But suppose my great aunt had been told that this Swann—who as the son of Swann was eminently qualified to be received by all the “belle bourgeoisie,” by the most esteemed bureaucrats and lawmakers of Paris (a privilege he apparently rather squandered)—had, as if in secret, an entirely different life; that after leaving our house in Paris, saying he was heading home to sleep, he’d scarcely get round the corner before setting off again and delivering himself to a salon that no broker or broker’s associate had ever set eyes on; to my aunt it would have seemed as extraordinary as for a more literate lady to think of being personally linked to Aristaeus, to understand that after having a chat with her, he’d dive down to the depths of the realms of Thetis, an empire hidden from mortal eyes where Virgil shows him received with open arms; or, to stick to an image more likely to come to her mind, as she’d seen it painted on our Combray petits-fours plates—to have hosted a dinner for Ali-Baba, who, once he finds himself alone, will enter the dazzling cave of unsuspected treasures.
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Mais si l’on avait dit à ma grand-tante que ce Swann qui, en tant que fils Swann était parfaitement « qualifié » pour être reçu par toute la « belle bourgeoisie », par les notaires ou les avoués les plus estimés de Paris (privilège qu’il semblait laisser tomber un peu en quenouille), avait, comme en cachette, une vie toute différente ; qu’en sortant de chez nous, à Paris, après nous avoir dit qu’il rentrait se coucher, il rebroussait chemin à peine la rue tournée et se rendait dans tel salon que jamais l’oeil d’aucun agent ou associé d’agent ne contempla, cela eût paru aussi extraordinaire à ma tante qu’aurait pu l’être pour une dame plus lettrée la pensée d’être personnellement liée avec Aristée dont elle aurait compris qu’il allait, après avoir causé avec elle, plonger au sein des royaumes de Thétis, dans un empire soustrait aux yeux des mortels et où Virgile nous le montre reçu à bras ouverts ; ou – pour s’en tenir à une image qui avait plus de chance de lui venir à l’esprit, car elle l’avait vu peinte sur nos assiettes à petits fours de Combray – d’avoir eu à dîner Ali-Baba, lequel quand il se saura seul, pénétrera dans la caverne, éblouissante de trésors insoupçonnés.
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N o t e s
Belle bourgeoisie. More or less, “fine bourgeoisie”—Proust means the very upper middle class.
Squandered. Proust uses the idiom “tomber en quenouille,” attested from 1606, which literally means “to fall onto the spindle.” This refers to fear of the royal crown falling into the hands of a woman, as spinning work was done by women.
Aristaeus, Thetis, Virgil. In Georgics 4, Virgil tells the story of Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene. Aristaeus seeks his mother’s help recovering his dead bees, and she admits him to her underwater home. (Proust calls her world the “realms of Thetis,” who is a sea nymph or a Nereid, and mother of Achilles.)
In this brief excerpt from Georgics where Aristaeus enters the water, Cyrene, “her heart trembling with fresh fear,” calls out to the nymphs, her daughters:
‘Bring him, bring him to me: it’s lawful for him to touch
the divine threshold’: at that she ordered the river to split apart
so the youth could enter. And the wave arched above him like a hill
and, receiving him in its vast folds, carried him below the stream.
Now, marvelling at his mother’s home, and the watery regions,
at the lakes enclosed by caves, and the echoing glades,
he passed along, and, dazed by the great rushing of water,
gazed at all the rivers as, each in its separate course, they slide
beneath the mighty earth …
It’s worth noting that Aristaeus’s bees died because he chased Eurydice to her death, and he approaches his mother by blaming her for his self-made misfortune. Proust’s narrator chooses a metaphor, like the brigand in paragraph 17, that troubles the portrait of Swann. The Ali-Baba metaphor assigned to his great aunt’s perspective is more flattering.
Also noteworthy: when Aristaeus arrives in Cyrene’s underwater home, her daughters are busy spinning, linking this passage to the “tomber en quenouille” idiom used earlier, and Aristaeus essentially does fall (tomber) into their world.