Evolution

A little context: The Princess of Luxembourg has come to spend a few weeks in Balbec. She’s a friend of the Marquise de Villeparisis, who herself is an old friend of the narrator‘s grandmother. When Mme de Villeparisis introduces grandmother and narrator to the Princess, the Princess looks at them with “loving sweetness.” The narrator feels as if he and his grandmother are about to be patted, like “a brace of docile animals poking our heads through the railings at the Zoo in the Bois de Boulogne.” The Princess buys candy and a loaf of rye bread, “the sort you feed to the ducks,” from the hawkers on the esplanade to give to her new acquaintances. And then the Princess offers her hand, to show she still has the common touch, and her expression is aimed “at not quite so lowly a level in the hierarchy of creatures.”

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

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