In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV (52 page)

By this time, Mme Cottard was sound asleep. “Now then, Léontine, you’re snoring,” the Professor called to her. “I’m listening to Mme Swann, my dear,” Mme Cottard replied faintly, and dropped back into her lethargy. “It’s absolute madness,” exclaimed Cottard, “she’ll be telling us presently that she wasn’t asleep. She’s like the patients who come to a consultation and insist that they never sleep at all.” “They imagine it, perhaps,” said M. de Cambremer with a laugh. But the doctor enjoyed contradicting no less than teasing, and would on no account allow a layman to talk medicine to him. “One doesn’t imagine that one can’t sleep,” he promulgated in a dogmatic tone. “Ah!” replied the Marquis with a respectful bow, such as Cottard at one time would have made. “It’s easy to see,” Cottard went on, “that you’ve never administered, as I have, as much as two grains of trional without succeeding in provoking somnolence.” “Quite so, quite so,” replied the Marquis, laughing with a superior air, “I’ve never taken trional, or any of those drugs which soon cease to have any effect but ruin your stomach. When a man has been out shooting all night, like me, in the forest of Chantepie, I can assure you he doesn’t need any trional to make him sleep.” “It’s only fools who say that,” replied the Professor. “Trional frequently has a remarkable effect on the tonicity of the nerves. You mention trional, have you any idea what it is?” “Well . . . I’ve heard people say that it’s a drug to make one sleep.” “You’re not answering my question,” replied the Professor, who, thrice weekly, at the Faculty, sat on the board of examiners. “I’m not asking you whether it makes you sleep or not, but what it is. Can you tell me what percentage it contains of amyl and ethyl?” “No,” replied M. de Cambremer, abashed. “I prefer a good glass of old brandy or even 345 Port.” “Which are ten times as toxic,” the Professor interrupted. “As for trional,” M. de Cambremer ventured, “my wife goes in for all that sort of thing, you’d better talk to her about it.” “She probably knows as much about it as you do. In any case, if your wife takes trional to make her sleep, you can see that mine has no need of it. Come along, Léontine, wake up, you’ll get stiff. Did you ever see me fall asleep after dinner? What will you be like when you’re sixty, if you fall asleep now like an old woman? You’ll get fat, you’re arresting your circulation. She doesn’t even hear what I’m saying.” “They’re bad for one’s health, these little naps after dinner, aren’t they, Doctor?” said M. de Cambremer, seeking to rehabilitate himself with Cottard. “After a heavy meal one ought to take exercise.” “Stuff and nonsense!” replied the Doctor. “Identical quantities of food have been taken from the stomach of a dog that has lain quiet and from the stomach of a dog that has been running about, and it’s in the former that digestion has been found to be more advanced.” “Then it’s sleep that interrupts the digestion.” “That depends whether you mean oesophagic digestion, stomachic digestion or intestinal digestion. It’s pointless giving you explanations which you wouldn’t understand since you’ve never studied medicine. Now then, Léontine, quick march, it’s time we were going.” This was not true, for the Doctor was merely going to continue his game, but he hoped thus to cut short in a more drastic fashion the slumbers of the deaf mute to whom he had been addressing without a word of response the most learned exhortations. Either because a determination to remain awake survived in Mme Cottard, even in her sleep, or because the armchair offered no support to her head, it was jerked mechanically from left to right and up and down in the empty air, like a lifeless object, and Mme Cottard, with her nodding poll, appeared now to be listening to music, now to be in her death-throes. Where her husband’s increasingly vehement admonitions failed of their effect, her sense of her own stupidity proved successful: “My bath is nice and hot,” she murmured. “But the feathers on the dictionary . . .” she exclaimed, sitting up. “Oh, good gracious, what a fool I am! Whatever have I been saying? I was thinking about my hat, and I’m sure I said something silly. In another minute I would have dozed off. It’s that wretched fire.” Everybody laughed, for there was no fire in the room.

“You’re making fun of me,” said Mme Cottard, herself laughing, and raising her hand to her forehead with the light touch of a hypnotist and the deftness of a woman putting her hair straight, to erase the last traces of sleep, “I must offer my humble apologies to dear Mme Verdurin and get the truth from her.” But her smile at once grew mournful, for the Professor, who knew that his wife sought to please him and trembled lest she fail to do so, had shouted at her: “Look at yourself in the mirror. You’re as red as if you had an eruption of acne. You look just like an old peasant.”

“You know, he’s charming,” said Mme Verdurin, “he has such a delightfully sardonic good nature. And then, he snatched my husband from the jaws of death when the whole medical profession had given him up. He spent three nights by his bedside, without ever lying down. And so for me, you know,” she went on in a grave and almost menacing tone, raising her hand to the twin spheres, shrouded in white tresses, of her musical temples, and as though we had threatened to assault the Doctor, “Cottard is sacred! He could ask me for anything in the world! As it is, I don’t call him Doctor Cottard, I call him Doctor God! And even in saying that I’m slandering him, for this God does everything in his power to remedy some of the disasters for which the other is responsible.”

“Play a trump,” M. de Charlus said to Morel with a delighted air.

“A trump, here goes,” said the violinist.

“You ought to have declared your king first,” said M. de Charlus, “you’re not paying attention to the game, but how well you play!”

“I have the king,” said Morel.

“He’s a fine man,” replied the Professor.

“What’s that thing up there with the sticks?” asked Mme Verdurin, drawing M. de Cambremer’s attention to a superb escutcheon carved over the mantelpiece. “Are they your
arms
?” she added with sarcastic scorn.

“No, they’re not ours,” replied M. de Cambremer. “We bear
barry of five, embattled counterembattled or and gules, as many trefoils countercharged
. No, those are the arms of the Arrachepels, who were not of our stock, but from whom we inherited the house, and nobody of our line has ever made any changes here.” (“That’s one in the eye for her,” muttered Mme de Cambremer.) “The Arrachepels (formerly Pelvilains, we are told) bore
or five piles couped in base gules
. When they allied themselves with the Féterne family, their blazon changed, but remained
cantoned within twenty cross crosslets fitchee in base or, a dexter canton ermine
. My great-grandmother was a d’Arrachepel or de Rachepel, whichever you like, for both forms are found in the old charters,” continued M. de Cambremer, blushing deeply, for only then did the idea for which his wife had given him credit occur to him, and he was afraid that Mme Verdurin might have applied to herself words which had in no way been aimed at her. “History relates that in the eleventh century the first Arrachepel, Macé, known as Pelvilain, showed a special aptitude, in siege warfare, in tearing up piles. Whence the nickname Arrachepel under which he was ennobled, and the piles which you see persisting through the centuries in their arms. These are the piles which, to render fortifications more impregnable, used to be driven, bedded, if you will pardon the expression, into the ground in front of them, and fastened together laterally. They are what you quite rightly called sticks, though they had nothing to do with the floating sticks of our good La Fontaine. For they were supposed to render a stronghold impregnable. Of course, with our modern artillery, they make one smile. But you must bear in mind that I’m speaking of the eleventh century.”

“Yes, it’s not exactly up-to-date,” said Mme Verdurin, “but the little campanile has character.”

“You have,” said Cottard, “the luck of a fiddlededee,” a word which he regularly repeated to avoid using Molière’s.
¹⁷
“Do you know why the king of diamonds was invalided out of the army?”

“I shouldn’t mind being in his shoes,” said Morel, who was bored with military service.

“Oh! how unpatriotic!” exclaimed M. de Charlus, who could not refrain from pinching the violinist’s ear.

“You don’t know why the king of diamonds was invalided out of the army?” Cottard pursued, determined to make his joke, “it’s because he has only one eye.”

“You’re up against it, Doctor,” said M. de Cambremer, to show Cottard that he knew who he was.

“This young man is astonishing,” M. de Charlus interrupted naïvely, pointing to Morel. “He plays like a god.”

This observation did not find favour with the Doctor, who replied: “Wait and see. He who laughs last laughs longest.”

“Queen, ace,” Morel announced triumphantly, for fortune was favouring him.

The Doctor bowed his head as though powerless to deny this good fortune, and admitted, spellbound: “That’s beautiful.”

“We’re so pleased to have met M. de Charlus,” said Mme de Cambremer to Mme Verdurin.

“Had you never met him before? He’s rather nice, most unusual, very much
of a period
” (she would have found it difficult to say which), replied Mme Verdurin with the complacent smile of a connoisseur, a judge and a hostess.

Mme de Cambremer asked me if I was coming to Féterne with Saint-Loup. I could not suppress a cry of admiration when I saw the moon hanging like an orange lantern beneath the vault of oaks that led away from the house. “That’s nothing,” said Mme Verdurin. “Presently, when the moon has risen higher and the valley is lit up, it will be a thousand times more beautiful. That’s something you haven’t got at Féterne!” she added scornfully to Mme de Cambremer, who did not know how to answer, not wishing to disparage her property, especially in front of the tenants.

“Are you staying much longer in the neighbourhood, Madame?” M. de Cambremer asked Mme Cottard, an inquiry that might be interpreted as a vague intention to invite her, but which dispensed him for the moment from making any more precise commitment. “Oh, certainly, Monsieur, I regard this annual exodus as most important for the children. Say what you like, they need fresh air. I may be rather primitive on this point but I believe that no cure is as good for children as healthy air—even if someone should give me a mathematical proof to the contrary. Their little faces are already completely changed. The doctors wanted to send me to Vichy; but it’s too stuffy there, and I can look after my stomach when those big boys of mine have grown a little bigger. Besides, the Professor, with all the examining he has to do, has always got his shoulder to the wheel, and the heat tires him dreadfully. I feel that a man needs a thorough rest after he has been on the go all the year like that. Whatever happens we shall stay another month at least.”

“Ah! in that case we shall meet again.”

“In any case I shall be obliged to stay here as my husband has to go on a visit to Savoy, and won’t be finally settled here for another fortnight.”

“I like the view of the valley even more than the sea view,” Mme Verdurin went on. “You’re going to have a splendid night for your journey.”

“We ought really to find out whether the carriages are ready, if you are absolutely determined to go back to Balbec tonight,” M. Verdurin said to me, “for I see no necessity for it myself. We could drive you over tomorrow morning. It’s certain to be fine. The roads are excellent.”

I said that it was impossible. “But in any case it isn’t time to go yet,” the Mistress protested. “Leave them alone, they have heaps of time. A lot of good it will do them to arrive at the station with an hour to wait. They’re far better off here. And you, my young Mozart,” she said to Morel, not venturing to address M. de Charlus directly, “won’t you stay the night? We have some nice rooms overlooking the sea.”

“No, he can’t,” M. de Charlus replied on behalf of the absorbed card-player who had not heard. “He has a pass until midnight only. He must go back to bed like a good little boy, obedient and well-behaved,” he added in a smug, affected, insistent voice, as though he found a sadistic pleasure in employing this chaste comparison and also in letting his voice dwell, in passing, upon something that concerned Morel, in touching him, if not with his hand, with words that seemed to be tactile.

From the sermon that Brichot had addressed to me, M. de Cambremer had concluded that I was a Dreyfusard. As he himself was as anti-Dreyfusard as possible, out of courtesy to a foe he began to sing me the praises of a Jewish colonel who had always been very decent to a cousin of the Chevregnys and had secured for him the promotion he deserved. “And my cousin’s opinions were the exact opposite,” said M. de Cambremer. He omitted to mention what those opinions were, but I sensed that they were as antiquated and misshapen as his own face, opinions which a few families in certain small towns must long have entertained. “Well, you know, I call that really fine!” was M. de Cambremer’s conclusion. It is true that he was hardly employing the word “fine” in the aesthetic sense in which his wife or his mother would have applied it to different works of art. M. de Cambremer often made use of this term, when for instance he was congratulating a delicate person who had put on a little weight. “What, you’ve gained half a stone in two months? I say, that’s really fine!”

Refreshments were set out on a table. Mme Verdurin invited the gentlemen to go and choose whatever drink they preferred. M. de Charlus went and drank his glass and at once returned to a seat by the card-table from which he did not stir. Mme Verdurin asked him: “Did you have some of my orangeade?” Whereupon M. de Charlus, with a gracious smile, in a crystalline tone which he rarely adopted, and with endless simperings and wrigglings of the hips, replied: “No, I preferred its neighbour, which is strawberry-juice, I think. It’s delicious.” It is curious that a certain category of secret impulses has as an external consequence a way of speaking or gesticulating which reveals them. If a man believes or disbelieves in the Virgin Birth, or in the innocence of Dreyfus, or in a plurality of worlds, and wishes to keep his opinion to himself, you will find nothing in his voice or in his gait that will betray his thoughts. But on hearing M. de Charlus say, in that shrill voice and with that smile and those gestures, “No, I preferred its neighbour, the strawberry-juice,” one could say: “Ah, he likes the stronger sex,” with the same certainty as enables a judge to sentence a criminal who has not confessed, or a doctor a patient suffering from general paralysis who himself is perhaps unaware of his malady but has made some mistake in pronunciation from which it can be deduced that he will be dead in three years. Perhaps the people who deduce, from a man’s way of saying: “No, I preferred its neighbour, the strawberry-juice,” a love of the kind called unnatural, have no need of any such scientific knowledge. But that is because here there is a more direct relation between the revealing sign and the secret. Without saying so to oneself in so many words, one feels that it is a gentle, smiling lady who is answering and who appears affected because she is pretending to be a man and one is not accustomed to seeing men put on such airs. And it is perhaps more gracious to think that a certain number of angelic women have long been included by mistake in the masculine sex where, feeling exiled, ineffectually flapping their wings towards men in whom they inspire a physical repulsion, they know how to arrange a drawing-room, to compose “interiors.” M. de Charlus was not in the least perturbed that Mme Verdurin should be standing, and remained ensconced in his armchair so as to be nearer to Morel. “Don’t you think it criminal,” said Mme Verdurin to the Baron, “that that creature who might be enchanting us with his violin should be sitting there at a card-table. When one can play the violin like that!” “He plays cards well, he does everything well, he’s so intelligent,” said M. de Charlus, keeping his eye on the game, so as to be able to advise Morel. This was not his only reason, however, for not rising from his chair for Mme Verdurin. With the singular amalgam that he had made of his social conceptions at once as a great nobleman and as an artlover, instead of being courteous in the same way as a man of his world would have been, he invented as it were tableaux-vivants for himself after Saint-Simon; and at that moment he was amusing himself by impersonating the Maréchal d’Huxelles, who interested him from other aspects also, and of whom it is said that he was so arrogant as to remain seated, with an air of indolence, before all the most distinguished persons at Court.