in the lowest rank of society, it is by the same instinctive
process that has made them appear to him as in the highest, that is to
say instinctively, at first sight, and without possibility of appeal.
Perhaps that special class of society which included in those days
women like Lady Israels, who mixed with the women of the aristocracy,
and Mme. Swann, who was to get to know them later on, that
intermediate class, inferior to the Faubourg Saint–Germain, since it
'ran after' the denizens of that quarter, but superior to everything
that was not of the Faubourg Saint–Germain, possessing this
peculiarity that, while already detached from the world of the merely
rich, it was riches still that it represented, but riches that had
been canalised, serving a purpose, swayed by an idea that was
artistic, malleable gold, chased with a poetic design, taught to
smile; perhaps that class—in the same form, at least, and with the
same charm—exists no longer. In any event, the women who were its
members would not satisfy to–day what was the primary condition on
which they reigned, since with advancing age they have lost—almost
all of them—their beauty. Whereas it was (just as much as from the
pinnacle of her noble fortune) from the glorious zenith of her ripe
and still so fragrant summer that Mme. Swann, majestic, smiling,
kind, as she advanced along the Avenue du Bois, saw like Hypatia,
beneath the slow tread of her feet, worlds revolving. Various young
men as they passed looked at her anxiously, not knowing whether their
vague acquaintance with her (especially since, having been introduced
only once, at the most, to Swann, they were afraid that he might not
remember them) was sufficient excuse for their venturing to take off
their hats. And they trembled to think of the consequences as they
made up their minds, asking themselves whether the gesture, so bold,
so sacrilegious a tempting of providence, would not let loose the
catastrophic forces of nature or bring down, upon them the vengeance
of a jealous god. It provoked only, like the winding of a piece of
clockwork, a series of gesticulations from little, responsive bowing
figures, who were none other than Odette's escort, beginning with
Swann himself, who raised his tall hat lined in green leather with an
exquisite courtesy, which he had acquired in the Faubourg
Saint–Germain, but to which was no longer wedded the indifference that
he would at one time have shewn. Its place was now taken (as though he
had been to some extent permeated by Odette's prejudices) at once by
irritation at having to acknowledge the salute of a person who was
none too well dressed and by satisfaction at his wife's knowing so
many people, a mixed sensation to which he gave expression by saying
to the smart friends who walked by his side: "What! another! Upon my
word, I can't imagine where my wife picks all these fellows up!"
Meanwhile, having greeted with a slight movement of her head the
terrified youth, who had already passed out of sight though his heart
was still beating furiously, Mme. Swann turned to me: "Then it's all
over?" she put it to me, "You aren't ever coming to see Gilberte
again? I'm glad you make an exception of me, and are not going to
'drop' me straight away. I like seeing you, but I used to like also
the influence you had over my daughter. I'm sure she's very sorry
about it, too. However, I mustn't bully you, or you'll make up your
mind at once that you never want to set eyes on me again." "Odette,
Sagan's trying to speak to you!" Swann called his wife's attention.
And there, indeed, was the Prince, as in some transformation scene at
the close of a play, or in a circus, or an old painting, wheeling his
horse round so as to face her, in a magnificent heroic pose, and
doffing his hat with a sweeping theatrical and, so to speak,
allegorical flourish in which he displayed all the chivalrous courtesy
of a great noble bowing in token of his respect for Woman, were she
incarnate in a woman whom it was impossible for his mother or his
sister to know. And at every moment, recognised in the depths of the
liquid transparency and of the luminous glaze of the shadow which her
parasol cast over her, Mme. Swann was receiving the salutations of the
last belated horsemen, who passed as though in a cinematograph taken
as they galloped in the blinding glare of the Avenue, men from the
clubs, the names of whom, which meant only celebrities to the public,
Antoine de Castellane, Adalbert de Montmorency and the rest—were for
Mme. Swann the familiar names of friends. And as the average span of
life, the relative longevity of our memories of poetical sensations is
much greater than that of our memories of what the heart has suffered,
long after the sorrows that I once felt on Gilberte's account have
faded and vanished, there has survived them the pleasure that I still
derive—whenever I close my eyes and read, as it were upon the face of
a sundial, the minutes that are recorded between a quarter past twelve
and one o'clock in the month of May—from seeing myself once again
strolling and talking thus with Mme. Swann beneath her parasol, as
though in the coloured shade of a wistaria bower.