~18 MARCEL PROUST
male travesty; although Mety does not seem to have been among
these, his association with her is doubtless another link with Elstir
and his portrait of Odette as Miss Sacripant. A year after Manet's
death in 1883, Mallarme became her lover; she was the delight of
his disappointed life until his own death in 1898.
It was to her charming villa, Les Talus, at 9 Boulevard Lannes
near the Bois de Boulogne, that Reynaldo took Proust and Marie
Nordlinger. Other guests have described Les Talus as a countri-
fied little house with low ceilings and rustic furniture upholstered
in flowered cretonne. But by 1897 Mme Laurent bad become
converted, like Odette, to Japanese art; and it was at Les Talus
that Proust saw Odette's staircase with dark painted walls hung
with oriental tapestries and Turkish beads, and the huge Japanese
lantern suspended from a silken cord and lit, 'to provide her
guests with the latest comforts of Western civilisation', Mlle
Nordiinger remembered, 'with a gas-jet!' The large and small
drawing-rooms, as at Odette's house in the Rue Laperouse, were
entered through a narrow lobby, the wall of which was covered
by a gilded trellis, and lined with a long rectangular box from
which grew a lofty row of pink, orange and white chrysanthe-
mums.I In Mme Laurent's drawing-room was the same portrait
of the hostess on a plush-draped easel as in Odette's2; though at
Les Talus it was 'Manet's enchanting pastel of his beloved,
wearing a little toque with a veil, through which emerged her
dreamy eyes, her slightly tilted nose and greedy little mouth'.
Mme Laurent was a tall, pink and gold blonde, with regular
features and arched eyebrows which made her look always
surprised. So ardent and varied was her love of poets that George
Moore called her' Toute fa Lyre'; though it was said that when she
led Moore himself to her blue-satin bedroom he failed to take the
hint, and stood looking like a gasping carp until she declared: "I
don't think there's any point in our staying any longer in my. bedroom," and led him out. Mallarme, who had borne with
equanimity her association with Gervex, Coppee, Dr Robin
(Proust's father's friend, who owned her portrait as 'Autumn' by
Manet) and so many more, was a little distressed by the new circle
of Dreyfusist young men who were gathering round her; and in a
letter of that summer in which he sent Mery an item of botanical
information he added ironically: "This will give you a chance of
1 I, 210 j I, loll