THE STUDENT IN SOCIETY 95detected elements in Swann, particularly his erudition in art,
which belonged to Charles Ephrussi; though Haas's own know-
ledge of art was quite sufficient to supply Swann's. Ephrussi
edited the Gatette des Beaux Arts, an expensive art-magazine
which every great lady kept open but unread on her table. He was
a Polish Jew whose career was parallel to that of Haas, for he
frequented much the same salons, but on a lower plane, for he
was sought after less for his personal charm than as a fashionable
art-expert. He was stout, bearded and ugly, his manner was
ponderous and uncouth, and he was nicknamed 'Matame', not for
any discreditable reason, but because he pronounced the word
'Madame' with a Polish accent'! It is difficult to think of any
feature of Swann to be found in Ephrussi and not in Haas; except
that Swann wrote an essay on Vermeer and Ephrussi one on
Diller, while Haas wrote nothing. Neither Haas nor Ephrussi
were particularly interested in Vermeer: it was Proust himself who
bestowed his own love of the Dutch master, as one of their saving
graces, on both Swann and Bergotte.
Proust knew Ephrussi well, but was never intimate with Haas.
He saw this mysterious and fascinating figure only from a distance
and in his late middle age: in life as in his novel he learned from
others of the days of his glory in the Second Empire-before his
own birth and the Narrator's-of his great love and his illegiti-
mate daughter, who supplied this feature to Gilberte. There is no
trace of Swann-Haas in Proust's work until the beginnings of Ala
Recherche nearly twenty years later. But it may well be, as some
have suggested, that he saw Haas even at this early period as a
hero and an example, another self. Haas, like himself, was a Jew,
a pariah by birth; yet by his own merits of intelligence and charm
he had made society a career open to the talents. Whether or not
he was aided by the inspiration of Haas, Proust set himself to do
the same. Social acceptance was a symbol-though, as he was to
discover, an illusory one-of salvation.
Another of Proust's early salons was that of Prince sse Mathilde,
Napoleon'S niece, now in her seventies. Long ago she had been
the hostess ofFlaubert, Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Dumas Fils,
Merimee and Edmond de Goncourt, and her friends had called
her 'Notre Dame des Arts'. All were now dead, except Goncourt
1 The Prince von Faffenheim addresses Mme de. Villeparisis as 'Matame la
"brquiSe" (II 26).