Chapter 6
BERGOTTE AND DONCIERESP
ROUST could never remember who had first taken him to
the salon ofMme Arman de Caillavet. It was some time in the
summer of 1889, and she greeted him with the remark she always
served out for newcomers: "You'll find instruction as well as
amusement here, it's just like a school prize-book." Then she
introduced him to Anatole France, and he found to his disappoint-
ment that the writer whom he had imagined as 'a sweet singer
with snowy locks' was a little man aged forty-five, of half-clerical,
half-military appearance, with 'a red nose like a snail-shell and a
pointed black beard'. From that moment of contrast between
imagination and reality the character of Bergotte was to be born.
His hostess lived at 12 Avenue Hoche. Her maiden name was
Leontine Lippmann, she had married the wealthy Albert Arman
in 1868, and at this stage in her progress she was called simply
Mme Arman. A few years later her husband added to the family
surname the name of a vine-growing chateau on his country
estate of Capian, and she was known as Mme Arman de Caillavet;
and then the Arman was suppre:;sed altogether and she became
Mme de Caillavet, which soufl<,cd best of all. But she always
professed that this self-ennobling of Albert's was absurd, and
insisted to the end of her life on signing herself '1. Arman
Caillavet', accepting the 'Caillavet', it is true, but rejecting the
'de'.
In 1889 she was forty-two, still unaged and good-looking,
loaded with pearls, with a small, intelligent head and short waved
hair" and blue eyes which, although a little too prominent, had
kept their air of mystery. Something of her imperious manner
entered into Mme Verdurin. Mme Arman hurried to greet the
proud and timid daughter of the dramatist Bjoernson with cries
of "A Norwegian! What luck, what a recruit for my salon! You're
just the number I need!" But whenever Mme Arman called on
this desirable Viking, the servant always announced: "Madame
regrets that she cannot receive Madame. She is in the middle of