:>9" MARCEL PROUST
your last book-have you finished that marvellous play yet,
Monsieur?--excuse me, Madame, what is the exact colour of your
charming wrap in daylight?" One evening at a nearby table the
Marquis de Lagrenee, a retired diplomat and a renowned duellist,
happened to call out to a friend: "Get along with you, you old
Dreyfusardl" Proust took the remark to himself, and sent Daudet
and Robert de Flers to demand either an apology or a duel: "he
probably thinks I'm scared of him, just because he's good with a
sword," he cried, white and trembling with rage, "but I'm not,
1 tell you, I'm not!" The aged Marquis was overcome with
delight: "Oh, how splendid I" he cried, raising his nervous
duellist's hands above his head, "what a simply delightful person
your Monsieur Proust must be I" His joy was complete when it
turned out that Daudet's grandmother had been his cousin Olga's
very best friend; he came over to assure Proust that no offence
had been intended-"It's such a pleasure to meet a young man
who knows how to stand up for himself," he repeated. Among
other habitues were the thin, bitter Paul Jean Toulet, author of
the exquisite Contrerimes, and his inseparable friend the gourmet
Curnonsky, who survived to commit suicide in the austere year
of 1956. Proust and T oulet disliked one another: "1 think,
Monsieur, don't you agree, Monsieur, you'll ruin your stomach
with all that whisky," insinuated Proust.
Sometimes on those June evenings they would emerge to find
the Place de la Madeleine still glowing in the last mellow sun-
light. "Look here, Daudet," Louis de la Salle would enquire,
"what would Hermant say on the present occasion?"; and Daudet,
who was almost as brilliant at imitations as Proust himself, would
oblige in the tinny voice of Abel Hermant: "He would say,
'Hasn't annywan sin Constantan de Brencoven? I've been lookin'
for him for hours 1 It's simply sickenin'I" "Quite right. And what
would Zola say?" "Zola would say: "Ve Madeleine dithappeared
in a sheaf of golden light. Over vatht toiling Parith toppled
thwatheth of thultry radianthe. Doctor Pathcal looked at
Thuthanne. She looked at Jean. Vere wath a thilenthe."
Another member of Daudet's circle at the Cafe Weber was the
swarthy, black-bearded Debussy, whose music Proust had
admired since the early 18905, and was to venerate still more
intensely, even at the expense of annoying the classicist Reynaldo,
after the first performances of Pellias and Milisande in April 1902..