Through Sunday, 16 June: The Guermantes Way

[Kalliope]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: " The section( 591-592) on the nicknames and how they're created was just delightful! "Quiou in order not to waste the precious time that it would have taken them to pronounce "Montesquiou" and saying "Petite" and "Mignon" for the two fat ladies was just too funny..."

Yes, this is a very funny section. It reminded me of an article from the WSJ on the "DoorBell Names in the Philippines"...

And since I am also listening to the French Audio version the section, with the excellent readers stressing and modulating their voices when pronouncing the short names just made me laugh out loud.

[Kalliope]

In my parallel read of G-V, I come to this section:

Ma soeur Thérèse qui avait épousé Gèrard de Lenoncourt, venait d'avoir une fille. Proust êut été amusé s'il avait pu prévoir que cette fille, par son mariage avec Antoine de Gramont, deviendrait la petite-fille de la belle comtesse Greffulhe, née Caraman-Chimay, qu'il avait tant admirée et que lui fournit plusieurs traits pour le personnage de la princesse de Guermantes"

Here we have the Comtesse de Greffulhe, originally Elisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, wearing an outfit by Worth:



and this lovely photograph of the ethereal lady:



and painted by Boldini:

[Kalliope]

We come to the hilarious extract with the reference to La Fontaine's Fable.

.. à quoi le grand-père avait répondu: "Je suis d'autant plus désolé que vous n'ayez pas pu venir.... et il n'y aurait eu au repas que le meunier, son fils et vous".

La Fontaine's Fable: "Le meunier, son fils et l'âne".

A "diaporama" in YouTube with the Fable...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNQ4PZ...

And a "fiche" with the Fable and an accompanying text.

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net...

And funnily enough, a couple of old versions of this story are Turkish, to parallel L'Ambassadrice de la Turquie.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1215.html

[Elizabeth]

Which Impressionist was it, who painted all those haystacks (the same one, actually) at different times of day? And did the same (I think) with a cathedral?

[Kalliope]

Elizabeth wrote: "Which Impressionist was it, who painted all those haystacks (the same one, actually) at different times of day? And did the same (I think) with a cathedral?"

Monet.

[Elizabeth]

Thanks.

Re "Ethereal Lady." My god, look at her waist! It might be my imagination, but her face looks as if she can barely breathe!

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Elizabeth wrote: "Thanks.

Re "Ethereal Lady." My god, look at her waist! It might be my imagination, but her face looks as if she can barely breathe!"

LOL. Bernard-Henri Lévy's new wife Arielle Dombasle who supposedly has the smalled waist in Paris must be related to her.

[Eugene]

Going to the Frick to see

The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark

http://www.frick.org//exhibitions/clark

what Proust may have seen.

[Kalliope]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Bernard-Henri Lévy's new wife Arielle Dombasle who supposedly has the smalled waist in Paris must be related to her.
..."

LOL... Reem...

I think though, the Duchesse is a winner...

[Kalliope]

To continue with the gallery of those who inspired Proust for his social portraits of the high aristocracy, here is Eugenia Errázuriz.

Here painted by Jacques-Emile Blanche (Proust wrote the preface to the book on his paintings)



and a couple by Sargent

[Marcelita]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "In the late afternoon, I sat outside in the garden trying to catch up on my reading when I came across this passage that made me stop, and think.

Speaking of Elstir's paintings, he speaks of how ..."

"...when I came across this passage that made me stop, and think."

ReemK10, how many times has this happened to us, while reading our favorite "philosopher?" Maybe because Proust forces us to look at ourselves, he begets his reputation of "changing" our lives.

It's also a joy to be able to re-read everyone's selected snippets of Marcel...like taking one lick of my husband's mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.

[Eugene]

Entering a gallery at the Frick I found someone I felt I knew, Robert Montesquieu painted by James McNeill Whistler.

[Kalliope]

Eugene wrote: "Entering a gallery at the Frick I found someone I felt I knew, Robert Montesquieu painted by James McNeill Whistler."

Yes, the Robert de Montesquiou-Ferzensac is in the same gallery as the two ladies, the Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink and the Harmony in Pink and Grey.

They all have been posted a couple of times in this Group.

They are all lovely. Enjoy!

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Bernard-Henri Lévy's new wife Arielle Dombasle who supposedly has the smalled waist in Paris must be related to her.
..."

LOL... Reem...

I think though, the Duches..."

LOL Kalliope, you're right the Duchesse does look thinner although a corset may help cinch in that waist.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Marcelita wrote: ReemK10, how many times has this happened to us, while reading our favorite "philosopher?" Maybe because Proust forces us to look at ourselves, he begets his reputation of "changing" our lives.

He does get us to think differently than we do, and that is what reading is all about. Lol@ like a lick out of your husband's mint chocolate chip icecream cone. What flavor do you take?

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Kalliope wrote: "To continue with the gallery of those who inspired Proust for his social portraits of the high aristocracy, here is Eugenia Errázuriz.

Here painted by Jacques-Emile Blanche (Proust wrote the prefa..."

Fanatastic photographs/ paintings! Such pretty women!

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

"And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom they would never have an opportunity of knowing personally, as something more wonderful and more extraordinary than Princess Bedr el-Budur...." (MKE 613)


Aladdin: Princess Badr al-Budur
Aladdin - extract
One day he was in the market when a herald came by shouting: "Make way! Make way for the Princess Badr-al-Budur, the daughter of his Most Exalted Sublimity the Sultan of China! Everyone is to close their shops, their doors, their windows and their eyes until she has passed on her way to the Baths, by the Sultan's orders!"

http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/c...

Aladdin and the magic lantern: Princess Bader al Budur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSkyh...
Aladdin: Princess Badr al-Budur
http://wordyenglish.com/arabian_night...


http://www.brb.org.uk/pdf/friends09/A...

[Marcelita]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ""And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom they would never have an opportunity of knowing personally, as som..."

Oh, thank you for continuing to remind us how much Proust was influenced by these tales.

Proust read this edition... "Les Mille et Une Nuits"
"Arab stories translated into French by Antoine Galland, Paris: Hachette, 1865, 2 volumes bound in one volume."

Source: expositions.bnf.fr

In "Time Regained," Marcel Proust presents "The Arabian Nights" as one of major literary models of the search.
(view spoiler)[
"If I worked it would only be at night but it would need many nights perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand. And I should be harassed by the anxiety of not knowing whether the Master of my destiny, less indulgent than the Sultan Sheriar, would, some morning when I stopped work, grant a reprieve until the next evening. Not that I had the ambition to reproduce in any fashion the Thousand and One Nights, anymore than the Mémoires of Saint-Simon, they too written by night, nor any of the books I had so much loved and which superstitiously attached to them in my childish simplicity as I was to my later loves, I could not, without horror, imagine different from what they were."

"It might perhaps be a book as long as the Thousand and One Nights but very different. It is true that when one loves a work one would like to do something like it but one must sacrifice one’s temporal love and not think of one’s taste but of a truth which does not ask what our preferences are and forbids us to think of them. And it is only by obeying truth that one may some day encounter what one has abandoned and having forgotten the Arabian Nights or the Mémoires of Saint-Simon have written their counterpart in another period. But had I still time? Was it not too late?"
MP "Time Regained (Translated by Stephen Hudson) (hide spoiler)]

[Kalliope]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "you're right the Duchesse does look thinner although a corset may help cinch in that waist.
..."

Haha... exactly... thanks to that corset she can sculpt her "ethereal" figure.

In the more modern film version of Buddenbrooks (version I have not really liked), there is however a wonderful scene showing Tony putting on her corset (with the help of two other women) as she is getting ready for her wedding.....

It is painful even to watch...!!!

[Kalliope]

Marcelita wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ""And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom they would never have an opportunity..."

Marcelita, I think you had not joined the group yet, because the discussion on the version of the Mille et une nuits, that the Narrator was reading came up in one of the very early Threads devoted to the Combray section.

The issue of translations of this Arabian work is fascinating, and the French wiki has a whole page devoted to this. I am also aware of it because my father used to tell us about it when I was growing up.

The Galland edition, from the 18th century, and the one read in France during the following century, was superseded in the early 20th century by the one by Marbrus, who was a friend of André Gide. Funnily, and as a member indicated in the earlier thread, the Aladin and the AliBaba stories included in the Galland edition (and mentioned by the Narrator), which were not part in the original. Now it is considered that the Marbrus one (which I have) exaggerates both the exoticism and the eroticism. There is a now an even later and more accurate version (Khawan).

In the wiki article, it mentions how in Proust’s work the Narrator’s Mother tells him at first to use both the Galland and Marbrus editions, but then once she (more conservative than my father) detects the greater eroticism of the second, tells him to go back to the Galland. Apparently, this is mentioned in a later volume of La Rercherche, from where we are now. I wonder if Proust was aware in 1913 when he wrote the first volume, of the Marbrus version.

We will pay attention when we arrive to this section on the two editions.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mill...

[Marcus]

Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote: ...all these people stimulated by the comfort of the restaurant after their long wanderings across the ocean of fog... ML p. 557

In the four Winters and one Summer that I live..."

Was it not due to coal burning fires in centre of European towns, as gave rise to cultural references such as "A foggy day in London Town" ?

[Marcus]

Marcelita wrote: "Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote: I looked at Saint-Loup, and I said to myself that it is a thing to be glad of when there is no lack of physical grace to serve as vestibule to the graces within,..."

ditto Eugene, thank you for this Marcelita

[Marcus]

Elizabeth wrote: "Many, many, many years ago, I was about 14, and my dad and I were horse shopping...one day we drove for hours and hours. We might have been up in Kentucky or Tennessee...we got to a huge, elaborat..."

An extraordinarily evocative story - thanks for this Elizabeth.

[Marcus]

One more amazing sentence:

"As the traveller discovers, almost unaltered, the houses roofed with turf, the terraces which may have met the eyes of Xenophon or St Paul, so in the manners of M de Guermantes, a man who was heart-warming in his graciousness and revolting in his hardness, a slave to the pettiest obligations and derelict as regards the most solemn pacts, I found still in tact after more than two centuries that aberration, peculiar to the life of the court under Louis XIV, which transfers the scruples of conscience from the domain of affections and morality to questions of pure form". (ML 598)

Hurrah! The king is in the altogether, etc. So is M de G. The narrator describes what could be called corruption with the elegance of a forensic historian. I am duly blown away...

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Kalliope wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ""And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom they would never h..."

Fascinating research Kalliope!!! I always thought that Aladdin and the Ali Baba stories were separate from One Thousand and One Nights. Wikipedia has Galland adding them as you say.

"Some critics believe that this story was added to One Thousand and One Nights by one of its European translators, Antoine Galland, an 18th-century French orientalist who may have heard it in oral form from a Middle Eastern story-teller from Aleppo, in modern day Syria. In any case, the first known text of the story is Galland's French version. Richard F. Burton included it in the supplemental volumes, rather than the main collection of stories, of his edition of the Thousand and One Nights, and seems to have thought it Greek Cypriot in origin.[1]

The American Orientalist Duncan Black MacDonald discovered an Arabic-language manuscript of the legend at the Bodleian Library;[2] however, this was later found to be a counterfeit.



Aladdin (Arabic: علاء الدين‎, ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn, IPA: [ʕalaːʔ adˈdiːn]; meaning, "glory of religion"[2][3]) is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ("The Arabian Nights"), and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection in the 18th century by Frenchman Antoine Galland."

I read "One Thousand and One Nights" decades ago, and cannot remember which translation I read, or if these stories were included.

Also fascinating the effect the tales had on Proust that he keeps mentioning them. More to look forward to.

Thanks for the passages quoted Marcelita!

[Elizabeth]

ReemK10 says:"although a corset may help cinch in that waist." When the first Xtian missionaries went to China, late 18th/early 19th century, they were horrified at the custom of foot-binding, and called their Chinese hosts "barbaric." Hardly the most tactful approach (atho it was horrible). The Chinese--looking at the missionaries' wives--remarked that at least they constricted only the foot...while these Westerners bound and constricted the vital organs of reproduction.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Elizabeth wrote: The Chinese--looking at the missionaries' wives--remarked that at least they constricted only the foot...while these Westerners bound and constricted the vital organs of reproduction.

Good point Elizabeth. Makes one appreciate the Fortuny gowns that Proust mentioned in the novel:

"Working out of a 13th-century Venetian palazzo, Fortuny, a Spanish-born artist turned textile designer, produced garments that the novelist Marcel Proust declared "faithfully antique but markedly original".[4][5] The "Delphos" was a deliberate reference to the chiton of ancient Greece and meant to be worn without undergarments, since the chiton was itself a form of underwear, a radical suggestion during the early years of the 20th century.[6] This earned it the description 'lingerie dress'.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Con...

[Eugene]

The Frick yesterday: The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark, the familiar Whistler portrait of Montesquiou, which having read portions of his letters to Proust in William Carter, hearing Antoine Campagnon read them from his lectures and his being a model for Charlus, made him closer to me: reading Proust also brought me nearer to Toulouse-Lautrec than I'd ever been before (I'd always ranked him as a characteurist of the 1890's in his illustrations, almost a cartoonist, valuable yes, but not first rate) in the gallery devoted to his lithographs.

His subjects were demoiselles in the theaters and cafes of Paris; their expressions and their situations now had more meaning for me as Lautrec's line brought them to life (like Picasso after him he was a superb draftsman), having read about Odette, Rachel, and the pair of friends, Germaine and Lucienne, along with their "counter-jumper" companions on the way to the rink, not to mention their 'moral' opposites, Oriane, Mme de Villeparisis, the Couvoisiers, the Guermantes, etc. which Proust goes upon about at length in this week's reading to provide an understandable relief.

A Saturday afternoon well spent.

[Kalliope]

Elizabeth wrote: "ReemK10 says:"although a corset may help cinch in that waist." When the first Xtian missionaries went to China, late 18th/early 19th century, they were horrified at the custom of foot-binding, and..."

Yes, but binding the feet meant that she could not walk away.. Mind you, with the current fashion for shoes (high heels - high platforms) in the West (and the East).. we are not that much better.

Talking about heels, my colleague had her foot broken two weeks ago thanks to the high heels that a train-hostess (in one of the very fast trains where it is actually not easy to walk) was wearing. She lost her balance and stepped on my colleague/friend who was just sitting next to the aisle.

[Marcelita]

Kalliope wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ""And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom they would never h..."

"The issue of translations of this Arabian work is fascinating..."

Oh, yes! I went down several prairie dog burrows looking for all the translations of the "Nights."
http://pinterest.com/marcelitaswann/o...

For those interested:
BBC Radio 4 podcast discussion of Arabian Nights. Listen here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/r...

For someone interested in Sir Richard Francis Burton:
(I found his life more interesting, than his-or his wife's-translations.)
http://pinterest.com/marcelitaswann/1...

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Marcelita wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ""And so the sham men of letters, the pseudo-intellectuals whom Mlle d'Argencourt entertained, picturing Oriane de Guermantes, whom t..."

These are fantastic Marcelita! I really like Sir Richard Burton's illustrations.

[Eugene]

Marcus wrote: Was it not due to coal burning fires in centre of European towns, as gave rise to cultural references such as "A foggy day in London Town" ?

People burned coal and wood for heat in the 19th century. New York State had 8% of the woods they have now in 1900. From the road you still see many stonewalls indicating that the land was cleared for hay or livestock of long ago abandoned farms in the now growing woods.

Several years ago I made a pilgrimage to Concord, Massachusetts on Henry David Thoreau's birthday, July 12, 1817 for a symposium of academics and transcendental aficionados like me, me being the only one, that I was to meet. One afternoon I went to Walden pond, several miles from Concord, to see a replica of the cabin he built and the markers of the bean field he planted. The pond was in dense woods but it had been cleared (I suppose for firewood) at the time he built the cabin on Emerson's land in the 1850's.

At a book shop in Concord I bought Wild Apples, originally published by The Atlantic in 1862, where Thoreau talks of the "Saunterer's apple" where you must get lost on your walk to find it.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Kalliope wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "ReemK10 says:"although a corset may help cinch in that waist." When the first Xtian missionaries went to China, late 18th/early 19th century, they were horrified at the custom of..."

Ouch Kalliope! That must have hurt. I have no idea how women wear those 6-inch heels. Luckily, I'm tall and have no need to, nor would I if I could walk around in them which I can't. High heels are also capable of creating foot deformities.

[Eugene]

Jack wrote about the Narrator's "merits unknown to myself": ...his as yet unrealized artistic aspirations, & is hoping they're perceptive enough to see that his dreams will come true.

We'll see ;-)

[Eugene]

There is a great difference from the Narrator's initial contact with the Guermantes at Mme de Villeparisis' salon and at home with them; among other changes, the Duke becomes Duke Charming:

So that it was the absence of grandeur in this gesture that disclosed the true grandeur which lay in the Duke's indifference to the splendor of his surroundings, in contrast to his deference towards a guest, however insignificant in himself, whom he desired to honor. ML p. 596

...the Guermantes were different from the rest of Society; they were more precious and rare. They had given me at first sight the opposite impression; I had found them vulgar, similar to all other men and women, but this was because before meeting them I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence or Parma, as names. ML p. 599

And this explanation leaves as much question as to why the difference in assessment in that I do not recall the Narrator confronting himself over "names" and how they might be a fantasy to him.

Are we to accept this difference with minimal explanation--well maybe and why not, strange things are afoot here.

[Historygirl]

@Eugene I agree the scene with Saint Loup in the restaurant illustrates friendship and its challenges, why the narrator loves SL, and also an incredibly thick tapestry of social distinctions. The narrator is seated poorly in a middle bourgeois section by the proprietor because he doesn't know he is with SL. There is a cold wind blowing from the Jewish room--amazing how segregated, like race in US but anti-semitism there. When SL comes in the proprietor, who is a nasty snob, now wants them to go to the private club room. SL shows great friendship by refusing to go to his special set of friends in the private room even when Marcel/narrator is invited. In fact he brings back the shawl of the most aristocratic friend to him. All so they can be "private together." SL is also enamored of the narrator for his intellect and originality, perhaps also by physical attraction to a degree, but we can't tell from this narrative vantage point.
In his run across the seat backs "like a frieze against the wall" (think Greek athlete in art) he shows a daring and physical grace that is characteristic and infinitely attractive. Beyond his handsomeness this grace and daring make him distinctive. In a previous example at Doncieres he casually controls a rearing horse while greeting the narrator. The restaurant exploit is so expressive and colorful that it lights up this section.
Yet in each encounter with Robert something also goes wrong-he fails to greet Marcel/narrator or wish him good-by at Doncieres, fights with him over Rachel, tells him cruel things about Bloch. He is not truly a god, just an attractive man.

[Historygirl]

Eugene wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "In the spring of 1903...Proust on a tour of three medieval cities southeast of Paris, including Saint-Loup-de-Naud, from which Proust borrowed the name for the character of Robert..."

Marcelita, I knew I could count on you to reference church! When I realized it was a composite, not an exact reference I knew I needed you folks. Many thanks

[Eugene]

Proust makes much of the "wit" of the Guermantes; in The Guermantes Way, I find nothing witty about the Duchess or in what she says, however in Swann in Love (which reportedly happened before the Narrator's birth), speaking to the General and to Swann at Mme de Saint-Euverte's party the Duchess is quite witty but here she is called the Princess de Laumes, perhaps because the Dukes's (Basin's) father has not yet died for him to inherit the title.

Certainly men of wit, such as Swann for instance, regarded themselves as superior to men of merit, whom they despised, but that was because what the Duchess valued above everything else was not intelligence but—a superior form of intelligence, according to her, rarer, more exquisite, raising it up to a verbal variety of talent—wit. ML p. 631

[Eugene]

Finally to distinguish myself from the Courvoisiers I had to find the source of that "line",

…the face of Mme de Villebon assumed exactly the expression that would have befitted it had she been called upon to recite the line:

And if but one is left, then that one will be me,

a line which for that matter was unknown to her. ML p. 606

"Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la." Victor Hugo, Chastisements, a book of poems (1852) written in exile.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid...

[Martin]

Eugene wrote: "Entering a gallery at the Frick I found someone I felt I knew, Robert Montesquieu painted by James McNeill Whistler."

Is it the same one from the Carter book, or the one where he is regarding a cane?

[Elizabeth]

Eugene: try Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers...that is, if you haven't already. It's wonderful.
Re the Duchesse's "wit." In college I happened to date several Ritzy East Coast prep school boys, who'd come to UNC-Chapel Hill because it was--in those days--known as a Party School. Totally same thing as the Guermantes "wit." Nothing but put-downs, one-upmanship, etc. Tres boring.

[Eugene]

Martin asked: "... Robert Montesquieu painted by James McNeill Whistler."

Is it the same one from the Carter book, or the one where he is regarding a cane?

Carter

[Eugene]

Elizabeth wrote: ...Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers...that is, if you haven't already. It's wonderful.

A memoir of a fellow boater, his brother Jack, who died of tetanus contracted from a cut while shaving.

[Elizabeth]

Eugene: re Toulouse-Lautrec: about five years ago I toured the National Gallery in D.C. The T-L room was a trip. Unlike all the other rooms, there was no artificial light (was there a skylight? there had to be something), and signs everywhere forbidding anyone to use a flash for a photo. The reason? The paintings were done on cardboard. Yes, that's right. Cardboard.

[Eugene]

Jaye wrote: So perhaps the idea of wit back then was something we don't entirely understand?

Wit has many definitions; the one I like is much like a private joke uttered publicly: over the heads of the many but understood by the few. I'm a snob.

[Marcelita]

Historygirl wrote: "@Eugene I agree the scene with Saint Loup in the restaurant illustrates friendship and its challenges, why the narrator loves SL, and also an incredibly thick tapestry of social distinctions. The n..."

Bertrand de Fénelon, arguably one of the greatest loves of Proust's life, was the main model of Saint Loup's athletic prowess. They dined together in 1901, at Chez LaRue.
"Long ago in Jean Santeuil, Proust had depicted the scene of Bertrand running along the restaurant banquettes to bring him a coat."
"Marcel Proust: A Life" by William C. Carter (p 588)

[Patricia]

Kalliope wrote: "In my parallel read of G-V, I come to this section:

Ma soeur Thérèse qui avait épousé Gèrard de Lenoncourt, venait d'avoir une fille. Proust êut été amusé s'il avait pu prévoir que cette fille, p..."

THE BEAUTY!!! THE BEAUTY!!!

[Patricia]

Kalliope wrote: "We come to the hilarious extract with the reference to La Fontaine's Fable.

.. à quoi le grand-père avait répondu: "Je suis d'autant plus désolé que vous n'ayez pas pu venir.... et il n'y aurait e..."

Pardon my French -it's not what it used to be,*so so*- but i think i saw the boy place a twig in the ass' *a^ne*(i couldn't make the little roof go on top of letter A) it's a good idea if you wnat an ass to go faster.

[Patricia]

Elizabeth wrote: "Thanks.

Re "Ethereal Lady." My god, look at her waist! It might be my imagination, but her face looks as if she can barely breathe!"

that is why they fainted at all times,now you don't see women fainting

[Patricia]

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Bernard-Henri Lévy's new wife Arielle Dombasle who supposedly has the smalled waist in Paris must be related to her.
..."

I think the painters did the photoshopping back then