128 MARCEL PROUSTAt such times he was capable of economy: he and Y turri might be
seen devouring the cheapest lunch at the humble creamery
opposite his apartment, or Y turri would go out and sell some-
thing. Sometimes the articles of his collection cost very little:
Yturri found Mme de Montespan's pink marble bath in the
garden of a Versailles convent, and paid for it with his own cast-
off slipper which, he assured the nuns, had once belonged to the
Pope. Sometimes they cost nothing at all. Worn out by
Montesquiou's nagging, his exclamations of "Don't you see, it's
disgusting to give away anything you can bear to part with," a
noble lady would surrender an eighteenth-century drawing, a
porcelain figurine, or a manuscript of Baudelaire; and he would
carry off the precious object wrapped in tissue-paper.
The conversation of Montesquiou appealed both to the ear and
the eye: it was like an aria by a great singer or a speech by a great
actor, yet with something of a clown's antics or a madman's
raving. He made beautiful gestures with his white-gloved hands;
then he would remove the gloves, displaying a simple but curious
ring; his gesticulation became ever more impassioned, tiII
suddenly he would point heavenward: his voice rose like a
trumpet in an orchestra, and passed into the soprano register of
fortissimo violins; he stamped his foot, threw back his head, and
emitted peal upon peal of shrill, maniacal laughter. He spoke of
poetry and painting, of countesses' hats, of the splendour of his
race, and of himself as its crowning glory. "I can't bear that man
who's always telling me about his ancestors," Anatole France
would complain; and Charles Haas, on request, would imitate
Montesquiou saying, in the choicest accent of the gratin-it was
a kind of incisive, yelping drawl-"My forebears used up all the
family intelligence; my father had nothing left but the sense of
his own grandeur; my brother hadn't even that, but had the
decency to die young; while I -I have added to our ducal coronet
the glorious coronal of a poetI" Very often he would recite his
own verses; and when his hostess whispered: "How very
beautiful I" he would reply: "Yes, it is a beautiful poem, and I will
now recite it to you again." Sometimes he would stand on the
staircase, like M. de Charlus at the Princesse de Guermantes's,
and make distinctly audible comments on the arriving guests: "I
see the Chanoinesse de F audoas is wearing orange-no doubt she
wishes to display the number of her quarters." Once he embar-