TIME BEGINS TO BE LOST 317
implies preference, fidelity, security and perseverance'; most
horrible of all, he once said of Ruskin that 'his greatest merit was
his skill in making even the loftiest ideas agreeable and accessible
to all!' 'Only an artist can see Loche's true merits, though
women have an inkling of them, because they find him extremely
attractive', and 'desire is a kind of sightless comprehension'.
Clearly, Loche had sat for Proust's eternal friendship, but failed
his examination.
At that time, however, the most important of all the new
recruits of 1903 was Marquis (later Duc) Louis d' Albufera,
known as 'Albu'. Albu was good-natured, loyal and simple, the
only one of Proust's group of young noblemen who was a non-
intellectual and an anti-Dreyfusard. He was aged twenty-six, an
ardent mutorist and traveller, and had made a journey to Tunisia
at the time of Proust's winter friendship with M. Like Saint-
Loup, he was in love with an actress; he had bought her a horse
and buggy, and his delight in this spring was to sit on one of the
iron chairs in the Avenue des Acacias and watch her drive up and
down. Louisa de Mornand was a tall, willowy young person,
with a long nose, arched eyebrows, and features of the most
fascinating prettiness. She specialised in light comedy, first in
soubrette parts, later in leads, and had a maid, Rachel, from
whom Proust took the name of Saint-Loup's mistress. Proust
himself immediately succumbed to Mile de Mornand's charm
partly because she was the beloved of a friend, but partly for
her own sake; and their amical relationship survived through
her subsequent love-affairs until the last years of his life. She
made her debut at the Theatre des Mathurins in Tarride's Coin
du feu on 17 April 1903 as the maid Victorine; and on 24 May
at the same theatre she played a rather more important role
in a curtain-raiser to the lyrical pantomime 'Rlve d'opium' which
featured the notorious Otero, la belle Otero, the rival in whoredom. and diamonds of Liane de Pougy. On this prominent occasion
Proust took it upon himself to organise her publicity: through
Antoine Bibesco he asked the dramatist Edmond See and Abel
Hermant, then dramatic critic of Gil BIas, to mention her
appreciatively in their criticisms, if it was only to say: 'A friend
of mine asks me to mention that Mile de Mornan! is a beauty and
a charmer, and I don't mind if I do.' Since Proust here spelled
her name wrongly, he can only have met her recently; but soon