The thought that we were perhaps despised by this lady because we never brought any sprays of lilac or fine roses to her bower made me redden, and in the hope of making a bodily escape—or of being condemned only by default—from an adverse judgment, I moved towards the exit. But it is not always in this world the people who brings us fine roses to whom we are most friendly, for the “Marquise”, thinking that I was bored, turned to me:
“You wouldn’t like me to open a little place for you?”
And, on my declining:
“No? You’re sure you won’t?” she persisted, smiling. “Well, just as you please. You’re welcome to it, but I know quite well, not having to pay for a thing won’t make you want to do it if you don’t want to.”
At this moment a shabbily dressed woman hurried into the place who seemed to be feeling precisely the want in question. But she did not belong to the “Marquise’s” world, for the latter, with the ferocity of a snob, flung at her:
“I’ve nothing disengaged, Ma’am.”
“Will they be long?” asked the poor lady, reddening beneath the yellow flowers in her hat.
“Well, Ma’am, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll try somewhere else; you see, there are still these two gentlemen waiting, and I’ve only one closet; the others are out of order.”
“Not much money there,” she explained when the other had gone. “It’s not the sort we want here, either; they’re not clean, don’t treat the place with respect, it would be your humble here that would have to spend the next hour cleaning up after her ladyship. I’m not sorry to lose her penny.”
Finally my grandmother emerged, and feeling that she probably would not seek to atone by a lavish gratuity for the indiscretion that she had shewn by remaining so long inside, I beat a retreat, so as not to have to share in the scorn which the “Marquise” would no doubt heap on her, and began strolling along a path, but slowly, so that my grandmother should not have to hurry to overtake me; as presently she did. I expected her to begin: “I am afraid I’ve kept you waiting; I hope you’ll still be in time for your friends,” but she did not utter a single word, so much so that, feeling a little hurt, I was disinclined to speak first; until looking up at her I noticed that as she walked beside me she kept her face turned the other way. I was afraid that her heart might be troubling her again. I studied her more carefully and was struck by the disjointedness of her gait. Her hat was crooked, her cloak stained; she had the confused and worried look, the flushed, slightly dazed face of a person who has just been knocked down by a carriage or pulled out of a ditch.
“I was afraid you were feeling sick, Grandmamma; are you feeling better now?” I asked her.
Probably she thought that it would be impossible for her, without alarming me, not to make some answer.
“I heard the whole of her conversation with the keeper,” she told me. “Could anything have been moretypical of the Guermantes, or the Verdurins and their little circle? Heavens, what fine language she put it all in!” And she quoted, with deliberate application, this sentence from her own special Marquise, Mme. de Sévigné: “As I listened to them I thought that they were preparing for me the pleasures of a farewell.”
Such was the speech that she made me, a speech into which she had put all her critical delicacy, her love of quotations, her memory of the classics, more thoroughly even than she would naturally have done, and as though to prove that she retained possession of all these faculties. But I guessed rather than heard what she said, so inaudible was the voice in which she muttered her sentences, clenching her teeth more than could be accounted for by the fear of being sick again.
“Come!” I said lightly, so as not to seem to be taking her illness too seriously, “since your heart is bothering you, shall we go home now? I don’t want to trundle a grandmother with indigestion about the Champs-Elysées.”
“I didn’t like to suggest it, because of your friends,” she replied. “Poor boy! But if you don’t mind, I think it would be wiser.”
I was afraid of her noticing the strange way in which she uttered these words.
“Come!” I said to her sharply, “you mustn’t tire yourself talking; if your heart is bad, it’s silly; wait till we get home.”
She smiled at me sorrowfully and gripped my hand. She had realised that there was no need to hide from me what I had at once guessed, that she had had a slight stroke.