In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust Read Free Book Online Page B

ravishingly—I should almost be tempted to describe it as a musical instrument!”
    My interest in Berma’s acting had continued to grow ever since the fall of the curtain because it was no longer compressed within the limits of reality; but I felt the need to find explanations for it; moreover it had been concentrated with equal intensity, while Berma was on the stage, upon everything that she offered, in the indivisibility of a living whole, to my eyes and ears; it had made no attempt to separate or discriminate; accordingly it welcomed the discovery of a reasonable cause for itself in these tributes paid to the simplicity, to the good taste of the actress, it drew them to itself by its power of absorption, seized upon them as the optimism of a drunken man seizes upon the actions of his neighbour, in each of which he finds an excuse for maudlin emotion. “It’s true!” I told myself, “what a beautiful voice, what an absence of shrillness, what simple costumes, what intelligence to have chosen
Phèdre
! No, I have not been disappointed!”
    The cold spiced beef with carrots made its appearance, couched by the Michelangelo of our kitchen upon enormous crystals of aspic, like transparent blocks of quartz.
    “You have a first-rate cook, Madame,” said M. de Norpois, “and that is no small matter. I myself, who have had, when abroad, to maintain a certain style in housekeeping, I know how difficult it often is to find a perfect chef. This is a positive banquet that you have set before us!”
    And indeed Françoise, in the excitement of her ambition to make a success, for so distinguished a guest, of a dinner the preparation of which had been sown with difficulties worthy of her powers, had put herself out as she no longer did when we were alone, and had recaptured her incomparable Combray manner.
    “That is a thing you don’t get in a chophouse, not even in the best of them: a spiced beef in which the aspic doesn’t taste of glue and the beef has caught the flavour of the carrots. It’s admirable! Allow me to come again,” he went on, making a sign to show that he wanted more of the aspic. “I should be interested to see how your chef managed a dish of quite a different kind; I should like, for instance, to see him tackle a
bœuf Stroganoff
.”
    To add his own contribution to the pleasures of the repast, M. de Norpois entertained us with a number of the stories with which he was in the habit of regaling his diplomatic colleagues, quoting now some ludicrous period uttered by a politician notorious for long sentences packed with incoherent images, now some lapidary epigram of a diplomat sparkling with Attic salt. But, to tell the truth, the criterion which for him set the two kinds of sentence apart in no way resembled that which I was in the habit of applying to literature. Most of the finer shades escaped me; the words which he recited with derision seemed to me not to differ very greatly from those which he found remarkable. He belonged to the class of men who, had we come to discuss the books I liked, would have said: “So you understand that, do you? I must confess that I don’t; I’m not initiated,” but I could have retaliated in kind, for I did not grasp the wit or folly, the eloquence or pomposity which he found in a retort or in a speech, and the absence of any perceptible reason for this being good and that bad made that sort of literature seem more mysterious, more obscure to me than any other. All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind. When M. de Norpois used certain expressions which were common currency in the newspapers, and uttered them with emphasis, one felt that they became an official pronouncement by the mere fact of his having employed them, and a pronouncement which would provoke widespread comment.
    My mother was counting greatly upon the pineapple and truffle salad. But the Ambassador,