My Year With Proust - Day 336

   "I say, I'm afraid I'm going to have to bid you good-night," she said to him as she rose with an air of melancholy resignation, and as though it were a bitter grief to her.  Beneath the magic spell of her blue eyes her gently musical voice made one think of the poetical lament of a fairy. "Basin wants me to go and talk to Marie for a while."

   In reality, she was fed up with listening to Froberville, who went on envying her her visit to Montfort-l'Amaury, when she knew quite well that he had never heard of the windows before in his life, and besides would not for anything in the world have missed going to the Saint-Euverte party.  "Good-bye, I've barely said a word to you, but it's always like that at parties - we never really see each other, we never say that things we should like to; in fact it's the same everywhere in this life.  Let's hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged. At any rate we shan't always be having to put on low-cut dresses.  And yet one never knows.  We may perhaps have to display our bones and worms on great occasions.  Why not?  Just look at old mother Rampillon - do you see any great difference between her and a skeleton in an open dress?  It's true that she has every right to look like that, for she must be at least a hundred.  She was already one those sacred monsters before whom I refused to bow the knee when I made my first appearance in society.  I thought she had been dead for years; which for that matter would be the only possible explanation for the spectacle she presents.  It's more impressive and liturgical; quite Campo Santo!"

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 710

And Mme de Guermantes redeems herself with a brilliant analogy wrapped in a wistful and funny rejoinder: "I've barely said a word to you, but it's always like that at parties - we never really see each other, we never say that things we should like to; in fact it's the same everywhere in this life.  Let's hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged. At any rate we shan't always be having to put on low-cut dresses."  One gets the sense that the Mme de Guermantes of the world always redeem themselves, not simply because of their wealth and station but also because of their inherent grace and cunning and beauty.  Proust paints a lovely picture, "Beneath the magic spell of her blue eyes her gently musical voice made one think of the poetical lament of a fairy."