MARCEL PROUSTthrough the outskirts of the aristocratic Quartier Monceau, a
much more suitable district for a distinguished doctor.
This is the change of home which occurs at the beginning of
Le C8ti de Guermantes. Well might Fran~oise, who at this period
of A fa Recherche is based on the Proust's aged cook, F elicie
Fitau, declare in the exile of this noiseless canyon that 'she found
the twittering of the birds at daybreak insipid'.1 But by a typical
transposition Proust made the new house of the Narrator, in its
most important features, more like his own old home than the
new. The house of the Narrator's childhood, it is true, resembled
51 Boulevard Malesherbes in several ways: it was near the Champs-
Elysees, had a Morriss column on the pavement opposite, and
commanded a distant view of the Piranesi-Iike dome of Saint-
Augustin. The Narrator's new home, like 45 Rue de Courcelles,
is quiet, and situated on a steep hill (down which the Ladies with
the Walking-Sticks clambered to tell the Due de Guermantes
that poor 'Mama' d'Osmond was dying). The height of the Rue
de Courcelles, and its nearness to the Pare Monceau, gave it the
better air which in the novel is needed for the Narrator's grand-
mother (,because, although we did not tell her the reason, she
had not been at all well lately,? and in real life was desirable for
Mme Proust. But it was 9 Boulevard Malesherbes which had a
tailor's shop like Jupien's (M. Eppler's, of whom Kiki Bartholoni
thought so highly) in the courtyard, and a ducal family as neigh-
bours. At NO.3, only three doors away,3 lived the Comte and
Comtesse Fran~ois de Maille, nephew and niece-in-Iaw of the
octogenarian Dowager Duchesse de Maille, whom Proust had so
often seen, enthroned with other aged wallflowers, at the balls of
his youth: her grey hair piled high over her forehead reminded
him of the triple-tiered wig of judges under the ancien regime.
Mme de Maille was the niece of the Comtesse de Boigne, who had
been dandled on the knees of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,
and whose memoirs, first published in 1907, suggested those of
Mme de Beausergent, the favourite reading of the Narrator's
grandmother. The Comtesse de Boigne's nephew, M. d'Osmond,1 II, 9 ' II, 10
8 'I was intimidated; wrote Lucien Daudet of his first invitation to tea
at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes, 'because I was under the impression that NO.9
formed part of the H6tel Maille, and therefore thought Marcel Proust lived
in a house of vast size and extreme magnificence.'