Mme de Guermantes advanced resolutely towards the carriage and uttered a last farewell to Swann. "You know, we'll talk about that another time; I don't believe a word you've been saying, but we must discuss it quietly. I expect they've frightened you quite unnecessarily. Come to luncheon, any day you like" (with Mme de Guermantes things always resolved themselves into luncheons), "just let me know the day and the time," and, lifting her red skirt, she set her foot on the step. She was just getting into the carriage when, seeing this foot exposed, the Duke cried out in a terrifying voice: "Oriane, what have you been thinking of, you wretch? You've kept on your black shoes! With a red dress! Go upstairs quick and put on red shoes, or rather," he said to the footman, "tell Mme la Duchess's lady's maid at once to bring down a pair of red shoes."
"But, my dear," replied the Duchess gently, embarrassed to see that Swann, who was leaving the house with me but had stood back to allow the carriage to pass out in front of us, had heard, "seeing that we're late . . ."
"No, no, we have plenty of time. It's only ten to; it won't take us ten minutes to get to the Parc Moncreau. And after all, what does it matter? Even if we turn up at half past eight they'll wait for us, but you can't possibly go there in a red dress and black shoes. Besides, we shan't be the last, I can tell you; the Sassenages are coming, and you know they never arrive before twenty to nine."
The Duchess went up to her room.
"Well," said M. de Guermantes to Swann and myself, "people laugh at us poor downtrodden husbands, but we have our uses. But for me, Oriane would have gone out to dinner in black shoes."
"It's not unbecoming," said Swann, "I noticed the black shoes and they didn't offend me in the least."
"I don't say you're wrong," replied the Duke, "but it looks better to have them to match the dress. Besides, you needn't worry, no sooner had she got there than she'd have noticed them, and I should have been obliged to come home and fetch the others. I should have had my dinner at nine o'clock. Good-bye, my boys," he said, thrusting us gently from the door, "off you go before Oriane comes down again. It's not that she doesn't like seeing you both. On the contrary, she's too fond of your company. If she finds you still here she'll start talking again. She's already very tired, and she'll reach the dinner table quite dead. Besides, I tell you frankly, I'm dying of hunger. I had a wretched luncheon this morning when I came from the train. there was the devil of a bernaise sauce, I admit, but in spite of that I shan't be sorry, not at all sorry to sit down to dinner. Five minutes to eight! Ah, women! She'll give us both indigestion before to-morrow. She's not nearly as strong as people think."
The Duke felt no compunction in speaking thus of his wife's ailments and his own to a dying man, for the former interested him more and therefore appeared to him more important. And so it was simply from good breeding and good fellowship that, after politely showing us out, he shouted in a stentorian voice from the porch to Swann, who was already in the courtyard: "You, now, don't let yourself be alarmed by the nonsense of those damned doctors. They're fools. You're as sound as a bell. You'll bury us all!"
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 619-620
And so we've come to the end of The Guermantes Way, and soon, as well, Swann's life. The M. de Guermantes, like his wife, reacts clumsily to the news that Swann is dying. But at least she felt some sense of stunted compassion for Swann's condition (which she displayed by inviting him to lunch, whenever he wanted - "with Mme de Guermantes things always resolved themselves into luncheons"), whereas her husband mainly wanted to be done with him. M. de Guermantes was much more shaken by the fact that his wife was wearing the wrong color shoes than by the news of the impending death of Swann, although he did manage to say, "You, now, don't let yourself be alarmed by the nonsense of those damned doctors. They're fools. You're as sound as a bell. You'll bury us all!" To be fair, I don't suppose there is a graceful to handle that sort of news. With my almost neurotic fear of being perceived as weak I imagine that I'll never actually tell anyone that I'm dying, but instead announce it on my blog through some sort of timed publication or a series of letters that my closest confidantes are entrusted to send on the news of my demise.
And so we come to the end of The Guermantes Way, and we'll be moving into Cities of the Plain, which I started reading a couple weeks ago. Truthfully, I'm already enjoying Cities of the Plain, the fourth volume in Remembrance of Things Past, than its predecessor. Too much of The Guermantes Way was a reflection, albeit insightful and at times moving, of the lives and preoccupations of the nobility and those who hung on their every word. The ending of the chapter, detailed above, in that way is a perfect, albeit sad, ending because it reminds us of the ridiculous folly of their existence.
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