Page 512 - swanns-way

which gymnastic instructors make us ‘extend’ so as to de-
velop the expansion of our chests.
At this moment the Princesse des Laumes, who had not
been expected to appear at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s that
evening, did in fact arrive. To shew that she did not wish
any special attention, in a house to which she had come by
an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior rank,
she had entered the room with her arms pressed close to
her sides, even when there was no crowd to be squeezed
through, no one attempting to get past her; staying pur-
posely at the back, with the air of being in her proper place,
like a king who stands in the waiting procession at the doors
of a theatre where the management have not been warned
of his coming; and strictly limiting her field of vision—so
as not to seem to be advertising her presence and claim-
ing the consideration that was her due—to the study of a
pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she stood there
on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and
from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from
Mme. de Saint-Euverte would extricate her as soon as her
presence there was noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer,
whom, however, she did not know. She observed the dumb-
show by which her neighbour was expressing her passion
for music, but she refrained from copying it. This was not
to say that, for once that she had consented to spend a few
minutes in Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s house, the Princesse
des Laumes would not have wished (so that the act of po-
liteness to her hostess which she had performed by coming
might, so to speak, ‘count double’) to shew herself as friend-

512 Swann’s Way