THE STUDENT IN SOCIETY 9'angry husband to change them; but it was in no such circum-
stances of cruelty and selfishness: Proust ran upstairs to fetch the
red shoes, and all was well.
Mme Straus's beauty was wholly different from that of the
Duchesse or Odette or any others of their originals. It resided in
the sincerity of her expression, the fervour of her eyes ('like black
stars', said Abel Hermant) and the elegance of her dress. The
poetry of her little hats tied under the chin, her tubular skirts,
her slim folded parasols, survives unfaded to this day in her
photographs of the ,890s. Her features had lost the fresh youth
of Del au nay's painting: they were gipsy-like, heavy, thick-lipped,
but still fascinating. A nervous tic made her open her eyes wide
and then suddenly screw them up, or protrude her lower lip, or
bend her head abruptly to her left shoulder: Mme Albert Gillou
compared her face to 'a sky disordered by summer lightning'.
In the huge rotunda drawing-room of the Boulevard Hauss-
mann the walls were hung with eighteenth-century paintings by
Nattier and Latour, side by side with Monets and the Delaunay
portrait of the hostess-"Don't you agree that it's lovelier than
the Mona Lisa?" Proust would ask his fellow-guests, as he leaned
adoringly over her chair or sat on a cushion at her feet. Her salon
consisted partly of writers and artists, partly of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain. But it was neither literary, since she refused to
tallr literature, nor social, for the Faubourg was in the minority
and came only as personal friends of the hostess. It was composed
of persons whom she invited for the sake of their intelligence,
and who came for the sake of hers. Henri Meilhac, who collabora-
ted as Offenbach's librettist with her cousin Ludovic Halevy
(Daniel's father), was almost one of the family: Proust refers
several times to the 'Meilhac and Halevy style' of the Duchesse de
Guermantes's wit.! Meilhac arrived with trailing laces, being too
fat to tie his shoes, and exchanged epigrams with F orain, whom
she had met through his master Degas. In his youth F orain had
sheltered Rimbaud in his studio, until that atrocious young man
left after defecating in his host's morning milk by way of farewell.
He was now as famous for his savage wit as for his art. Among
the men of letters were the dramatists Hervieu and Porto-Riche,
the novelist Bourget, and the bearded, spectacled Louis Ganderax,
the literary editor of the Revue de Paris. He was feared by his
1 1,334; II, 207, 495-6; III, 1009