16~ MARCEL PROUSTpainting of the Empress Eugenie's ladies-in-waiting. She was
notorious for talking throughout the performance whenever she
went to the opera; and Charles Haas, when invited to her box,
had murmured: "Yes, 1'd love to come, I've never heard you in
Faust." She still wore imperial violets, and refused to allow her
golden hair to tum white; and from force of habit she eyed young
men, we are told, with 'matriarchal coquetry'. To an old priest
who expressed his gratitude at meeting 'the beautiful Comtesse de
Pourtales of whom I've heard so much', she sighed: "Ah, M. Ie
Cure, if you'd seen me forty years ago you would have said the
Almighty created his masterpiece when He made me!" But she
stood on her dignity, and when Reynaldo Hahn unfortunately
used his friend Proust's favourite adjective of her she retorted:
"My dear Reynaldo, you can say the Comtesse de Pourtales is
kind; you can say she is no ordinary woman; but you can't
possibly call her nice!" Her guests comprised not only the
Faubourg, but also Central European dignitaries-her friendship
with Princesse Mettemich was legendary-Protestants, such as
Proust's bete noire, the Byzantine historian Gustave Schlumberger,
and Bonapartist nobles-the Prince de Borodino at Doncieres
naturally dines with her whenever he visits Paris.! But she wisely
refrained from mingling all these with the Faubourg; and the
Duchesse de Guermantes says, complaining of the mixed company
at her cousin the Princesse's soiree: "It's much better arranged at
Melanie Pourtales's-she can invite the Holy Synod and the
Oratoire chapel if she likes, but she doesn't ask us on the same
day."2
One of the great ladies to whom Montesquiou was particularly
devoted was Mme Greffulhe's friend and his own second cousin,
Mme Standish (his cousin Bertrand had married her sister Emilie).
Despite her foreign name (the Faubourg called her 'Missis'), she
eminently belonged to the gratin, being a niece of the Duc des
Cars, while her husband was the son of a N oailles. 'It would take
a whole lecture,' says the Narrator, 'to explain to certain foolish
young men why Mme Standish is at least as great a lady as the
Duchesse de Doudeauville.'3 She had been the mistress of General
Galliffet and of Edward VII as Prince of Wales, and dressed
(though people could never decide which inIitated the other)
exactly like the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra, with
1 II, 132 2 11,672 • 11,66;