THE GUERMANTES WAY '49care for Montesquiou and his friends, who descended on his Villa
La Case at Dieppe every September as soon as he left for the
shooting-season at Boisboudran. "They're a lot of Japs," he said,
meaning aesthetes.
Comtesse Greffulhe (the gratin pronounced the name
GreJfeuille) was considered the supreme society beauty of her
time. As she sailed rapidly through a drawing-room the guests
could be heard murmuring: "Which way did she go? Did you
see her?" She had chestnut hair and dark mineral eyes, like agates
or topazes:
'Comtesse Greffulhe
Is two dark glances wrapped in tulle,'wrote Montesquiou; but her features, though delicately chiselled,
were somewhat irregular, with a hint of wildness. She was fully
conscious of the uniqueness of her looks, but despaired of finding
an artist to do them justice: "However beautiful one is, there are
days when one looks hideous, and that's when they paint one!"
she exclaimed. She was sculpted by Falguiere ("the head wasn't
very good, so I threw it away, but I've kept the shoulders"),
etched and pastelled by Helleu (an original ofEistir), and painted
by Laszlo, Hebert and other society portraitists. But only a poet
or a camera, she thought, could reproduce the loveliness she saw
reflected in her mirror or in the eyes of beholders. She was
particularly gratified, therefore, by a sonnet of Montesquiou
which ended: 'Fair lily, your black pistils are your eyes.' Turning
to her sister (the favourite lady-in-waiting of Queen Elisabeth of
Belgium), she remarked: "Quite a good likeness, Ghislaine, don't
you think?" and added to Montesquiou: "Only you and the sun
really understand me!" "I was glad she put me first," said
Montesquiou afterwards.
The countess and her cousin Count Robert were united by
mutual admiration and genuine affection: "She's the only person
with whom I have never succeeded in quarrelling," he would say.
Montesquiou had a great respect for her intelligence, though in
his belief she never read a book (Edmond de Goncourt thought
her extremely well-read, but that was because she talked to him
about his own novels), and picked up her knowledge through
conversation with learned guests. Like the Duchesse de Guer-
mantes she invited scientists to dinner in her later years; and she