MARCEL PROUSTa dinner to Mme de Chevigne's heroine, the Grand-Duchess
Wladimir, and GaIliffet. "Your Highness is sitting between the
two biggest cuckolds in Europe," announced the Prince; but his
remark was coldly received. The General had led the famous
cavalry charge at Sedan, and taken part in the savage suppression
of the Commune just before Proust's birth. Proust admired him
for his wit, of which perhaps the best example is a silent one: when
riding one afternoon in the Bois GaIliffet met the unfrocked priest
Monsignor Bauer, an acquaintance from Second Empire days,
when he was the Empress Eugenie's chaplain. Mgr Bauer politely
raised his hat; and the General with equal politeness made the sign
of priestly benediction.
In several respects, however, Mme Greffulhe resembled not
only the Duchesse, but the Duchesse's cousin, the Princesse de
Guermantes. Her topaz eyes and statuesque beauty are given to
the Princesse; so is her flamboyant style of dress, in which Mme
Greffulhe contrasted with the sobriety of Mme de Chevigne as
did the Princesse with the Duchesse. A characteristic anecdote of
Comtesse Greffulhe is told of the Princesse de Guermantes in a
rejected passage of Sodome et Gomorrhe.' "I shall know I've lost
my beauty when people stop turning to stare at me in the street,"
the Comtesse told Mme Standish; and Mme Standish replied:
"Never fear, my dear, so long as you. dress as you do, people will
always turn and stare!" The famous scene of the Princesse de
Guermantes's box at the Opera in Le Core de Guermantes actually
occurred, as we shall see, in May 1912: here the Princesse re-
preseflts Mme Greffulhe, and the Duchesse Mme Standish.
Elstir's portrait of the Princesse with the crescent moon of Diana
in her hair' was a very bad painting ofMme Greffulhe by Hebert."
The Princesse's attitude in the Dreyfus Case was shared, as will
be shown later, by Mme Greffulhe; and her chaste but pronounced
affection for her cousin Montesquiou no doubt suggested the
Princesse's unhappy passion for Charlus.
A later but equally important original of the Princesse was
Comtesse Jean (Dolly) de Castellane, a half-sister of Boson de
, II, ll8, • II, ll83
3 M. de Norpois at Mme de Villeparisis's, when he hears the Narrator
declaring his admiration for Elstir's Bunch of Radishes, cries: "If you call
that clever little sketch a masterpiece, what words will you have left for
Hebert's Virgin?" (II, 223).