:11:>' MARCEL PROUSTconsolations of the Church. "It was one of the best fetes I've ever
given," he exulted. Curiously enough, he found it impossible to
dislike Lorrain. Y turri, always glad to act as a dove of peace, was
sent to negotiate, and they made it up. Despite a rather un-
fortunate dinner with Lorrain, during which he was several
times called downstairs by blackmailers ("People keep bringing
me proofs to correct," he mumbled to Montesquiou), they
remained on affable terms until the deplorable Lorrain's death,
from multiple anal fistulas, in 1906.
The recital at Mme de Rothschild's was the last given by
Delafosse as Montesquiou's protege. The young pianist had
committed the unforgivable treachery of flirting with another
patron: 'He threw himself,' said Montesquiou, 'not into the arms,
for she can hardly be said to have had any, but at the feet, which
were enormous, of an aged spinster of Swiss origin.' Their
estrangement was very different from that between Charlus and
Morel. Far from being heartbroken, Montesquiou dismissed the
unhappy young man with vengeful delight, and when, one day,
Delafosse found himself cut in public, the Count's explanation
was unanswerable: "One bows when the Cross passes, but one
does not expect the Cross to bow back." Visiting friends noted
that the Angel's portrait had been transferred from the drawing-
room to the lavatory, and that a sure means of giving pleasure
to the Count was to speak ill of Delafosse. Mme Howland could
call him 'that little "Defosse" girl' with impunity; Montesquiou
referred to him no longer as 'the Angel' but as 'the Scrambled
Egg'I; and during the Dreyfus Affair Proust curried favour by
pretending that the famous reference in the 'Alexandrine' letter
to 'that swine D--' alluded not to Dreyfus but to Delafosse.^2
The pianist's career, much to Montesquiou's disappointment, was
not broken. He played for Countess Metternich at Vienna, in
Paris at Princesse Rachel de Brancovan's musical evenings, where
Proust continued to see him, and during the 1900S to Edwardian
society in London, where he was a friend of Percy Grainger and
1 L'O!uf orouille, 'hrouilU' meaning also 'someone with whom one has
quarrelled'..
B The true identity of 'D--' in the letter signed Alexandrine from
Schwartzkoppen to the Italian mili tary attache Panizzarcii, written at an
unknown date in 1891 or 1893, has never been established; but as he was
engaged in selling maps of fortifications at a mere 10 fr. apiece, D--must
have been a very small-time spy.