The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust by Joachim Neugroschel

Author:Joachim Neugroschel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2001-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

A DINNER IN HIGH SOCIETY

But Fundianus, who shared the happiness of that banquet with you? I’m dying to know.

—HORACE: SATIRES

Honoré was late; he greeted his host and hostess and the people he knew, he was introduced to the rest, and they all went in to dinner. Several moments later, his neighbor, a very young man, asked him to name the others and tell him something about them. Honoré had never met him in society. He was very handsome. The mistress of the house kept darting ardent glances at him, which sufficiently indicated why she had invited him and that he would soon become part of her circle. Honoré saw him as a future power; but with no envy and out of kindness and courtesy, he set about answering him.

He looked around. Two diners across from him were not on speaking terms: with good but clumsy intentions, they had been invited and placed side by side because they were both involved in literature. But to this foremost reason for mutual hatred they added a more personal one. The older man, as a relative—doubly hypnotized—of Monsieur Paul Desjardins and Monsieur de Vogüé, affected a scornful silence toward the younger man, who, as a favorite disciple of Monsieur Maurice Barrès, maintained a stance of irony toward his neighbor. Moreover, each man’s malevolence quite involuntarily exaggerated the other’s importance, as if the chief of villains were confronting the king of imbeciles.

Further away, a superb Spanish woman was eating ravenously. That evening, serious person that she was, she had unhesitatingly sacrificed a rendezvous to the probability of advancing her social career by dining in a fashionable home. And indeed, she had every prospect of success with her calculations. Madame Fremer’s snobbery was, for her female friends, and that of her female friends was, for her, like mutual insurance against sinking into the bourgeoisie. But as luck would have it, on this particular evening Madame Fremer was ridding herself of a stock of people whom she had been unable to invite to her dinners, but to whom she insisted on being polite for various reasons and whom she had gathered almost higgledy-piggledy.

The event was crowned by a duchess, but the Spanish woman had already met her and could get nothing more out of her. So she exchanged irritated glances with her husband, whose guttural voice could perpetually be heard at soirées, asking at five-minute intervals that were quite filled with other kettles of fish: “Would you present me to the duke?” “Monsieur le duc, would you present me to the duchess?” “Madame la duchesse, may I present my wife?”

Fuming at having to waste his time, he was nevertheless resigned to starting a conversation with his neighbor, the host’s business partner. For over a year now Fremer had been begging his wife to invite him. She had finally yielded and had tucked him away between the señora’s husband and a humanist. The humanist, who read too much, ate too much. He quoted and burped, and these two complaints were equally repugnant to his neighbor, a self-made aristocrat, Madame Lenoir.

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