THE CITIES OF THE PLAINcomparatively recent ducal branch, whose title dated only from
1815, but now consisted mostly of innumerable counts and
countesses with whom he was on terms of permanent enmity.
He claimed descent from the Merovingian kings of France; but
among his undoubted ancestors were the crusader Raimond-
Aimeri de Montesquiou (circa rr90), Blaise de Montluc (1502-72),
the marshal of France, massacrer of Protestants and author of the
famous Commentaires, and Charles de Batz (16rr-73), the original
ofD' Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. The chateau of Artagnan
in the Hautes-Pyrenees was still in the possession of the family,
and Montesquiou used it as his country-seat and occasional refuge
from the fatigues of Paris. Various Montesquious of the grand
siecle move through the memoirs of Saint-Simon; but the family
reached its highest prominence in the church and army under
Louis XVI. "There's one good thing about the French Revolu-
tion," Hervieu had been heard to remark one evening at Mme de
CaiUavet's, when Montesquiou was reciting his poems and
leaning nobly against the mantelpiece: "if it hadn't happened, that
man would have had us beating his ponds to keep the frogs
quiet." But there were several scores of families of higher absolute
position in the French society of Proust's time; and Count
Robert's own social eminence was based partly on his snob-value
as a titled intellectual, partly on his hypnotic power of imposing
himself on the fashionable world, and partly on the gift his hated
relatives possessed for intermarriage with the great. He was
related by recent marriages to the ducal families of La Roche-
foucauld, Bauffremont, Rohan-Chabot, Gramont, F eltre, Descars,
Bethune, Maille de la Tour Landry, N oailles and Rochechouart-
Mortemart; to the princes of Caraman-Chimay, Faucigny-
Lucinge, Bibesco and Brancovan; and through these to everyone
else who mattered in the slightest. Charlus spoke of 'my cousin
Clara de Chimay', 'my cousins the La Rochefoucaulds? and so,
incessantly, did Robert de Montesquiou. For the 1910 edition of
Qui etes-vous he wrote under his name: 'Allied to the greater part
of the European aristocracy.' It was the simple truth.
Montesquiou was now thirty-eight, and the soiree at Mme
Lemaire's was the first step in a campaign already long overdue,
through which he hoped to exchange his notoriety as a beautiful
aesthete for fame as a well-preserved poet. He was born in 185S,
I I, 764; IJI, 268