MARCEL PROUSTperhaps he didn't read Picuchet, but I'm quite sure he read
Bouvard." After a visit to the country she spoke of "a cow that
gave so much milk, everyone thought it must be a stallion!" In a
season of untimely rain she said: "You'd think the barometer had
stopped having any influence on the weather"; and on a cold
winter's day she assured the company that "it can't possibly snow,
they've spread salt on the pavements." The second and last of
these anecdotes are told of the Princesse de Parme's lady-in-
waiting Mme de Varambon.^1 Another of Mme de Galbois's
absurdities is given to the Comtesse de Monteriender, who says
to Swann of the musicians who perform the Vinteuil Sonata at
Mme de Sainte-Euverte's reception: "I've never seen anything so
amazing--except table-turning, of course."2
Of the literary and artistic bourgeois· salons those of Mme
Aubemon de N erville and Mme Lemaire, to both of which Proust
gained admission in 1892 or a little before, were supreme in their
prestige. A great artist is remembered, a great hostess is forgotten
when the last of her guests has died; yet each of these ladies
contributed to the immortal Mme Verdurin, and lives still in her.
Mme Lydie Aubernon had been blissfully parted from her
husband since 1867, and was in the habit of remarking that she
was looking forward to her 'golden separation'. M. Georges
Aubemon lived with their son Raoul, at Antibes, and his wife was
known as 'the Widow'. Until the end of the 1880s she was assisted
in the running of her salon by her mother, whose own drawing-
room had been famous in the 1840S under Louis Philippe. The
rwo ladies, in allusion to their republican sympathies and to
Moliere's comedy, were called 'Les Precieuses Radicales'. But
Mme Aubemon showed little positive interest in politics, and used
to say: "I'm a republican, but only in sheer desperation." After
old Mme de Nerville died she told Edmond de Goncourt: "I miss
her often, but only a little at a time"-a remark also uttered by
Swann's father after the death of his wife.^3 She received at her
house in the A venue de Messine, later in the Rue d' Astorg, where
(incongruous conjunction) the Comtesse Greffulhe also lived, and
last at I I Rue Montchanin. Along with her more brilliant guests
she entertained a hard core of mysterious elderly ladies, widows
of writers or friends of her dead mother, who sat in the back-
1 II, 547; III, 1009
S I, IS
, I, 35}