Marcel Proust: A Biography

104 MARCEL PROUST
Mme Aubemon owned a seaside villa at Trouville, the Manoir
de la Cour Brillee, which helped to suggest Mme Verdurin's La
Raspeliere and to connect Mme Aubemon with the district of
Balhec. It had a magnificent view of the Channel, but the 'three
views' of La Raspeliere belonged, as we shall see, to Les F remonts
near by. The Cour Brulee was rented from Mme Aubemon by
Mme Straus in 1892, and Proust perhaps saw it only as Mme
Straus's guest. No doubt the week-ends at Cceur-Volant, preceded
as they were by the journeys with Brochard and Doasan in the
little train, contributed more than the summer parties at the Cour
Brillee to La Raspeliere. We sha!l meet later, in their place, three
other prototypes of the 'little train' of Sodome er Gomorrke. The
name of the villa hired by Mme Verdurin from the Cambremers
came from La Rachepeliere, a hamlet a mile west of IIIiers on the
Mereglise way.
To complete the foreshadowing of Mme Verdurin's salon in
Mme Aubemon's it only remains to discover representatives of
Swann and Odette among her guests. Paul Hervieu, the dramatist,
was a little like Haas and Swann in appearance, with his rather
frigid elegance, his upturned moustache ("Hervieu has tiny icicles
in the comers of his moustache," said Femand Gregh), his air of
weary sadness and irony. The remark made by Swann to a girl
in a brothel-"How sweet of you, you're wearing blue eyes to go
with your sash"l-is modelled on a compliment of Hervieu at
Mme Aubemon's to the Baronne de J ouvenel: "1 see you're
wearing black velvet eyes this evening." The lady on this occasion
was not flattered, and replied: "Thanks very much-do you mean
that I don't wear them every day?" At Mme Aubemon's Hervieu
met and fell in love with the beautiful and talented Baronne
Marguerite de Pierrebourg ("Mme de Pierrebourg is so eloquent,"
Mme Aubernon would say appreciatively). She was then thirty-
five, and lived apart from her husband Aimery de Pierrebourg:
Odette, it will be remembered, was herself the separated wife of
Pierre de Verjus, Comte de Crecy, whom the Narrator met
during his second visit to Balhec. The baroness deserted Mme
Aubemon, taking Hervieu with her, and began, like Odette, a
brilliant salon of her own, which Proust afterwards frequented.
They never married, or lived together, and their love was life-
iong; but otherwise their story has clear analogies with that of
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