THE GARDEN OF THE CHAMPS-EL YSEES 4!
perhaps he was right; for although according to Gotha she was
born at Pavlovsk on I2 July 1874, and would therefore only have
been twelve, Gotha is known to be less fallible on the ages of
princes than on those of princesses, particularly when these
belonged before their marriage only to the minor nobility.l
Except for the hooting torrent of automobiles which rushes past
their gravel bank towards the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-
Elysees to-day are much the same as they were seventy years ago.
The lawns by the Alcazar, d'Ete and the Theatre des Ambassa-
deurs, on which Marcel played prisoner's base, are now railed off;
but the laurel shrubberies of his games of hide-and-seek are still
there, and the nymph of the fountain still arranges her long stony
tresses. In the novel she is holding out a baby, and after the snow-
fall an icicle hangs from her hand, 'which seemed to explain her
gesture'2; but in the real Champs-Elysees she is childless, and in
order to make his joke, Proust had to present her with one of the
three putti, carrying wheat, grapes and doves, who form the
centre-piece of another fountain further up, by the Theatre
Marigny. The only surviving roundabout has been banished to
this part of the park since Marcel's time. Near by is a cedar,
bearing a notice which reads 'Probable age in 1950, 90 years':
here, too, is something which saw Marcel at play with 'Gilberte',
and could perhaps tell us whether their wr~stling match in the
shrubbery ever occurred, or whether, as he affirmed long after-
wards, 'there was never anything in the least improper in my
relations with her'. The wooden booths, lettered A to H, where
ginger-bread, barley-sugar, toy drums and windmills were sold,
still line the avenue under the chestnut-trees; and there is the
public lavatory in which the Narrator's grandmother had her
stroke, a dignified edifice of cast-iron painted green. Perhaps the
Marquise, its guardian and hostess, was a real figure, and perhaps
in real life Marcel was plunged into an ecstasy of unconscious
memory when the musty odour of her 'salon' reminded him of
Jules Amiot's den in the back-garden at IIIiers. But the story of
the Marquise's exclusiveness, her pride in 'choosing her society',
is also told in Jean Santeuil of Mme Laudet, at whose farm, Les
Aigneaux, the people of Etreuilles are served with refreshments
on Sundays: "I only receive people I like," she says.^3
1 The Almanach de Gotha for '900 even dates her birth as ,876.
- I, 398, 405 • Jean Santeuil, vol. " '1<