THE G UERMANTES WAYto persuade herself, in a well-meaning sort of way, that she's the
muse Polyhymnia," said Montesquiou, who when presented with
one of her books had simply returned his card, inscribed 'Yours
in spite of everything.' Her husband, Duc Alain, would stop in
front of any pretty face not previously known to him and say, "I
bet you don't know who I am"; but the pretty face invariably
replied, "You're the Duc de Rohan." He was particularly fond of
foreign lady visitors. "After a month he gets tired of them," said
his wife, "and then I have them on my hands for the rest of my
life"-a remark which is also given to the Duchesse de Guer-
mantes.l
Another Guermantes hostess was Comtesse Rosa de FitzJames,
for whose sake (if not for her husband's, of whom she was
supposed to be still fonder) Mme de Chevigne had left Proust
standing in the Avenue Gabriel. Proust was presented to her by
the old Marquise de Brantes; and the Comtesse de Pourtales
remembered him on this very occasion, 'extraordinarily pale, with
a fringe of black hair over his huge black eyes'. Comtesse Rosa
was a Jewess from Vienna, nee Gutmann, and at first the Faubourg
was inclined to find her unacceptable; but her husband was so un-
kind and unfaithful that they nicknamed her 'Rosa Malheur'
(after the animal-painter Rosa Bonheur) and (except for the
inflexible Comte Aimery de La Rochefoucauld, who said: "She
wanted a salon, and all she's got is a dining-room") took her to
their hearts. The German philosopher Count Keyserling, Bourget
and the Abbe Mugnier were to be met in her house, together with
the inevitable Charles Haas, Turenne and Marquis du Lau.
Comtesse Rosa was plain, melancholy and not very intelligent:
"Everyone says you're silly, my dear Rosa," said her best friend,
"but I always tell them they exaggerate." She was said to keep a
secret weapon in her desk: a list of all the Jewish marriages in the
noble families of Europe. Her husband, Comte Robert de Fitz-
James, when she began "In Vienna, where I was bred," would
interrupt with "You mean, born." But he had no respect for any-
one's feelings, and to a duchess who said, when her last daughter
was engaged, "At last my girls are all placed," he retorted: "Yes,
but not in the first three."
Comtesse Melanie de Pourtales was a surviving beauty of the
Second Empire and had appeared in Winterhalter's famous
1 III, IOOG