216 MARCEL PROUST
Proust was among the wee thousand guests at Boni de Castel-
lane's famous ban in the Bois de Boulogne on 2 July. The ban
was to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of Boni's reluctant wife
("I'm just as good as these princesses of yours!"), though the
host and his uncle gave a different reason when they called on
the President of the Municipal Council to extract permission for
the use of the Bois. "What is the purpose of this ban?" asked the
astonished functionary; and the Prince de Sagan replied, adjusting
his monocle with Olympian impertinence: "This ban, Monsieur,
will be given for pleasure ... simply and solely for pleasure!" So
300,000 francs of Mme de Castellane's fortune were spent; the
trees of the Bois were hung with 80,000 green Venetian lanterns,
shining like unripe fruit; and the entire corps de banet of the
Opera danced before the guests. The climax of the evening was
when twenty-five swans, brought by Boni's neighbour Camille
Groult, were released to beat their white wings among the
lanterns, revellers and fountains of fire. But the loveliest swan of
an was Mme Greffulhe, swathed in clouds of white tulle.
M. Groult was a millionaire art-collector, of jolly, piratical
appearance, whose wealth came from flour and meat-paste. His
collection was particularly remarkable for its eighteenth-century
drawings and pastels, beneath which were displayed glass cases
of transfixed butterflies. "These are signed Watteau, Nattier,
Fragonard," M. Groult would say, "and these"-pointing to the
butterflies-"are signed: God." Montesquiou, who frequently
caned with sight-seeing parties of his friends, was enamoured of a
portrait of a young nobleman by Perroneau. "You can see the
tooth-marks where that exquisite young mouth has been kissed,"
he announced, and the pretty Marquise de J aucourt, leaning
eagerly forward, cried "Where? Where? Show me!" M. Groult's
most celebrated jest was on the occasion of Edward VII's visit to
Paris in '907. Henri de Breteuil (the other original of Hannibal
de Breaute) was asked to arrange lunch for the King at M.
Groult's, to be followed by a tour of his pictures; and to make
sure that no one unsuitable should be invited, he demanded a
complete list of the guests. 'Don't worry,' M. Groult wrote back,
alluding both to the source of his riches and to La Fontaine's fable
of the miller and his son, in which the third party is their ass;
'There'n only be the miller, the miller's son, and you!' The story
is told in Le COtt! de Guermantes of the Prince de Luxembourg and