Every day she would write to express her regret at having been
kept away--by the sudden arrival of her husband's mother, by an invitation
from his brother, by the Opera, by some excursion to the country--from
some party to which she had never for a moment dreamed of going. In this
way she gave many people the satisfaction of feeling that she was on
intimate terms with them, that she would gladly have come to their houses,
and that she had been prevented from doing so only by some princely
occurrence which they were flattered to find competing with their own
humble entertainment. And then, as she belonged to that witty 'Guermantes
set'--in which there survived something of the alert mentality, stripped
of all commonplace phrases and conventional sentiments, which dated from
Merimee, and found its final expression in the plays of Meilhac and
Halevy--she adapted its formula so as to suit even her social engagements,
transposed it into the courtesy which was always struggling to be positive
and precise, to approximate itself to the plain truth. She would never
develop at any length to a hostess the expression of her anxiety to be
present at her party; she found it more pleasant to disclose to her all
the various little incidents on which it would depend whether it was or
was not possible for her to come.
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