MARCEL PROUSTwould be heard to remark afterwards: "Did you know that even
iron suffers from fatigue?" She took a public interest in the arts,
especially in music. She wrote a one-act play for a house-party at
Boisboudran, and a book of confessions in which she showed
such keen appreciation of her own beauty that Goncourt advised
her not to publish.
As we have seen, many features of the Duchesse de Guermantes
-her corn-coloured hair and cornflower eyes, her rasping voice.
something of her wit, her style of dress, the Narrator's early love
for her-derived from Mme de Chevigne. Most of the remaindel
-including her supreme position in society, her relations with
her husband, her cousinship with Charlus-Montesquiou--came
from Mme Greffulhe. She had the chiming silvery laugh of the
Duchesse: "Mme Greffulhe's laugh sounds like the carillon at
Bruges," said Proust, at a later time when he had heard both.
Just as the Duc and Duchesse lived in the same house as Mme de
Villeparisis-shared also by the Narrator's family and the tailor
J upien-so Comte Greffulhe dwelt in symbiosis at 8 Rue d' Astorg
with his widowed mother (born a La Rochefoucauld) and his
sisters, the Marquise de I' Aigle and the Princesse d' Areuberg
(the wife of Mme Straus's friend, original of the Prince
d' Agrigente). Duc Agenor de Gramont playfully called their
house Vatican City. Like the Duchesse, Comtesse Greffulhe was
famous for the exclusive coterie of her men-friends. Chief of them
all was Charles Haas, the original of Swann, now, sixteen years
after her marriage, a sick and ageing man. The others, some of
whom were among the band of club-men who spent their after-
noons with Mme de Chevigne, included the Marquis du Lau,
Comte Costa de Beauregard, Comte Albert de Mun, Comte
Louis de Turenne and Marquis Henri de Breteuil. The latter pair
together made up Hannibal (Babal) de Breaute. The good-
natured but stupid Turenne had blue eyes and a yellow com-
plexion, and wore Breaute's monocle, 'which carried, glued to the
other side, an infinitesimal gaze, swarming with affability, and
never ceasing to beam at the height of the ceiling, the magni-
ficence of the reception, the interestingness of the programme and
the quality of the refreshments'.1 Like Breaute he was thought a
connoisseur of objects of art, and loved to give advice with an air
of expert knowledge on things he knew nothing whatever about:
1 I, )17