106 MARCEL PROUST
Joachim Murat's garden made Mme Lemaire's yard seem like a
glade in a forest.
She was a tall, energetic woman, with arched eyebrows, hair
that was not all her own, a great deal of rouge, a spangled evening-
gown that seemed to have been thrown on in a hurry, and the
remains of pleasant good looks-though later she is said to have
become hideous. All day she had indefatigably painted her flower-
pieces, whieh were reputed to fetch 500 francs apiece, and
enormous roses still stood in a corner of the studio posing in their
glasses of water. "Noone, except God, has created more roses,"
the younger Dumas had said (her daughter Suzette remarked long
afterwards that Dumas was the only one of her mother's lovers
she had felt quite certain about, "because she always called him
'Monsieur"'); and Montesquiou nicknamed her 'the Empress of
roses'.
As a painter of flowers Madeleine Lemaire helped to suggest
Mme de Villeparisis; but the chief original of Mme de Villeparisis,
as will be seen later, only made artificial flowers. Mme Lemaire
contributed more to Mme Verdurin. She was known as 'fa
Patronne', 'the Mistress',! and she used to call the painter Clairin
by the nickname given by Mme Verdurin to Briehot, 'Chochotte'.
Like Mmes Arman and Aubernon, Mme Lemaire spoke inces-
santly of her dread of bores, 'les ennuyeux'; but for her this word
had the special sense given to it by Mme Verdurin, of people who
felt too distinguished to come to her evenings. But like Mme
Verdurin, though far more rapidly, she experienced a rise in social
standing which made the numerous race of bores dwindle to the
verge of extinction. She, too, was not averse to executions of un-
satisfactory guests, which would be heralded in the Verdurin
manner by ominous pronouncements of "The fact is, that man
has lost his talent", or "that woman is a goose", or "I won't allow
that sort of behaviour in my house". She frequently interfered in
the private lives of her friends, though not as a rule to their
detriment. She owned a magnificent country-house called
Reveillon in Seine-et-Marne, where we shall see Proust a few
years later, and her system of interior decoration there is said to
have resembled Mme Verdurin's at La Raspeliere. Alone of tlle
hostesses we have so far met, she provided music as an essential
1 She was also called, like !-1me Aubernon and for the same reason, 'the
Widow'.