The Princess then displayed her social sense by going to sit down, as though by preference, in one of these. She did not however hesitate to pick out and draw into it a member of another group. If, for instance, she had remarked to M. Detaille, who had naturally agreed with her, on the beauty of Mme de Villemur’s neck, of which that lady’s position in another group made her present a back view, the Princess had no hesitation in raising her voice: “Madame de Villemur, M. Detaille, wonderful painter that he is, has just been admiring your neck.” Mme de Villemur interpreted this as a direct invitation to join in the conversation; with the agility of a practised horsewoman, she would swivel round slowly in her chair through three quadrants of a circle, and, without in any way disturbing her neighbours, come to rest almost facing the Princess. “You don’t know M. Detaille?” exclaimed their hostess, for whom her guest’s skilful and discreet about-face was not enough. “I don’t know him, but I know his work,” Mme de Villemur would reply with a respectful and winning air and an aptness which many of the onlookers envied her, addressing the while an imperceptible bow to the celebrated painter whom this invocation had not been sufficient to introduce to her in a formal manner. “Come, Monsieur Detaille,” said the Princess, “let me introduce you to Mme de Villemur.” That lady thereupon showed as much ingenuity in making room for the creator of the Dream as she had shown a moment earlier in wheeling round to face him. And the Princess would draw forward a chair for herself, having in fact addressed Mme de Villemur only in order to have an excuse for leaving the first group, in which she had spent the statutory ten minutes, and bestow a similar allowance of her time upon the second. In three quarters of an hour, all the groups would have received a visit from her, which seemed to have been determined in each instance by impulse and predilection, but had the paramount object of making it apparent how naturally “a great lady knows how to entertain.” But now the guests for the reception were beginning to arrive and the lady of the house was seated not far from the door—erect and proud in her quasi-regal majesty, her eyes ablaze with their own incandescence—between two unattractive highnesses and the Spanish Ambassadress.

I stood waiting behind a number of guests who had arrived before me. Facing me was the Princess, whose beauty is probably not the only thing, among so many other beauties, that reminds me of this party. But the face of my hostess was so perfect, stamped like so beautiful a medal, that it has retained a commemorative virtue in my mind. The Princess was in the habit of saying to her guests when she met them a day or two before one of her parties: “You will come, won’t you?” as though she felt a great desire to talk to them. But since, on the contrary, she had nothing to talk to them about, when they entered her presence she contented herself, without rising, with breaking off for an instant her vapid conversation with the two highnesses and the Ambassadress and thanking them with: “How good of you to have come,” not because she thought that the guest had shown goodness by coming, but to enhance her own; then, at once dropping him back into the stream, she would add: “You will find M. de Guermantes by the garden door,” so that the guest proceeded on his way and ceased to bother her. To some indeed she said nothing, contenting herself with showing them her admirable onyx eyes, as though they had come solely to visit an exhibition of precious stones.

The person immediately in front of me was the Duc de Châtellerault.

Having to respond to all the smiles, all the greetings waved to him from inside the drawing-room, he had not noticed the usher. But from the first moment the usher had recognised him. In another instant he would know the identity of this stranger, which he had so ardently desired to learn. When he asked his “Englishman” of the other evening what name he was to announce, the usher was not merely stirred, he considered that he was being indiscreet, indelicate. He felt that he was about to reveal to the whole world (which would, however, suspect nothing) a secret which it was criminal of him to ferret out like this and to proclaim in public. Upon hearing the guest’s reply: “Le Duc de Châtellerault,” he was overcome with such pride that he remained for a moment speechless. The Duke looked at him, recognised him, saw himself ruined, while the servant, who had recovered his composure and was sufficiently versed in heraldry to complete for himself an appellation that was too modest, roared with a professional vehemence softened with intimate tenderness: “Son Altesse Monseigneur le Duc de Châtellerault!” But now it was my turn to be announced. Absorbed in contemplation of my hostess, who had not yet seen me, I had not thought of the function—terrible to me, although not in the same sense as to M. de Châtellerault—of this usher garbed in black like an executioner, surrounded by a group of lackeys in the most cheerful livery, strapping fellows ready to seize hold of an intruder and fling him out. The usher asked me my name, and I gave it to him as mechanically as the condemned man allows himself to be strapped to the block. At once he lifted his head majestically and, before I could beg him to announce me in a lowered tone so as to spare my own feelings if I were not invited and those of the Princesse de Guermantes if I were, roared the disquieting syllables with a force capable of bringing down the roof.

The famous Huxley (whose grandson occupies a leading position in the English literary world of today) relates that one of his patients no longer dared go out socially because often, on the very chair that was offered to her with a courteous gesture, she saw an old gentleman already seated. She was quite certain that either the gesture of invitation or the old gentleman’s presence was a hallucination, for no one would have offered her a chair that was already occupied. And when Huxley, to cure her, forced her to reappear in society, she had a moment of painful hesitation wondering whether the friendly sign that was being made to her was the real thing, or whether, in obedience to a non-existent vision, she was about to sit down in public upon the knees of a gentleman of flesh and blood. Her brief uncertainty was agonising.