In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

3 “utter nonchalance ...”: Michael Finn, Proust, the Body and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 177.

4 “... muddles the design”: Sur Proust (Paris: Julliard, 1960), p. 25; my translation.

5 “rid him of ...”: F. Lhomeau and A. Coelho, Marcel Proust à la recherche d’un éditeur (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1988), p. 130; my translation.

6 “powers of observation ...”: Edmund White, Marcel Proust (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), pp. 7, 37, 83, 89.

1 Twickenham: the place of residence of Louis-Philippe Albert d’Orléans, the exiled pretender to the French throne.

2 “It is said ...”: Racine, Phèdre, V, 584: “On dit qu’un prompt départ vous éloigne de nous, Seigneur.”

3 three portentous strokes: in the French theatrical tradition, the raising of the curtain is preceded by les trois coups, a loud hammering culminating in three strokes of the stage manager’s brigadier, a staff.

4 was to jeopardize his own interests: if this comparison was suggested to Proust by the actions of Colonel Picquart, then this is the first reflection in the novel of the Dreyfus Affair.

5 “... Vatel ...”: François Vatel, the Prince de Condé’s butler, has become a byword for the perfectionist in cooking: in 1671, the fish having failed to arrive for a dinner prepared for Louis XIV, he committed suicide.

6 “... the Consulta ... Carracci gallery ...”: the Consulta was the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Farnese Palace was the French Embassy at Rome, containing a gallery of frescoes by Agostino and Annibale Carracci dating from about 1600.

7 “... Wilhelmstrasse ...”: the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.

8 “At Pevchesky Bridge ... Ballhausplatz”: Pevchesky Bridge, literally the Singers’ (or the Choristers’) Bridge, tsarist Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg; Montecitorio, the lower house of the Italian Parliament; Ballhausplatz, the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna.

9 “It was worse than a crime ...”: Norpois’s paradox was coined, it is said, by Talleyrand (or perhaps Fouché) describing Napoleon’s execution of the Duc d’Enghien in 1804.

10 “... Admiral de Tourville”: Anne de Cotentin, Comte de Tourville (1642-1701); his tomb can be seen, not in fictional Balbec, but in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris.

11 “... Panurge’s sheep ...”: Rabelais tells, in chaps. 5-8 of the Quart Livre, his fourth book of the adventures of Pantagruel (1552), how Panurge avenges himself on an objectionable merchant by throwing one of the man’s sheep into the sea; the whole flock jumps in after it.

12 “... Molière’s word ...”: the word cocu (= cuckold) figures in Molière’s comedy Sganarelle, ou le cocu imaginaire (1660).

13 Comte de Paris: the title given to the pretender to the throne of France.

14 “... through their books ...”: the “clever fellow” is Proust, who here refers to the theory of his essay Contre Sainte-Beuve.

15 “... Alfred de Vigny by Loménie . . . Sainte-Beuve ...”: Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863), historical novelist, Romantic poet, and dramatist; Louis-Léonard de Loménie (1815-78), a biographer and man of letters (who spoke of Vigny, but not in such terms); Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), the bestknown literary critic of the nineteenth century. In Contre Sainte-Beuve and in parts of In Search of Lost Time, Proust taxes him with “blindness” toward the most important writers of his day, such as Stendhal and Baudelaire, a defect which, Proust says, derived from his focus on writers’ lives instead of on the originality of their works.

16 Assurbanipal: also known as Sardanapalus, King of Assyria (669-640 B.C.). Proust, in saying “ten centuries before Christ,” is misreading his source.

17 L’Aventurière, Le Gendre de M. Poirier: comedies by Émile Augier (1820-89).

18 “... Weber’s ...”: a restaurant once frequented by artists, men of letters, and politicians. Proust was a regular in the early 1900s.

19 Café Anglais: once the haunt of wealthy foreigners and crowned heads.

20 Raspail: François Raspail (1794-1878), a revolutionary, doctor, and journalist, has little in common with Pius IX (1792-1878), save the year of his death.

21 “haunts the heart of the evening woods”: the allusion is to the opening and closing lines of Alfred de Vigny’s poem “Cor” (“Horn”).

22 the palaces of Gabriel: the two buildings by Gabriel, separated by the rue Royale, date from the 1760s.

23 Palais de l’Industrie, Palais du Trocadéro: both the Palais de l’Industrie, modeled on the Crystal Palace, and the Palais du Trocadéro, of Moorish design, were built for nineteenth-century exhibitions and later demolished.

24 Orpheus in the Underworld : Offenbach’s comic opera Orphée aux enfers dates from 1858.

25 lavabo: the French word means a washbasin. The OED does not confirm that it has ever been used in English in the modern sense of “lavatory.”

26 Saint-Simon: the Mémoires of Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755), largely observe life at the Court of Louis XIV.

27 “. . . olé! au lait!”: a pun on the French au lait (= with milk).

28 the Candlestick in Scripture: in Exodus 25:31-40, Moses’ candlestick has six branches (but seven lamps).

29 “... Berlier”: Jean-Baptiste Berlier (1843-1911), an engineer and inventor, one of whose ideas led to the construction of the Paris Métro.

30 Renan’s Life of Jesus: Ernest Renan (1823-92) published his Vie de Jésus in 1863, a biography of “a peerless man” without supernatural dimension.

31 “... Gérôme’s new painting”: Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), painter and sculptor, neo-Greek and academic in genre.

32 “... Colombin’s ...”: once a fashionable English-style tearoom and patisserie on the rue Cambon.

33 Wolf: Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) argued that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not by Homer, but were collections of short works by diverse anonymous authors.

34 “. . . Union Générale ...”: a leading bank, of Roman Catholic inspiration, the collapse of which in 1882 ruined many small investors.

35 “Strangers to Speak in Sparta”: the allusion is to the memorial to the 300 erected at Thermopylae, as recorded in Herodotus, bk. VII: “Stranger, go and speak in Sparta of us who lie here in obedience to her law.”

36 an Opportunist: the “Opportunists,” Republicans who practiced gradualism, belonged to governments, especially during the 1880s.

37 husband: Pléiade, I, 513, gives ami (= friend), presumably an error. Earlier editions give mari (= husband).

38 banging on the door: Proust says à la porte (= on the door). In the earlier scene (Swann’s Way, pp. 287-88), Swann rings the doorbell and knocks on the window.

39 at six o’clock on that day: in the earlier scene, the time is both à trois heures (= at three o’clock) and vers cinq heures (= about five o’clock).

40 Klingsor’s magic transmutations: Klingsor is the evil enchanter in Wagner’s Parsifal.

41 a play by Sardou ... different performance: the play was Fédora (1882), the leading lady Sarah Bernhardt. The “tiny nonspeaking part,” that of a corpse lying on the stage, was “played” by, among others, the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII.

42 Coquelin’s: Constant Coquelin (1841-1909) was a celebrated actor, noted for his performances of Molière and in the title role of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

43 Île-de-France: the region around Paris that in medieval times was the origin of the French monarchy, and the dialect of which eventually became the French language.

44 Winterhalter: Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73), a German painter favored in the courts of Europe.

45 “. . . Taine ...”: Hippolyte Taine (1828-93), a renowned historian and ideologue, was most influential in his determinist analyses of French (and English) society, literature, and psychology.

46 bishop who tried Joan of Arc: an untranslatable reference to the name of the bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon (1371-1442).

47 “After that article of his ... ‘PPC’ ...”: Taine’s article, published in 1887, spoke of Napoleon’s mother’s lack of cleanliness. PPC = pour prendre congé (to bid farewell).

48 Alfred de Musset: Louis-Charles-Alfred de Musset (1810-57), Romantic poet and dramatist.

49 “... Prince Louis ...”: Louis Napoléon (1864-1932), the nephew of Princesse Mathilde.

50 Compiègne: the château, fifty miles north of Paris, was a favorite residence of Napoleon III.

51 hansom cab: in English in the text.

52 “Quite a tall man ...”: Saint-Simon speaks of Villars, a military commander, in 1702. See note 26 to pt. I.

53 when Racine spoke ... the following day: Scarron was the former husband of the King’s mistress, then secret wife, Mme de Maintenon. The story of Racine’s disgrace in 1699 can be read in the Mémoires of Saint-Simon. See note 26 to pt. I.

54 Mélusine: a French water fairy, associated with elusiveness and transformations.

55 Menaechmi: Plautus’ comedy turns on a pair of identical twins.

56 “Where are we going ... where we go”: this exchange makes no sense, given that the narrator leaves with Bergotte. It is an example of Proust’s careless correction of proofs: the scene, before he deleted some of it, was originally to end with the narrator accompanying Gilberte and Bergotte to Saint-Cloud.

57 Bernardino Luini: (1480?-1532), a pupil of Leonardo.

58 “Rachel, when of the Lord”: the nickname derives from the first four words of a famous aria, “Rachel / Quand du Seigneur la grâce tutélaire ...” (act IV, scene v, La Juive [= The Jewess], by Fromental Halévy, 1835).

59 Mlle Lili: a series of illustrated storybooks published by P.-J. Stahl between the 1860s and the early 1900s.

60 Julie de Lespinasse: having been befriended by Mme du Deffand, then banished by her in 1764, she formed a circle of philosophes and Encyclopédistes including d’Alembert and Condillac.

61 Henry Gréville: the pen name of Alice Durand (1842-1902), many of whose novels are set in Russia.

62 “Well, that’s how history’s written, isn’t it?”: the allusion is to a saying coined or adapted by Voltaire (in a letter of Sept. 24, 1766), about the unreliability of accepted accounts of things: “Voilà comme on écrit l’histoire.”

63 As La Bruyère says, “... without wealth”: Jean de la Bruyère (1645-96) is remembered for a single book, Les Caractères (1688). The quotation is from IV, 20: “Il est triste d’aimer sans une grande fortune.”

64 As both Joseph and the Pharaoh: see Genesis, chap. 41.

65 Ice Saints: the expression, also known in the form “Frost Saints,” denotes three saints whose days fall in “the blackthorn winter”—i.e., the second week of May.

66 Good Friday Spell: the allusion is to the end of the first part of act III of Wagner’s Parsifal.

67 like Hypatia ... measured tread: the French sentence contains an unretrievable echo of “Hypatie,” one of Leconte de Lisle’s Poèmes antiques (1852): “Et les mondes encor roulent sous ses pieds blancs!”

68 “... Sagan ...”: Charles-Guillaume-Boson de Talleyrand-Périgord (1832-1910), known as the Prince de Sagan, an arbiter of elegance, may be the source of some features of Charlus and of the Duc de Guermantes.

69 Antoine de Castellane, Adalbert de Montmorency: like Sagan, Antoine de Castellane (1844-1917) and Adalbert de Montmorency (1837-1915) were real people.

1 Mme de Sévigné . . . “the Pont-Audemer”: Marie de Rabutin- Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-96), is remembered for her many letters, almost 800 of which she wrote to her daughter, Mme de Grignan. With some of these place-names in this sentence, Proust reproduces Mme de Sévigné’s seventeenth-century usage: “L’Orient,” for example, is now Lorient.

2 Céline and Victoire: in “Combray,” these aunts are called Céline and Flora.

3 Balbec-Plage: roughly, “Balbec Beach.”

4 Anne of Brittany ... book of hours: Les Heures d’Anne de Bretagne, the work of a French miniaturist, Jean Bourdichon (1457?-1521).

5 “Regulus was accustomed ...”: a form of words modeled on one of the Lives of Plutarch.

6 “I’ll have to draw ...”: this quotation, like many others, is very approximate (letter of Feb. 9, 1671).

7 Mme de Beausergent: a fictitious writer.

8 Mme de Simiane: Pauline de Simiane (1674-1737) was a granddaughter of Mme de Sévigné.

9 “I could not resist ...”: Proust quotes (approximately) from the letter of June 12, 1680, in which Mme de Sévigné describes uncanny optical illusions caused by the moonlight. The italics are his.

10 Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus: sons of Zeus who became the three judges of the shades in Hades.

11 Duguay-Trouin: Proust borrows this statue from Saint-Malo, the birthplace of René Duguay-Trouin (1673-1736), an admiral and privateer who left memoirs of his exploits.

12 Cardinal La Balue: Jean Balue, or de La Balue (1421?-91), was imprisoned for eleven years by Louis XI (1423-83). Modern historians tend to doubt whether he was held in a cage.

13 for the Duc de Guise to have been assassinated in: the Duc de Guise was assassinated at Blois in 1588 on the orders of Henri III.

14 Saint Blandine: one of the first Christian martyrs in Gaul, put to death in Lyon in 177, remembered for her serenity under torture.

15 First Presidents ... bâtonnier: a First President is a leading magistrate; the bâtonnier is the president of the lawyers attached to a French law court.

16 Cour de Cassation: supreme court of appeal.

17 “... They’re the de Cambremers, aren’t they? ...”: in many French names, de is a vestige of noble birth.

18 “... half of my Estate?”: the quotation is from Racine, Esther, line 660: “Faut-il de mes États vous donner la moitié?”

19 “so sumptuous that you starve”: letter of July 30, 1689.

20 the Cimmerians: in the Odyssey, Homer speaks of the mythical Cimmerii, who dwelt at the western edge of the world, by the deep-flowing Ocean, amid perpetual mists and darkness.

21 Archduke Rudolf ... still alive: the Archduke Rudolf of Habsburg (1858-89), the son of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, was found dead in a hunting lodge with his mistress, Marie Vetsera.

22 “Each time I receive your letter ...”: letters of Feb. 1671.

23 Gustave Moreau’s Jupiter ... mere female mortal: the reference is probably to Gustave Moreau’s Jupiter and Sémélé (1895).

24 “... Baronne d’Ange!”: the title assumed by a courtesan in the play Le Demi-monde (Dumas fils, 1855).

25 Mathurin Régnier and Macette: Régnier (1573-1613) was a satirical poet. His character Macette is a reformed bawd.

26 Glauconome: a Nereid, often depicted as all smiles, one of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris.

27 Esther or Joad: characters from Racine’s last two tragedies, Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691), written for Mme de Maintenon’s school for young noblewomen.

28 “like a flight of raptors ...”: Proust quotes from Leconte de Lisle’s tragedy Les Érynnies, after Aeschylus: “tel qu’un vol d’oiseaux carnassiers dans l’aurore”; and “de cent mille avirons battaient le flot sonore.” See also p. 481 and note 106 to pt. II.

29 Molé . . . Daru: many of these men, politicians or members of the Académie Française in the early nineteenth century, dabbled in history or left memoirs that the critic Sainte-Beuve admired. Proust here gives to Mme de Villeparisis something of an admiration that he deplored.

30 “... As M. Sainte-Beuve used to say ...”: Proust’s novel grew out of a projected essay on Sainte-Beuve, which criticized the critic for letting his judgment of writing be influenced by his knowledge of the writer. The superiority of Bergotte the writer over Bergotte the speaker is another reflection of this criticism.

31 “The moon ... august and solemn”: the quotations, two of which Proust has slightly misremembered, are “Bientôt elle répandit dans les bois ce grand secret de mélancolie” (Chateaubriand, Atala); “Pleurant, comme Diane au bord de ses fontaines” (Vigny, “La Maison du berger”); and “L’ombre était nuptiale, auguste et solennelle” (Hugo, “Booz endormi”).

32 Hernani: the first night of Hugo’s verse drama, in 1830, was a controversial event in the development of the new Romanticism.

33 “. . . the Duc de Nemours ...”: probably the second son, also known as the Prince d’Orléans, of King Louis-Philippe.

34 “... Bagard ...”: César Bagard (1639-1709), a sculptor from Nancy, whose work figured in certain fine houses in Paris.

35 “. . . the ill-fated Duchesse de Praslin ...”: the daughter of General Sébastiani, married to the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin, was “ill-fated” because in 1847 her husband, having abandoned her for the governess of their ten children, then stabbed her (and poisoned himself when arrested).

36 Doudan ... Joubert: Ximénès Doudan (1800-1872), an administrator and civil servant, whose correspondence (Mélanges et lettres, 4 vols.) was published in 1876. Charles, Comte de Rémusat (1797-1875), a minister in governments between the 1840s and 1870s. Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), a moralist and friend of Chateaubriand, known mainly for a posthumous selection from his notebooks, Pensées, maximes, essais.

37 Doncières: an invented name.

38 Proudhon: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), a theorist of French socialism, one of whose most celebrated statements was “Private property is theft.”

39 “intellectuals”: the use of intellectuel as a noun became widespread in 1898, an acute phase of the Dreyfus Affair.

40 Boieldieu or Labiche: François-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834), a composer of songs and light opera. Eugène Labiche (1815-88) wrote about 100 comedies.

41 “... La Belle Hélène ...”: a comic opera by Jacques Offenbach, first staged in 1864.

42 “... rue d’Aboukir”: a street in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, a noted Jewish quarter.

43 Concours Général . . . universités populaires: the Concours Général is a competitive public examination in different subjects, taken by only the best pupils in each lycée. The one taken by Bloch and Saint-Loup would have been in French literature. The universités populaires were private adult-education establishments set up in the late nineteenth century with the aim of promoting knowledge and technical qualifications among the working classes.

44 “. . . ‘lyfte’ ...”: referring to the elevator boy, Bloch mispronounces the English “lift,” as though it rhymed with “knifed.”

45 “common sense that is the commonest ...”: Descartes’s ironic dictum “Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée” is here slightly misquoted by Proust (Discours de la méthode, I).

46 Barbey d’Aurevilly: Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-89), a Catholic dandy and polemicist from Normandy who wrote novels of provincial life in a belated Gothic-Romantic and derivatively Balzacian vein.

47 “by the Kroniôn Zeus, keeper of oaths”: here, as elsewhere, Bloch borrows tags from Leconte de Lisle’s poems and translations from Greek.

48 Samuel Bernard: (1651-1739) a financier who lent much money to Louis XIV and Louis XV.

49 “. . . Menier of the swift ships ...”: it has been suggested that Bloch’s Homeric reference is to the family of the chocolate-maker Gaston Menier, whose yacht Ariane was well known.

50 Heredia: José Maria de Heredia (1842-1905), a poet who began as an admirer of Leconte de Lisle and became, like him, a major poet of the Parnassian group.

51 “... a few of his friends ...”: Proust himself did the same thing with the Poulet Quartet during the Great War.

52 “... Passavant ... Combraysis ...”: Passavant is made up from the verb passer (to pass) and the adverb avant (before), the utterance meaning roughly “Forward!” Combraysis is a word of Proust’s own coinage, suggesting the lands around Combray (or perhaps the inhabitants of them).

53 “. . . Carrière ...”: Eugène Carrière (1849-1906), a painter of portraits (including those of Mallarmé, Alphonse Daudet, and Anatole France), family scenes, and works of religious and allegorical inspiration.

54 “. . . Gustave Moreau ...”: (1826-98) a painter of mainly symbolic, mythological, and allegorical subjects.

55 “. . . Île-de-France ...”: see note 43 to pt. I.

56 Lebourg and Guillaumin: Albert Lebourg (1849-1928) and Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927), minor painters from the fringes of impressionism and fauvism.

57 Fénelon: François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715), an archbishop, remembered for educational works and as the tutor of a prince, the Due de Bourgogne, who, though he did not live to reign, was to be the father of Louis XV.

58 Mme de Grignan: see note 1 to pt. II.

59 “. . . in La Fontaine ... the other pigeon ...”: Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95), a writer of fables and stories. The fables cited here are “Les deux amis” (bk. VIII, xi) and “Les deux pigeons” (IX, ii).

60 “... ‘This separation ...’ ”: Proust conflates and misquotes two letters of Mme de Sévigné to Mme de Grignan (Feb. 18, 1671, and Jan. 10, 1689).

61 “... ‘so slight ... ever notices them’ ...”: an approximate quotation from Mme de Sévigné (May 29, 1675).

62 “... ‘To be with those ...’ ”: another misremembered quotation, La Bruyère, Les Caractères, “Du cœur,” 23 (see note 63 to pt. I).

63 Le Nôtre: André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), a landscape designer who became “king’s gardener” to Louis XIV. Among his gardens are those of the Tuileries and Versailles.

64 “... Clara de Chimay ...”: a reference to a rich American, Clara Ward, who married the Prince de Caraman- Chimay in 1890, then eloped with a Gypsy violinist.

65 “... Petit Trianon ... English garden in front of it”: this actually refers to Le Hameau, a pseudo-rustic dwelling built at Versailles in 1783 by Marie-Antoinette, near the mini-châteaux of the Petit Trianon and the Grand Trianon.

66 “... hilarious and undeserved Christian name ...”: the Christian name Charlus refers to is “Aimé,” which means literally “loved.”

67 “À Saint-Blaise ... Adriatique”: these lines from Musset’s Poésies nouvelles, so fragmentary as to be barely translatable, speak of places: Padua, Le Havre, Venice, etc.

68 Mme Cornuel: of Anne-Marie Cornuel (1605-94) Saint-Simon says that on her deathbed she said to Soubise, of his forthcoming marriage to an heiress, “Oh, monsieur, what a fine marriage that will be in sixty or eighty years!”

69 “... he’s not my father ...”: a sexual innuendo and catchphrase, from Georges Feydeau’s play La Dame de chez Maxim’s (1899); a young woman of no great chastity, speaking of men, says it throughout the play, giving an unambiguous suggestiveness to her activities.

70 “the Duc d’Aumale’s double”: the Duc d’Aumale (1822-97) was a son of the last king of France, Louis-Philippe.

71 Gramont- Caderousse: Proust may be referring to Charles-Robert de Gramont-Caderousse (1808-65?), the prodigal son of a noble family.

72 “... your Villiers or your Catulles ...”: Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838-89), a minor writer of some note, from the fringes of late Romanticism and early symbolism. Catulle Mendès (1841-1909), a prolific minor writer, associated with movements such as Parnassianism, Decadence, and Wagnerism.

73 “... Peter Schlemihl”: the central character in the novel Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (= The Marvelous Story of Peter Schlemihl, 1814) by Adalbert von Chamisso de Boncourt (1781-1838), in which the hero sells his shadow to the devil.

74 Mme Dieulafoy: Jeanne Dieulafoy (1851-1916) was a French archaeologist, notable especially for the reconstruction of Mesopotamian friezes held by the Louvre.

75 “... Sardou, Labiche, Augier ...”: well-known writers of light comedies of the second half of the nineteenth century. On Sardou, see note 41 to pt. I.

76 “... Menander, Kalidasa”: Menander was an Athenian comic writer, fourth century B.C., whose works were later adapted by Plautus; Kalidasa was a Sanskrit poet of the 5th-4th centuries B.C., whose drama Sakuntala was translated into French in 1803.

77 agrégation: a public examination, a qualification for teaching in secondary and higher education.

78 Journal officiel: the government gazette.

79 Ancilla Domini: Proust may have in mind Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), though many religious paintings, from the Middle Ages onward, bore the words spoken by the Virgin Mary to the angel announcing her divine pregnancy: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

80 the little gang: the expression la petite bande, handed down from the sixteenth century, originally meant François I’s seraglio of mistresses.

81 Peri: Proust may have in mind a poem by Victor Hugo, or La Péri by Paul Dukas, danced in Paris by the Russian ballet in 1912: the Péri, an evil fairy in Iranian folklore, disappears back to paradise, having seduced Prince Iskander, who had stolen her lotus flower, with its power to bestow immortality.

82 Pisanello ... Gallé: Antonio Pisano (1395?-1455?), a painter and engraver, some of whose bird sketches can be seen in the Louvre. Émile Gallé (1846—1904), a French artist in stained glass and wood.

83 Harmony in Grey and Pink after Whistler: Proust may have had in mind Whistler’s portrait of Lady Meux, also known as Harmony in Pink and Grey, shown in Paris in 1892 and now in the Frick Collection, New York.

84 Dreyfus was guilty, totally and utterly: between late Oct. 1897 and the summer of 1898, one of the Dreyfus Affair’s most eventful phases, there took place the court-martial and acquittal of Esterhazy, the publication of Émile Zola’s open letter “J’accuse . . . ,” the trial and exile of Zola, and the suicide of Colonel Henry.

85 Pauillac lamb: renowned for its red wines, Pauillac, a small town on the Gironde estuary, also grows fine lamb from salt meadows.

86 the builder in the fable: Amphion’s lyre moved stones that Zethus then built into walls. In Ruskin, Proust found several allusions to this legend, recorded in the Odyssey (XI, 260-65) and in Horace (Ars poetica, 394-97).

87 King Mark ... Forest of Broceliande: in the legend of Tristan and Yseult, King Mark is the husband intended for the latter. The Forest of Broceliande appears in the legends of the knights of King Arthur.

88 “... Redon ...”: Odilon Redon (1840-1916), a sculptor and painter of sometimes symbolist sympathies. Elstir’s reference may be to the set of lithographs L’Apocalypse de saint Jean (1899).

89 Sacripant: deriving from the character Sacripante in Orlando innamorato, a poem by Boiardo (1441-94), the word sacripant had taken on a sense close to “naughty boy” or “rascal.” See also the next note.

90 Miss Sacripant: Sacripant is the title of a comic opera by Gille and Duprato (1866). The hero appears disguised as a woman (and the part of the hero was acted by a woman). Works by Renoir, Whistler, and Manet have been suggested as possible sources for Elstir’s watercolor of “Miss Sacripant.” See also the preceding note.

91 “... something that surpasses them”: here Proust noted on his manuscript: “This is all badly written; perhaps I’ve put it better elsewhere.”

92 “... Arvède Barine ...”: the pen name of Louise-Cécile Vincens (1840-1908), who was instrumental in introducing Ibsen, Spencer, and Tolstoy to a French readership.

93 a goddess, a table, or a bowl: Proust here adapts a line from La Fontaine’s fable “Le statuaire et la statue de Jupiter” (bk. IX, 6), in which a sculptor wonders whether his chisel will transform a block of marble into “dieu, table ou cuvette” (“god, table, or bowl”).

94 “My duty ...”: Bloch combines pedantry and ignorance by ascribing to Voltaire (“Master Arouet”) a couplet deriving from Corneille (Polyeucte, III, ii): “Apprends que mon devoir ne dépend point du sien; / Qu’il y manque, s’il veut; je dois faire le mien.”

95 restful: editors disagree on whether Proust wrote reposant (“restful”) or passionnant (“exciting”).

96 the First President: on page 373, it was “an old banker” who was subjected to this indignity.

97 “... Conseil Général ...”: the elective governing body of a département, roughly “County Council.”

98 “. . . Cavalleria Rusticana ...”: Mascagni’s one-acter dates from the early 1890s.

99 “. . . they’ve gone and taken down the crucifix ...”: the symbolic removal of a crucifix from a public building is a symptom of the anticlericalism of the Third Republic and of the growing divorce between church and state, to be consummated in 1905.

100 “ ‘... Alceste or Philinte?’ ...”: men characters in Le Misanthrope, a comedy by Molière (1666).

101 “. . . Le Gaulois ...”: an anti-Republican newspaper of the moneyed right, much read by the well-bred and fashionable (1868-1928). In younger days, Proust had contributed gossipy pieces to its social column.

102 “... Fortuny ...”: Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949), a painter and designer of Spanish origin. During the Great War, Proust became interested in designs of Fortuny’s modeled on paintings by Carpaccio. If this first Balbec episode is set in the late 1890s, Elstir’s reference is anachronistic.

103 “... Callot ... Doucet, Cheruit ... Paquin ...”: couturiers of the Belle Époque, mostly established at fashionable addresses on or near the rue de la Paix or the Place Vendôme.

104 “... Saint-Augustin ...”: a large church, imitative of Italian Renaissance and Byzantine styles, built just off the Boulevard Malesherbes by Baltard during the 1860s.

105 “... Les Creuniers ...”: Proust borrows this place-name from cliffs near Trouville in Normandy.

106 “Gone are the kings ...”: from Leconte de Lisle’s Les Érynnies, after Aeschylus: “Ils sont partis, les rois des nefs éperonnées, / Emmenant sur la mer tempétueuse, hélas! / Les hommes chevelus de l’héroïque Hellas.” See also p. 287 and note 28 to pt. II.

107 Combray-in-Champagne: Combray was originally not in Champagne, east of Paris, but to the southwest, near Chartres. Proust later relocated it, with Roussainville and Méséglise, to Champagne, so as to place them in the battlefields of the Great War.

108 Bellini’s musical cherubs: Proust saw cherubs by Gentile Bellini (1429—1507) in the church of Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice.

109 “ ‘ ’Tis this passion . . .’ ”: the couplet is from Boileau’s L’Art poétique (1674), canto III (on tragedy), lines 95-96: “De cette passion la sensible peinture / Est pour aller au coeur la route la plus sûre.”

110 “... Robert Garnier ... Antoine de Montchrestien”: Garnier (1544-90) was a poet and dramatist, the most important playwright of his day. Montchrestien (1575-1621) was a minor poet and playwright.

111 “... ‘not just the masterpiece ...’ ”: Voltaire, without apparent irony, more than once expressed this view of Racine’s Athalie.

112 “... Merlet ... Deltour ... Gasc-Desfossés”: in the second half of the nineteenth century, all three wrote schoolbooks on literature. Proust may have borrowed some of Andrée’s words from Gasc-Desfossés.

113 Trianon: see note 65 to pt. II.

114 “... Laura Dianti’s ... Eleanor of Aquitaine’s ... Chateaubriand’s sweetheart ...”: Laura Dianti (1476-1534) was Titian’s likely model for Flora (Uffizi, Florence) and Girl with Mirror (Louvre), paintings showing a figure with long hair. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) was Queen of England and mother of Richard the Lion-Hearted; she was celebrated for her long hair. Chateaubriand’s sweetheart was Delphine de Sabran (1770-1826), a descendant not of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but of Marguerite de Provence.

115 those figures by Michelangelo: the reference is to the figures representing Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

116 Panama Affair: a political and financial scandal revealed in 1891, marked by ruin for many thousands of investors and corruption among politicians, much exploited by antiparliamentarians and anti-Semites.

117 Leucothea: a goddess of spindrift, mentioned as Ino in the Aeneid (V, 823).

118 Jules Ferry: a politician (1832-93), best known for educational reforms in the 1880s. Perhaps the narrator has confused him with Gabriel Ferry, a very minor playwright?