MARCEL PROUSTAntoinette was at its height about eighteen months before the
present period, and was a milder prefiguration of his love for
Marie de Benardaky: in a photograph taken in the Parc Monceau,
Mile Faure, with a plumed hat and carrying an umbrella, is about
fourteen, and Marcel, in a striped straw hat, is only thirteen. The
Comtesse de Martel, otherwise the novelist Gyp, saw him playing
with Antoinette in the Champs-Elysees, and was amused to meet
the little boy a few days later buying tile complete works of
Moliere and Lamartine in Calmann Levy's bookshop in the Rue
de Grammont^1 ; where recognising her as a friend of Antoinette he
greeted her with a pallid but charming smile. When Gyp next had
tea with Mme Faure she asked who he was. "He's Dr Proust's
son, I've known his mother for years," replied that lady, "he's
amazingly intelligent, but unfortunately rather frail, and he's a
great friend of Antoinette's." Marcel used to recite his favourite
poems to Antoinette, and then ask timidly, "Did you like that?";
and in return she taught him how to make caramels. She could
always make him obey her with a glance of her grey eyes, with
their extraordinarily long lashes: "have you ever noticed
Antoinette's eyelashes, madame?" he asked Gyp earnestly.
Marie de Benardaky and her younger sister Nelly were
daughters of a Polish nobleman, Nicolas de Benardaky, who is
said to have gained his wealth as a tea-merchant. He had once been
master of ceremonies at the court of the Tsar, and was still entitled
to be called 'Your Excellency'. M. de Benardaky lived at 65 Rue
de Chaillot, which runs into the Avenue Marceau a quarter of a
mile to the west of the Champs-Elysees; for these elysian lawns
were the joint playground of the noble children of the west end
of Paris and the bourgeois children of the centre. He had a
reputation for arrogance, while his wife, whose maiden name was
Lebrock, was said to care for nothing but champagne and love.
She was statuesque and beautiful, and was remembered for her
appearance at a fancy-dress ball as a Valkyrie, complete "with
spear. Her daughter Marie had long black hair and a rosy, laugh-
ing face; she can have had little outward resemblance to the red-
haired, freckled and sullen Gilberte. As Proust remembered her
long afterwards, she was fifteen when he feU in love with her, and
1 The shop of Calmann Levy, who later published Les Plauirs el les
Jours, was a favourite resort of Charles Haas, original of Swann, and of
Anatole France, original of Bergotte.