Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Marcel Proust

Author:Marcel Proust [Proust, Marcel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2005-10-31T23:00:00+00:00

“I’ve never said that,” said M. Verdurin to Saniette, with a simulated candor that seemed perfectly to reconcile what the Patronne had been saying with his own treatment of Saniette. Then, looking at his watch, no doubt so as not to prolong the farewells in the evening damp, he advised the coachmen not to dawdle, but to be careful on the descent, and assured us that we would get there before the train. The latter would be setting down the faithful, one at one station, another at another, ending with myself, none of the others going as far as Balbec, and starting with the Cambremers. They, so as not to make their horses go all the way up to La Raspelière in the dark, took the train with us to Douville-Féterne. The nearest station to them was not in fact this one, which is some little way from the village and even farther from the château, but La Sogne. On arriving at the station of Douville-Féterne, M. de Cambremer insisted on “crossing the palm,” as Françoise used to put it, of the Verdurins’ coachman (the same gentle, sensitive coachman, with the melancholy ideas), for M. de Cambremer was generous, being “from his mamma’s side” rather in this. But whether it was that “his papa’s side” intervened at this juncture, even as he gave it, he felt qualms that a faux pas was being committed—either by himself, because, unable to see properly, he might for example be giving a sou instead of a franc, or by the recipient, who could not notice the size of the gift he was getting. He drew attention to it, therefore. “That is a franc I’m giving you, isn’t it?” he said to the coachman, causing the coin to reflect the light, and so that the faithful might report it to Mme Verdurin. “Isn’t it? It’s twenty sous, as it’s only a short ride.” He and Mme de Cambremer left us at La Sogne. “I shall tell my sister that you have breathless attacks,” he repeated to me. “It’s sure to interest her.” I realized he meant: to please her. As for his wife, in taking leave of me, she employed two of those abbreviations that, even when written, used in those days to shock me in a letter, although we have grown accustomed to them since, but which, when spoken, seem to me still, even today, to have about them, in their studied familiarity, something intolerably pedantic: “Glad to have spent the evening with you,” she said to me; “regards to Saint-Loup if you see him.” In saying these words, Mme de Cambremer pronounced it “Saint-Loupe.” I have never found out who had pronounced it like that in her presence, or what had given her to believe that it was to be so pronounced. The fact remains that for several weeks she pronounced it “Saint-Loupe,” and that a man who had great admiration for her and followed her in everything did likewise. If other people

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