40bis Boulevard Malesherbes is the address of the narrator’s great-uncle’s former Paris home and, within the family, a shorthand for visiting him. Remembered through family routines and Charles Morel’s inherited admiration, the house becomes both a particular property and a measure of domestic comfort whose prestige exceeds its objective distinction.

Address and Family Custom

The great-uncle once lived at 40bis Boulevard Malesherbes. Until the rupture between him and the narrator’s parents—caused when the narrator told them the story of the lady in pink—the family often substituted the address for the ordinary phrase “at your uncle’s.” A relative might say that the narrator’s mother could not come to dinner because she was dining “at 40bis”; the narrator, when making calls on relations, was sometimes instructed to go there first so that the great-uncle would not be offended. The address thus entered family speech as a social destination in its own right, carrying an expectation of precedence and attention.

The arrangement depended on the great-uncle’s position as proprietor and his marked interest in the house. He chose his tenants carefully, and they either were or became his personal friends. Colonel the Baron de Vatry came by every day to smoke a cigar and seek the great-uncle’s consent to repairs. The carriage entrance was kept shut; if the great-uncle noticed washing or a rug hanging from a window-sill, he would insist on its prompt removal. He let part of the property while keeping two floors and the stables for himself. These details present 40bis as a managed household, where ownership, standards of appearance, and personal relations extended beyond the rooms the owner occupied.

The “Little Mansion” and Its Reputation

The family praised the comfort of the “little mansion” as though the great-uncle occupied it alone, although he reserved only two floors and the stables. He encouraged this fiction without formally correcting it. The house had the latest inventions installed by the great-uncle and was comfortable, but the narrator explicitly qualifies that it was not extraordinary. Its distinction therefore comes partly from the story told about it: the great-uncle’s affectedly modest reference to “my little hovel” coexisted with his conviction that no place in Paris could match it for comfort, luxury, and attractiveness.

That conviction was not confined to the owner. The great-uncle had instilled it in his valet, the valet’s wife, the coachman, and the cook. Morel, whose father had served as the great-uncle’s valet, grew up within this household’s praise and never shed it. The contrast between the house’s ordinary character and its exalted reputation explains why 40bis functioned as more than an address: it was a domestic legend transmitted through service and memory.

Morel’s Inherited Memory

Morel’s attachment to the great-uncle surfaces in his conversation with the narrator. He responds warmly to the name of Thureau-Dangin, recalling that the great-uncle could secure front-row seats at Academy receptions by writing to him. Morel also associates Boissier with the presents the great-uncle ordered for women at New Year; he knows the story through the person sent to obtain them, his own father. These affectionate recollections illuminate the social network around the household and the servant family’s proximity to its routines.

The memories help explain Morel’s advice when the narrator’s family discusses moving. They do not intend to remain permanently in the Hôtel Guermantes, where they took an apartment because of the narrator’s grandmother. Whenever Morel hears the narrator mention a possible move, he recommends a home in the style of 40bis, smiling and winking as if its superiority needed no argument. For Morel, the address remains the standard by which a suitable Paris residence should be judged.

Narrative Significance

The house is recalled not as a scene of present action but through layered recollection: family expressions, the great-uncle’s habits, and Morel’s inherited view of the place converge in a later conversation about moving. The address binds together the narrator’s childhood family history and Morel’s own background, while revealing how social memory can preserve a household’s prestige long after its circumstances have changed. 40bis is at once a real property, a family code for visiting the great-uncle, and a remembered ideal of comfort whose force depends on the people who continue to repeat it.