THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 145shall see him ending his attachment to Delafosse at a time of his
own choosing, without regret, with delight in vengeance.
Meanwhile, however, Count Robert was in the first enthusiastic
.tage of a new friendship. 'For three years,' he afterwards con··
fessed, 'Delafosse became part of my life.' Proust waited in vain
for his reward: the cunning Montesquiou had swallowed the bait
and rejected the hook. By way of a reminder he sent Delafosse to
the count on 24 March with yet another angel, a rather battered
plaster one from an eighteenth-century creche. 'For those who
have ears I am sure he can sing with the same witty voice as our
little musician. His tailcoat reveals his wings by its complete
absence. His little nose is damaged, but even if it were all there
I'm afraid it wouldn't have the expressive dryness, the passionate
thinness, the eloquent concision of the noSe of our musician.' But
Montesquiou was furious: 'our little musician', indeed I-and at
Mme Lemaire's Tuesday on 27 March he pointedly refrained from
speaking to the giver of angels. On 17 April Proust tried again.
He went straight from one of his lessons for the licence os lettres
to the private view of the Marie Antoinette exhibition at the
Sedelmayer Gallery, hoping to see Montesquiou 'with one or two
ladies who are themselves works of art'; but he arrived too late,
when everyone had left except the proprietors, from whose angry
glares he became aware that it was long past closing-time. When
he first saw Comtesse Greffulhe, early in May, it was by his own
efforts. She was at the Princesse de Wagram's, wearing a coiffure
of mauve cattleyas, which gave her 'a somehow Polynesian grace';
but he did not dare ask to be presented to her. She was the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen; he asked Montesquiou to tell
her so; and the count realised that if he did not give this deter-
mined young man the introduction he craved for, someone or
other soon would.
He was now preparing at the Pavilion Montesquiou the first
of the magnificent fetes which for the next two decades were to
be considered among the most brilliant events of the social year.
In theory it was in honour of Sarah Bernhardt and her temporary
protege, a Breton sailor named Yann Nibor who was to sing some
original verses about storms and albatrosses. But the count saw
his chance to support other, even more deserving causes. His own
poems and those of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, recited by
Mlles Bartet and Reichenberg from the Comedie F ran~aise,