Aristocracy

Now the chapel from which she was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad, beneath the flat tombstones of which, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb, rested the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having heard it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family, whenever any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; hence there was only one woman resembling the portrait of Mme de Guermantes who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there, could conceivably be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was immense. It arose from my not having borne in mind, when I thought of Mme de Guermantes, that I was picturing her to myself in the colours of a tapestry or a stained-glass window, as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest of the human race.

     One day my mother said to me: “You’re always talking about Mme de Guermantes. Well, Dr Percepied took great care of her when she was ill four years ago, and so she’s coming to Combray for his daughter’s wedding. You’ll be able to see her in church.” It was from Dr Percepied, as it happened, that I had heard most about Mme de Guermantes, and he had even shown us the number of an illustrated paper in which she was depicted in the costume she had worn at a fancy dress ball given by the Princesse de Léon.
     Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the verger, by moving to one side, enabled me to see in one of the chapels a fair-haired lady with a large nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy and new and bright, and a little pimple at the corner of her nose.

And I knew that they bore not only the title of Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, but that since the fourteenth century, when, after vain attempts to conquer its earlier lords in battle, they had allied themselves to them by marriage and so become Counts of Combray, the first citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only ones who did not reside in it—Comtes de Combray, possessing Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles, absorbing it in their personalities, and imbued, no doubt, with that strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of any particular house there; dwelling, presumably, outside, in the street, between heaven and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes of whom I could see, in the stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the reverse side in dull black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him on my way to Camus's for a packet of salt.

I knew that it was the residence of the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages that did actually exist, but whenever I thought about them I thought of them either in tapestry, like the Comtesse de Guermantes in the "Coronation of Esther" which hung in our church, or else in iridescent colours, like Gilbert the Bad in the stained-glass window where he changed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my fingers in the holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row of chairs, or again altogether impalpable, like the image of Geneviève de Brabant, ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern sent wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the ceiling–in short, invariably wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age and bathed, as in a sunset, in the amber light which glowed from the resounding syllable "antes."

In my heart of hearts I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, two or three books and pictures, and the light of the moon when the fresh breeze of your youth wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers my old eyes can no longer distinguish."

Gilbert, wishing to be avenged on Charles, caused the church at Combray to be burned down, the original church, that was, which Théodebert, when he and his court left the country residence he had near here, at Thiberzy (which is, of course, Theodeberciacus), to go and fight the Burgundians, had promised to build over the tomb of Saint Hilaire if the saint brought him victory. Nothing remains of it now but the crypt, into which Théodore has probably taken you, for Gilbert burned all the rest. Finally, he defeated the unlucky Charles with the aid of William the Conqueror,” (the Curé pronounced it “Will’am), “which is why so many English still come to visit the place. But he does not appear to have managed to win the affection of the people of Combray, for they fell upon him as he was coming out from mass, and cut off his head. Théodore has a little book he lends people that tells the whole story.

But, as I said to this artist, who, by the way, seems to be a most civil fellow, and is a regular virtuoso, it appears, with the brush, what on earth do you find so extraordinary in this window, which is if anything a little dingier than the rest?”
     “I am sure that if you were to ask the Bishop,” said my aunt in a resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she was going to be “tired,” “he would never refuse you a new window.”
     “You may depend upon it, Mme Octave,” replied the Curé. “Why, it was his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a lord of Guermantes and a direct descendant of Genviève de Brabant who was a daughter of the House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire.”
     “But I don’t see where Saint Hilaire comes in.”
     “Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the window, a lady in a yellow robe? Well, that’s Saint Hilaire, who is also known, you will remember, in certain parts of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint Hélier, and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions of Sanctus Hilarius are by no means the most curious that have occurred in the names of the blessed. Take, for example, my good Eulalie, the case of your own patron, Sancta Eulalia; do you know what she has become in Burgundy? Saint Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady has become a gentleman. Do you hear that, Eulalie—after you’re dead they’ll make a man out of you!”

     “What is this I have been hearing, Father, about a painter setting up his easel in your church, and copying one of the windows? Old as I am, I can safely say that I have never heard of such a thing in all my life! What is the world coming to! And the ugliest thing in the whole church, too.”
     “I will not go so far as to say that it’s quite the ugliest , for although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth a visit, there are others that are very old now in my poor basilica, the only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored. God knows our porch is dirty and antiquated, but still it has a certain majesty. I’ll even grant you the Esther tapestries, which personally I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for, but which the experts place immediately after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that apart from certain details which are—well, a trifle realistic—they show features which testify to a genuine power of observation. But don’t talk to me about the windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave up windows which shut out all the daylight and even confuse the eyes by throwing patches of colour, to which I should be hard put to it to give a name, on to floor in which there are not two slabs on the same level and which they refuse to renew for me because, if you please, those are the tombstones of the Abbots of Combray and the Lords of Guermantes, the old Counts, you know, of Brabant, direct ancestors of the present Duc de Guermantes and of the Duchess too since she was a Mademoiselle de Guermantes who married her cousin?”

It was Françoise, motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to this religious darkness we could discern in her features the disinterested love of humanity, the tender respect for the gentry, which the hope of receiving New Year bounty intensified in the nobler regions of her heart.