Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust

Author:Marcel Proust
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141956756
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-12-09T23:00:00+00:00

An important publisher from Paris, there on a visit and who had thought he would be asked to stay, went abruptly off, without delay, understanding that he was not fashionable enough for the little clan. He was a tall, powerful man, very dark, studious, with something sharp-edged about him. He looked like an ebony paper knife.72

Mme Verdurin who, in order to receive us in her immense drawing-room, where trophies of ornamental grasses, poppies and wildflowers, picked that same day, alternated with the same motif painted in camaieu, two centuries earlier, by an artist of exquisite taste, had got up for a moment from a game of cards she was having with an old friend, and asked for two minutes’ grace in order to finish it while going on talking to us. What I told her of my impressions was only half agreeable to her, however. For one thing, I was shocked to find that she and her husband came back in every day long before it was time for the sunsets that were held to be so beautiful, seen from these cliffs, and even more so from the terrace at La Raspelière, for the sake of which I would have travelled great distances. ‘Yes, they’re incomparable, said Mme Verdurin off-handedly, with a glance at the immense casements that formed a French window. For all that we see them all the time, we never grow tired of them’, and her eyes went back to the cards. But my very enthusiasm had made me demanding. I complained of not being able to see from the drawing-room the rocks at Darnetal that Elstir had told me were adorable at this hour of the day, when they refracted so many colours. ‘Oh, you can’t see them from here, you’d need to go to the end of the garden, to the “Bay-view”. From the seat there you can take in the whole panorama. But you can’t go there on your own, you’d get lost. I’ll take you there, if you like, she added, lamely. – No you don’t, come on, weren’t the pains you had the other day enough, d’you want to get more of them? He can come back, he’ll see the view of the bay another time.’ I did not insist, and I realized that for the Verdurins it was enough to know that the setting sun was here in their drawing-room or their dining-room, like a magnificent painting, or a precious Japanese enamel, justifying the high price at which they were renting La Raspelière fully furnished, but to which they seldom raised their eyes; their main business here was to live agreeably, to go on excursions, to eat well, to talk, to entertain agreeable friends whom they made play amusing games of billiards, have good meals and cheerful tea-parties. I found later on, however, how intelligently they had learned to know the locality, taking their guests on excursions as ‘original’ as the music to which they made them listen. The part that

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