Page 113 - swanns-way

in the street, the hair over her forehead abloom with roses,
did the face of a woman who, I would think, was perhaps
an actress, leave with me a lasting disturbance, a futile and
painful effort to form a picture of her private life.
I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished:
Sarah Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne
Samary; but I was interested in them all. Now my uncle
knew many of them personally, and also ladies of another
class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind.
He used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to
see him on certain days only, that was because on the oth-
er days ladies might come whom his family could not very
well have met. So we at least thought; as for my uncle, his fa-
tal readiness to pay pretty widows (who had perhaps never
been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding titles
were probably no more than noms de guerre) the compli-
ment of presenting them to my grandmother or even of
presenting to them some of our family jewels, had already
embroiled him more than once with my grandfather. Often,
if the name of some actress were mentioned in conversa-
tion, I would hear my father say, with a smile, to my mother:
‘One of your uncle’s friends,’ and I would think of the weary
novitiate through which, perhaps for years on end, a grown
man, even a man of real importance, might have to pass,
waiting on the doorstep of some such lady, while she re-
fused to answer his letters and made her hall-porter drive
him away; and imagine that my uncle was able to dispense
a little jackanapes like myself from all these sufferings by
introducing me in his own home to the actress, unapproach-

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