THE DUCHESSE AND ALBERTINE "3
was trenchant and hoarse, with a peasant-like roughness which,
as Proust realised, came from her provincial ancestry, and was
part of her supreme distinction; though Albert Flament
prosaically explained it by her excessive cigarette smoking. Like
the Duchesse she had two reputations, an early one for impreg-
nable chastity, and another, which spread mysteriously when she
was already ageing, for having had secret lovers. It was at this
later period that one day, as she was crossing the street, a work-
man called out from his scaffolding: "Coo, what a lovely tart";
to which she replied: "Not so fast, young man, you haven't seen
the front view!" Like the Duchesse, again, the countess was a
friend of Queen Isabella of Spain, of Edward VII as Prince of
Wales, and of the Grand-Duchess Wladimir, whom she appro-
priated each November on her arrival from St Petersburg, and
advised on her clothes. "Where did your highness get that dress?
It looks as if it came from Menilmontantl"; and the Grand-
Duchess was whisked back into her carriage and off to Worth's
for refitting.
In May 1892, when the fatal words "FitzJames is expecting
me" had already been spoken, Proust had the melancholy pleasure
of reading in a little magazine called Le Banquet a sketch of Mme
de Chevigne, which he had written a month or two earlier when
his pursuit was just beginning. The genesis of the Duchesse is
already visible: Mme de Chevigne has become Hippolyta, the
beauty of Verona, who has a hooked, birdlike nose, piercing eyes
and a sharp angle in her mouth when she laughs. He has seen her,
as the Narrator was to see the Duchesse, in a box at the theatre,
dressed in white gauze like folded wings, waving a white wing-
like fan of feathers. She is a white peacock, a hawk with diamond
eyes. Whenever he meets her nephew (Gustave de Waru), who
has the same curved nose, thin lips, piercing eyes and too delicate ...
skin, he is disturbed at recognising again this race issued from the
union of a goddess and a bird. It is an epitome, using many
identical words, of passages on the Duchesse and Saint-Loup
which would not appear in Le crSt! de Guermantes until twenty-
eight years later.
Le Banquet was founded, in direct descent from the Revue Lilas
and Revue Verte, the schoolboy magazines of three or four years
before, by a group of Proust's former schoolfellows. As a compli-
ment to the beloved M. Darlu, who had taught them all in their