108 MARCEL PROUSTin his anny year. At the Princesse de Guermantes'ssoiree M. de
Charlus taunts her with her 'mystic name'l; and Montesquiou had
once loudly exclaimed in Mme de Saint-Paul's hearing: "That she
should dare to call herself both Diana and Saint Paul is as
monstrous an insult to paganism as it is to Christianity!" In his
Figaro article of 11 May 1903 on Mme Lemaire's salon Proust was
to introduce the Marquise de Saint-Paul angling there for her next
week's guests (as Mme de Saint-Euverte did at the Princesse de
Guermantes's soiree), and promising the singer Gabrielle Krauss
'a fan painted by her own hands if she would promise to perform
at her next Thursday in the Rue Nitot'.
Mme Aubernon, nevertheless, remains the most important
model of Mme Verdurin; and the chief significance of Mme
Lemaire for Proust was that in her salon was the most accessible
entrance to the Guermantes Way. Already, in this spring of 1892,
he was beginuing to meet the people whose recognition, he
obscurely hoped, might palliate the guilt of his Jewish blood, his
awakening perversion, and the memory of the moonlit night at
Auteuil.
1 li,7OO