TIME BEGINS TO BE LOST 3U
of eight letters of pain and alarm there is audible the note of
sentimental enjoyment which the French call marivaudage, and
Proust's friends called Proustification.
During this spring Proust seems to have resumed his trips by
motor-car. He asked his mother to invite Robert Proust to lend
his own car, promising to have it driven 'by a chauffeur from any
firm he cares to name and feels he can trust', or by Albufera, 'who
has driven all round France, Belgium, Germany and Switzer-
land'. It is not impossible that the visit to Saint-Leu-d'Esserent
and Senlis took place at this time, rather than on the way to Laon
and Coucy on 28 March 1902.1
On 9 June the ineffable Mme Lemaire gave a fancy-dress ball
on the theme 'Athens in the time of Pericles'. 'Banquet,
procession, dancing, costume strictly Classical Greek,' enjoined the
invitation cards. Montesquiou, a little confused in his chronology,
had arranged to come as the poet Anacreon in a purple robe,
crowned with ivy, waving a golden lyre, and pelted with roses
by a band of youthful disciples in very short white tunics. Could
he have had a secret warning that his reception would be less
serious than this almost sacred role demanded? He had shown less
diffidence at her last ball, when as Haroun al Raschid, in a turban
covered with turquoises borrowed from Sarah Bernhardt, he had
gone the round of the rival salons before arriving, remarking to
every hostess: "Your guests seem unusually ugly this evening!";
but now, purely and simply, he failed to show up. The agonised
Empress of Roses sent Proust to telephone the aggrieved Count
Robert, once, twice and thrice; but the line was dead. While he
was behind the scenes Marie Nordlinger, Reynaldo Hahn and
Coco de Madrazo had arrived, flinging themselves into the ball
and calling "Have you seen Marcel yet?" every time their paths
crossed. Suddenly, as Mlle Nordlinger danced past an alcove, a
sepulchral voice exclaimed "Dieu, que vous etes belle !"; and. there, dressed not in 'strictly classical costume' but in white tie,
tails and his new furlined overcoat, stood an embarrassed Marcel.
1 Proust mentions Senlis in the letter to Antoine Bibesco quoted above
(Bihesco, p. 129), and Saint-Leu in the quarrel with Antoine a month or two
later (Mme Proust, 215), though in such a way as to leave it uncertain
whether the visits were recent or a year old. The Laon and Couey trip, at
least, can only have been on Good Friday 1902, because in 1903 Fenelon
was in Constantinople.