Marcel Proust - The Lemoine Affair

During the same period of time, Delaire married a Rohan and rather oddly took the name of Comte de Cambacérès. The Marquis d’Albuféra, who was a good friend of mine as was his mother, filed a number of complaints that, despite the minuscule and, as we will see later on, well-deserved esteem the King had for him, remained without effect. So now he is one of those fine Comtes de Cambacérès (not to mention the Vicomte Vigier, whom we imagine still back in Les Bains where he arose), like the counts de Montgomery and de Brye, whom ignorant Frenchmen think of as descended from G. de Montgomery, so famous for his duel under Henri II, and as belonging to the de Briey family, which included my friend the Comtesse de Briey, who has often figured in these Memoirs and who jokingly called the new Comtes de Brye, who at least were gentlemen of good stock although of lower lineage, les non brils . 6

Another, greater marriage delayed the arrival of the King of England, one that concerned more than just this country. Mlle Asquith, who was probably the most intelligent of anyone, and was like one of those beautiful figures painted in fresco that one sees in Italy, married Prince Antoine Bibesco, who had been the idol of the people who lived where he resided. He was a good friend of Morand, envoy from the King to their Catholic Majesties; he will often be discussed in the course of these Memoirs, as a good friend of my own. This marriage made a great stir, and was applauded everywhere. A few poorly educated Englishmen alas believed that Mlle Asquith was not contracting a good enough marriage. She could indeed lay claim to anything, but they did not know that these Bibescos are related to the Noailles, the Montesquious, the Chimays, and the Bauffremonts who are of Capetian stock and could with great reason claim the crown of France, as I have often said.

Not a single duke, or any titled gentleman, went to that parvulo at Saint-Cloud, aside from me, who came because Mme de Saint-Simon was lady-in-waiting to Mme the Duchesse de Bourgogne, and consented under sheer compulsion, and at risk for any refusal, and out of necessity to obey the King, but with all the suffering and tears we have seen and the endless entreaties of M. the Duc and Mme the Duchesse d’Orléans; the Ducs de Villeroy and de La Rochefoucauld, present because they were unable to console themselves at counting for so little, one might even say for nothing, and wanting to cook up one last little stew of rumors, who used this as an occasion to pay court to the Regent; the chancellor too was there, needing advice, of which he got none that day; at times, Artagnan, Captain of the Guard, would come in, to say that the King was served, or a little later, with the fruit, bringing dog biscuits for the pointers; finally when he proclaimed that the music had begun, by which he fervently hoped to win favorable regard, which yet eluded him.

He was of the house of Montesquiou; one of his sisters had been a lady’s maid to the Queen, had gotten ahead nicely, and had married the Duc de Gesvres. He had asked his cousin Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac to come to this parvulo at Saint-Cloud. Who replied, however, with the admirable apothegm that he was descended from the ancient counts of Fezensac, who were known before Philippe-Auguste, and that he did not see why a hundred years — it was Prince Murat he meant — should have precedence over a thousand years. He was the son of T. de Montesquiou who was well-known to my father and about whom I have spoken in another place, and he had a face and demeanor that gave a powerful sense of what he was and where he came from, his body always slim, and that’s an understatement, as if tilted backwards; he could bend forward, actually, when the whim took him, with great affability and with bows of all kinds, but returned quite quickly to his natural position which was all pride, hauteur, intransigence not to bend before anyone and not to yield on anything, to the point of walking always straight ahead without bothering about the way, jostling someone without seeming to see him, or if he wanted to annoy someone, showing that he did see him, that he was in his way, with a great crowd always around him of people of high quality and wit to whom he sometimes bowed right and left, but most often left them, as they say, by the wayside, without seeing them, both eyes fixed in front of him, speaking very loudly, and very well, to those of his acquaintance who laughed at all the funny things he said, and with great reason, as I have said, for he was as witty as can be imagined, with graces that were his alone and that all those who approached him tried, often without wanting to, sometimes even without suspecting they were doing so, to copy and assume, but not one person ever managed to succeed, or do anything but let appear in their thoughts, in their discourse, and in the very air almost, his writing and the sound of his voice, both of which were very singular and very beautiful, like a varnish of his that was recognized immediately and that showed by its light and indelible surface that it was just as difficult not to try to imitate him as it was to manage to do so.

He had often at his side a Spaniard by the name of Yturri whom I had known during my ambassadorship in Madrid, as has been related. At a time when everyone else scarcely ever advanced an opinion except to have his merit noticed, he had that quality, very rare actually, of putting all his own merit into making the Count’s shine, helping him in his researches, in his dealings with booksellers, even in matters of the table, finding no task too tedious so long as it spared the Count one, his own task being, if one may say so, only to listen and make Montesquiou’s statements resound far and wide, just as those disciples did whom the ancient sophists were accustomed to have always with them, as is evident from the writings of Aristotle and the discourses of Plato. This Yturri had kept the fiery manner of his countrymen, who make a fuss over anything at all, for which Montesquiou chid him very often and very amusingly, to the merriment of all and of Yturri himself first of all, who apologized, laughing at the heatedness of his race, yet took care not to do anything about it, since everyone liked him that way. He was an expert in antique objects, of which knowledge many people took advantage to go see him and consult him about them, even in the retirement our two hermits had resorted to, located, as I have said, in Neuilly, close to the house of M. the Duc d’Orléans.

Those whom Montesquiou invited were very few and very select, only the best and the greatest, but not always the same ones, and this was done expressly, since he played very much at being king, offering favors and disgraces to the point of shameful injustice, but all this was supported by such well-known merit, that others overlooked it in him, but some however were invited very faithfully and very regularly, and one was almost always certain of finding them at his house when he hosted an entertainment, like the Duchesse Mme de Clermont-Tonnerre of whom much will be spoken later on, who was the daughter of Gramont, granddaughter of the famous secretary of state, sister of the Duc de Guiche, who was very much inclined, as we have seen, toward mathematics and painting, and Mme Greffulhe, who was a Chimay, of the famous princely house of the counts of Bossut. Their name is Hennin-Liétard and I have already spoken about the Prince de Chimay, on whom the Elector of Bavaria had the Golden Fleece bestowed by Charles II and who became my son-in-law, thanks to the Duchesse Sforze, after the death of his first wife, daughter of the Duc de Nevers. He was no less attached to Mme de Brantes, daughter of Cessac, of whom it has already been spoken quite often and who will return many times in the course of these Memoirs, and to the Duchesses de la Roche-Guyon and de Fezensac. I have spoken enough of these Montesquious, about their amusing fancy of being descended from Pharamond, as if their antiquity were not great enough and well-known enough not to need to scribble fables, and also about the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, eldest son of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and ward of his two charges, of the strange present he received from M. the Duc d’Orléans, of his nobility at avoiding the trap that the shrewd villainy of the first president of Mesmes set for him and of the marriage of his son with Mlle de Toiras. One also very often saw there Mme de Noailles, wife of the eldest brother of the Duc d’Ayen, today the Duc de Noailles, whose mother is La Ferté. But I will have occasion to speak of her at greater length as the woman of the finest poetic genius her time has seen, who renewed, and one might even say enlarged, the miracle of the famous Mme de Sévigné. Everyone knows that what I say of her is pure fair-mindedness, it being well enough known by everyone what terms I came to with the Duc de Noailles, nephew of the cardinal and husband of Mlle d’Aubigné, niece of Mme de Maintenon, and I have gone on enough in its place about his intrigues against me to the point of making himself along with Canillac an advocate to the state councillors against people of quality, his skill at deceiving his uncle the cardinal, in criticizing the chancellor Daguesseau, in courting Effiat and the Rohans, in lavishly pouring the enormous pecuniary graces of M. the Duc d’Orléans onto the Comte d’Armagnac to have him marry his daughter, after having failed to snare the eldest son of the Duc d’Albret for her. But I have spoken too much of all that to return to it, of his dark schemes concerning Law, and of the matter of the gemstones, and also of the conspiracy of the Duc and Duchesse du Maine. Quite otherwise, and of quite a different breed, was Mathieu de Noailles, who married the woman in question here, and whom her talent has made famous. She was the daughter of Brancovan, reigning prince of Wallachia, which they call there Hospodar, and had as much beauty as genius. Her mother was a Musurus, which is the name of a very noble family, one of the foremost in Greece, made illustrious by numerous and distinguished ambassadorships and by the friendship of one of those Musuruses with the famous Erasmus. Montesquiou had been the first to speak of her verses. Duchesses went often to listen to his own, at Versailles, at Sceaux, at Meudon, and in the past few years women in town have been imitating them by a familiar strategy, and they invite actors over who recite them, with the aim of attracting one of those ladies, many of whom would go to the house of the Great Nobleman rather than abstain from applauding them there. There was always some recitation in his house at Neuilly, and also the concourse of the most famous poets as well as of the most respectable people and the best company, and on his part, to everyone, and in front of the objects of his house, always a flood of discourse, in that language so peculiar to him that I have described, at which everyone continually marveled.