Marcel Proust: A Biography

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 129
rassed an unfortunate maiden whose dress was garnished with
imitation cherries: "I had no idea young girls were allowed to
bear fruit." There was, indeed, even apart from his insolent
delight in the pleasure of making enemies, his readiness to sacri-
fice his best friends for the sake of making an epigram, a streak of
sadism in his nature. He used to visit his little nieces and say, "My
dears, to-day we will play at pretending to cry." He would then
mimic bitter sobs, his nieces would imitate him just for fun; and
when their tears became real he would slip away, leaving them
writhing in hysteria.
Montesquiou was by no means insensible to the beauty of
women. He had adored Sarah Bernhardt in the days when she was
still ravishingly pretty and young-looking: he had even gone to
bed with her, an experience which was unhappily followed by a
week of uncontrollable vomiting. He kept up a life-long, semi-
mystical cult for the Comtesse de Castiglione, who had been the
mistress of Napoleon III and many of his courtiers; she still lived
on in the Place Vendome, half-crazed, emerging only at night,
lest people should see the ruin of her beauty. Among his most
treasured possessions-along with La Gandara's drawing of
Comtesse Greffulhe's chin and Boldini's painting ofYturri's legs
in cycling breeches-was a plaster-cast of the Castiglione's knees.
His Les Chauves-Souris was dedicated to the lovely Marquise
Flavie de Casa-Fuerte, whose son IIIan was to become one of his
last young friends fifteen years later. In his middle age he was to
be no less devoted to Eleanora Duse, Isadora Duncan and Ida
Rubinstein. His sexual abnormality was so inconspicuous that
after his death several of the people who had known him best
denied its existence: "he was not an invert, but merely an intro-
vert," says Andre Germain. In fact, Montesquiou's inversion may
have been confined largely to his almost conjugal relations with
his secretaries, and his attachments to other young men were
perhaps often, if not invariably, platonic. Similarly, in A fa
Recherche the Narrator sometimes surprisingly conjectures that
Charlus's liaison with Morel may have been entirely innocent.
There is no hint in the life of Montesquiou of casual affairs with
waiters, cabmen and other underlings: this feature of Charlus,
like his burly physique, was derived from Baron Doasan.
The first of Count Robert's secretaries-followed after his
death by the second and last-was Gabriel d'Y turri. The surname