In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV by Marcel Proust Page B

exaggerated sarcasm: “It’s nice,” he went on, “but above all it’s extremely funny.” And he broke into peals of laughter which appeared to be indicative at once of his amusement and of the inadequacy of human speech to express it. Certain of the guests, meanwhile, who knew both how difficult he was of access and how prone to offensive outbursts, had been drawn towards us by curiosity and now, with an almost indecent haste, took to their heels. “Come, now, don’t be cross,” he said to me, patting me gently on the shoulder, “you know I’m fond of you. Good evening, Antioche, good evening, Louis-René. Have you been to look at the fountain?” he asked me in a tone that was more affirmative than questioning. “Very pretty, is it not? Marvellous though it is, it could be better still, naturally, if certain things were removed, and then there would be nothing like it in France. But even as it stands, it’s quite one of the best things. Bréauté will tell you that it was a mistake to put lamps round it, to try and make people forget that it was he who was responsible for that absurd idea. But on the whole he didn’t manage to spoil it too much. It’s far more difficult to disfigure a great work of art than to create one. Not that we hadn’t a vague suspicion all along that Bréauté wasn’t quite a match for Hubert Robert.”
    I drifted back into the stream of guests who were going into the house. “Have you seen my delicious cousin Oriane lately?” asked the Princess who had now deserted her post by the door and with whom I was making my way back to the rooms. “She’s coming tonight. I saw her this afternoon,” my hostess added, “and she promised she would. Incidentally, I gather you’ll be dining with us both to meet the Queen of Italy at the embassy on Thursday. There’ll be every imaginable royalty—it will be most alarming.” They could not in any way alarm the Princesse de Guermantes, whose rooms swarmed with them and who would say “my little Coburgs” as she might have said “my little dogs.” And so she said: “It will be most alarming,” out of sheer silliness, a characteristic which, in society people, overrides even their vanity. With regard to her own genealogy, she knew less than a history graduate. As regards the people of her circle, she liked to show that she knew the nicknames with which they had been labelled. Having asked me whether I was dining the following week with the Marquise de la Pommelière, who was often called “la Pomme,” the Princess, having elicited a negative reply, remained silent for some moments. Then, without any other motive than a deliberate display of involuntary erudition, banality, and conformity to the prevailing spirit, she added: “She’s quite an agreeable woman, la Pomme!”
    While the Princess was talking to me, it so happened that the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes made their entrance. But I was unable to go at once to meet them, for I was waylaid by the Turkish Ambassadress, who, pointing to our hostess whom I had just left, exclaimed as she seized me by the arm: “Ah! What a delightful woman the Princess is! What a superior person! I feel sure that, if I were a man,” she went on, with a trace of oriental servility and sensuality, “I would give my life for that heavenly creature.” I replied that I did indeed find her charming, but that I knew her cousin the Duchess better. “But there is no comparison,” said the Ambassadress. “Oriane is a charming society woman who gets her wit from Mémé and Babal, whereas Marie-Gilbert is
somebody
.”
    I never much like to be told like this, without a chance to reply, what I ought to think about people whom I know. And there was no reason why the Turkish Ambassadress should be in any way better qualified than myself to judge the merits of the Duchesse de Guermantes. On the other hand (and this also explained my irritation with the Ambassadress), the defects of a mere acquaintance, and