Mme. de Villeparisis meanwhile was not too well pleased to receive a

visit from M. de Charlus. He, while admitting serious defects in his

aunt’s character, was genuinely fond of her. But every now and then,

carried away by anger, by an imaginary grievance, he would sit down and

write to her, without making any attempt to resist his impulse, letters

full of the most violent abuse, in which he made the most of trifling

incidents which until then he seemed never even to have noticed. Among

other examples I may instance the following, which my stay at Balbec

brought to my knowledge: Mme. de Villeparisis, fearing that she had not

brought enough money with her to Balbec to enable her to prolong her

holiday there, and not caring, since she was of a thrifty disposition

and shrank from unnecessary expenditure, to have money sent to her from

Paris, had borrowed three thousand francs from M. de Charlus. A month

later, annoyed, for some trivial reason, with his aunt, he asked her to

repay him this sum by telegraph. He received two thousand nine hundred

and ninety-odd francs. Meeting his aunt a few days later in Paris, in

the course of a friendly conversation, he drew her attention, with the

utmost politeness, to the mistake that her banker had made when sending

the money. “But there was no mistake,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis,

“the money order cost six francs seventy-five.” “Oh, of course, if it

was intentional, it is all right,” said M. de Charlus, “I mentioned it

only in case you didn’t know, because in that case, if the bank had done

the same thing with anyone who didn’t know you as well as I do, it might

have led to unpleasantness.” “No, no, there was no mistake.” “After all,

you were quite right,” M. de Charlus concluded easily, stooping to kiss

his aunt’s hand. And in fact he bore no resentment and was only amused

at this little instance of her thrift. But some time afterwards,

imagining that, in a family matter, his aunt had been trying to get the

better of him and had “worked up a regular conspiracy” against him, as

she took shelter, foolishly enough, behind the lawyers with whom he

suspected her of having plotted to undo him, he had written her a letter

boiling over with insolence and rage. “I shall not be satisfied with

having my revenge,” he added as a postscript; “I shall take care to make

you a laughing-stock. To-morrow I shall tell everyone the story of the

money order and the six francs seventy-five you kept back from me out of

the three thousand I lent you; I shall disgrace you publicly.” Instead

of so doing, he had gone to his aunt the next day to beg her pardon,

having already regretted a letter in which he had used some really

terrible language. But apart from this, to whom could he have told the

story of the money order? Seeking no longer vengeance but a sincere

reconciliation, now was the time for him to keep silence. But already he

had repeated the story everywhere, while still on the best of terms with

his aunt; he had told it without any malice, as a joke, and because he

was the soul of indiscretion. He had repeated the story, but without

Mme. de Villeparisis’s knowledge. With the result that, having learned

from his letter that he intended to disgrace her by making public a

transaction in which he had told her with his own lips that she had

acted rightly, she concluded that he had been deceiving her from the

first, and had lied when he pretended to be fond of her. This storm had

now died down, but neither of them knew what opinion exactly the other

had of her or him. This sort of intermittent quarrel is of course

somewhat exceptional. Of a different order were the quarrels of Bloch

and his friends. Of a different order again were those of M. de Charlus,

as we shall presently see, with people wholly unlike Mme. de

Villeparisis. In spite of which we must bear in mind that the opinions

which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and kinsfolk

are in no sense permanent, save in appearance, but are as eternally

fluid as the sea itself. Whence all the rumours of divorce between

couples who have always seemed so perfectly united and will soon

afterwards speak of one another with affection, hence all the terrible

things said by one friend of another from whom we supposed him to be

inseparable and with whom we shall find him once more reconciled before

we have had time to recover from our surprise; all the ruptures of

alliances, after so short a time, between nations.

“I say, my uncle and Mme. Swann are getting warm over there!” remarked

Saint-Loup. “And look at Mamma in the innocence of her heart going

across to disturb them. To the pure all things are pure, I suppose!”

I studied M. de Charlus. The tuft of his grey hair, his eye, the brow of

which was raised by his monocle to emit a smile, the red flowers in his

buttonhole formed, so to speak, the three mobile apices of a convulsive

and striking triangle. I had not ventured to bow to him, for he had

given me no sign of recognition. And yet, albeit he had not turned his

head in my direction, I was convinced that he had seen me; while he

repeated some story to Mme. Swann, whose sumptuous, pansy-coloured cloak

floated actually over the Baron’s knee, his roving eye, like that of a

street hawker who is watching all the time for the “tecs” to appear, had

certainly explored every corner of the room and taken note of all the

people who were in it. M. de Châtellerault came up to bid him good day

without any indication on M. de Charlus’s face that he had seen the

young Duke until he was actually standing in front of him. In this way,

in fairly numerous gatherings such as this, M. de Charlus kept almost

continuously on show a smile without any definite direction or

particular object, which, pre-existing before the greetings of new

arrivals, found itself, when these entered its zone, devoid of any

indication of friendliness towards them. Nevertheless, it was obviously

my duty to go across and speak to Mme. Swann. But as she was not certain

whether I already knew Mme. de Marsantes and M. de Charlus, she was

distinctly cold, fearing no doubt that I might ask her to introduce me

to them. I then made my way to M. de Charlus, and at once regretted it,

for though he could not have helped seeing me he shewed no sign

whatsoever. As I stood before him and bowed I found standing out from

his body, which it prevented me from approaching by the full length of

his outstretched arm, a finger widowed, one would have said, of an

episcopal ring, of which he appeared to be offering, for the kiss of the

faithful, the consecrated site, and I was made to appear to have

penetrated, without leave from the Baron and by an act of trespass for

which he would hold me permanently responsible, the anonymous and vacant

dispersion of his smile. This coldness was hardly of a kind to encourage

Mme. Swann to melt from hers.

“How tired and worried you look,” said Mme. de Marsantes to her son who

had come up to greet M. de Charlus.

And indeed the expression in Robert’s eyes seemed every minute to reach

a depth from which it rose at once like a diver who has touched bottom.

This bottom which hurt Robert so when he touched it that he left it at

once, to return to it a moment later, was the thought that he had

quarrelled with his mistress.

“Never mind,” his mother went on, stroking his cheek, “never mind; it’s

good to see my little boy again.”

But this show of affection seeming to irritate Robert, Mme. de Marsantes

led her son away to the other end of the room where in an alcove hung

with yellow silk a group of Beauvais armchairs massed their violet-hued

tapestries like purple irises in a field of buttercups. Mme. Swann,

finding herself alone and having realised that I was a friend of

Saint-Loup, beckoned to me to come and sit beside her. Not having seen

her for so long I did not know what to talk to her about. I was keeping

an eye on my hat, among the crowd of hats that littered the carpet, and

I asked myself with a vague curiosity to whom one of them could belong

which was not that of the Duc de Guermantes and yet in the lining of

which a capital ‘G’ was surmounted by a ducal coronet. I knew who

everyone in the room was, and could not think of anyone whose hat this

could possibly be.

“What a pleasant man M. de Norpois is,” I said to Mme. Swann, looking at

the Ambassador. “It is true, Robert de Saint-Loup says he’s a pest, but

...”

“He is quite right,” she replied.

Seeing from her face that she was thinking of something which she was

keeping from me, I plied her with questions. For the satisfaction of

appearing to be greatly taken up by some one in this room where she knew

hardly anyone, she took me into a corner.

“I am sure this is what M. de Saint-Loup meant,” she began, “but you

must never tell him I said so, for he would think me indiscreet, and I

value his esteem very highly; I am an ‘honest Injun,’ don’t you know.

The other day, Charlus was dining at the Princesse de Guermantes’s; I

don’t know how it was, but your name was mentioned. M. de Norpois seems

to have told them—it’s all too silly for words, don’t go and worry

yourself to death over it, nobody paid any attention, they all knew only

too well the mischievous tongue that said it—that you were a

hypocritical little flatterer.”

I have recorded a long way back my stupefaction at the discovery that a

friend of my father, such as M. de Norpois was, could have expressed

himself thus in speaking of me. I was even more astonished to learn that

my emotion on that evening long ago when I had asked him about Mme.

Swann and Gilberte was known to the Princesse de Guermantes, whom I

imagined never to have heard of my existence. Each of our actions, our

words, our attitudes is cut off from the “world”, from the people who

have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is

of infinite variation and remains unknown to ourself; having learned by

experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be

disseminated (such as those so enthusiastic speeches which I used at one

time to make to all comers and on every occasion on the subject of Mme.

Swann) has found itself, often simply on account of our anxiety,

immediately hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose

that some tiny word, which we ourself have forgotten, or else a word

never uttered by us but formed on its course by the imperfect refraction

of a different word, can be transported without ever halting for any

obstacle to infinite distances—in the present instance to the Princesse

de Guermantes—and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the

gods. What we actually recall of our conduct remains unknown to our

nearest neighbour; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed

what we never did say flies to provoke hilarity even in another planet,

and the image that other people form of our actions and behaviour is no

more like that which we form of them ourself, than is like an original

drawing a spoiled copy in which, at one point, for a black line, we find

an empty gap, and for a blank space an unaccountable contour. It may be,

all the same, that what has not been transcribed is some non-existent

feature which we behold merely in our purblind self-esteem, and that

what seems to us added is indeed a part of ourself, but so essential a

part as to have escaped our notice. So that this strange print which

seems to us to have so little resemblance to ourself bears sometimes the

same stamp of truth, scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and

useful, as a photograph taken by X-rays. Not that that is any reason why

we should recognise ourself in it. A man who is in the habit of smiling

in the glass at his handsome face and stalwart figure, if you shew him

their radiograph, will have, face to face with that rosary of bones,

labelled as being the image of himself, the same suspicion of error as

the visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of a girl,

reads in his catalogue: “Dromedary resting.” Later on, this discrepancy

between our portraits, according as it was our own hand that drew them

or another, I was to register in the case of others than myself, living

placidly in the midst of a collection of photographs which they

themselves had taken while round about them grinned frightful faces,

invisible to them as a rule, but plunging them in stupor if an accident

were to reveal them with the warning: “This is you.”

A few years earlier I should have been only too glad to tell Mme. Swann

in what connexion I had fawned upon M. de Norpois, since the connexion

had been my desire to know her. But I no longer felt this desire, I was

no longer in love with Gilberte. On the other hand I had not succeeded

in identifying Mme. Swann with the lady in pink of my childhood.

Accordingly I spoke of the woman who was on my mind at the moment.

“Did you see the Duchesse de Guermantes just now?” I asked Mme. Swann.

But since the Duchess did not bow to Mme. Swann when they met, the

latter chose to appear to regard her as a person of no importance, whose

presence in a room one did not even remark.

“I don’t know; I didn’t _realise_ her,” she replied sourly, using an

expression borrowed from England.

I was anxious nevertheless for information with regard not only to Mme.

de Guermantes but to all the people who came in contact with her, and

(for all the world like Bloch), with the tactlessness of people who seek

in their conversation not to give pleasure to others but to elucidate,

from sheer egoism, facts that are interesting to themselves, in my

effort to form an exact idea of the life of Mme. de Guermantes I

questioned Mme. de Villeparisis about Mme. Leroi.

“Oh, yes, I know who’ you mean,” she replied with an affectation of

contempt, “the daughter of those rich timber people. I’ve heard that

she’s begun to go about quite a lot lately, but I must explain to you

that I am rather old now to make new acquaintances. I have known such

interesting, such delightful people in my time that really I do not

believe Mme. Leroi would be any addition to what I already have.” Mme.

de Marsantes, who was playing lady in waiting to the Marquise, presented

me to the Prince, and, while she was still doing so, M. de Norpois also

presented me in the most glowing terms. Perhaps he found it convenient

to do me a courtesy which could in no way damage his credit since I had

just been presented, perhaps it was because he thought that a foreigner,

even so distinguished a foreigner, was unfamiliar with French society

and might think that he was having introduced to him a young man of

fashion, perhaps to exercise one of his prerogatives, that of adding the

weight of his personal recommendation as an Ambassador, or in his taste

for the archaic to revive in the Prince’s honour the old custom,

flattering to his rank, that two sponsors were necessary if one wished

to be presented.

Mme. de Villeparisis appealed to M. de Norpois, feeling it imperative

that I should have his assurance that she had nothing to regret in not

knowing Mme. Leroi.

“Am I not right, M. l’Ambassadeur, Mme. Leroi is quite uninteresting,

isn’t she, quite out of keeping with the people who come here; I was

quite right not to make friends with her, wasn’t I?”

Whether from independence or because he was tired, M. de Norpois replied

merely in a bow full of respect but devoid of meaning.

“Sir,” went on Mme. de Villeparisis with a laugh, “there are some absurd

people in the world. Would you believe that I had a visit this afternoon

from a gentleman who tried to persuade me that he found more pleasure in

kissing my hand than a young woman’s?”

I guessed at once that this was Legrandin. M. de Norpois smiled with a

slight quiver of the eyelid, as though such a remark had been prompted

by a concupiscence so natural that one could not find fault with the

person who had uttered it, almost as though it were the beginning of a

romance which he was prepared to forgive, if not to encourage, with the

perverse indulgence of a Voisenon or the younger Crébillon.

“Many young women’s hands would be incapable of doing what I see there,”

said the Prince, pointing to Mme. de Villeparisis’s unfinished

water-colours. And he asked her whether she had seen the flower

paintings by Fantin-Latour which had recently been exhibited.

“They are of the first order, and indicate, as people say nowadays, a

fine painter, one of the masters of the palette,” declared M. de

Norpois; “I consider, all the same, that they stand no comparison with

these, in which I find it easier to recognise the colouring of the

flower.”

Even supposing that the partiality of an old lover, the habit of

flattering people, the critical standard admissible in a small circle

had dictated this speech to the ex-Ambassador, it proved upon what an

absolute vacuum of true taste the judgment of people in society is

based, so arbitrary that the smallest trifle can make it rush to the

wildest absurdities, on the way to which it is stopped, held up by no

genuinely felt impression.

“I claim no credit for knowing about flowers, I’ve lived all my life

among the fields,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis modestly. “But,” she

added graciously, turning to the Prince, “If I did, when I was quite a

girl, form a rather more serious idea of them than children generally do

in the country, I owe that to a distinguished fellow-countryman of

yours, Herr von Schlegel. I met him at Broglie, when I was staying there

once with my aunt Cordelia (Marshal de Castellane’s wife, don’t you

know?). I remember so well M. Lebrun, M. de Salvandy, M. Doudan, getting

him to talk about flowers. I was only a little girl, I wasn’t able to

follow all he said. But he liked playing with me, and when he went back

to your country he sent me a beautiful botany book to remind me of a

drive we took together in a phaeton to the Val Richer, when I fell

asleep on his knee. I have got the book still, and it taught me to

observe many things about flowers which I should not have noticed

otherwise. When Mme. de Barante published some of Mme. de Broglie’s

letters, charming and affected like herself, I hoped to find among them

some record of those conversations with Herr von Schlegel. But she was a

woman who looked for nothing from nature but arguments in support of

religion.”

Robert called me away to the far end of the room where he and his mother

were.

“You have been good to me,” I said, “how can I thank you? Can we dine

together to-morrow?”

“To-morrow? Yes, if you like, but it will have to be with Bloch. I met

him just now on the doorstep; he was rather stiff with me at first

because I had quite forgotten to answer his last two letters. (At least,

he didn’t tell me that that was what had annoyed him, but I guessed it.)

But after that he was so friendly to me that I simply can’t disappoint

him. Between ourselves, on his side at least, I can feel it’s a life and

death friendship.” Nor do I consider that Robert was altogether

mistaken. Furious detraction was often, with Bloch, the effect of a keen

affection which he had supposed to be unreturned. And as he had little

power of imagining the lives of other people, and never dreamed that one

might have been ill, or away from home, or otherwise occupied, a week’s

silence was at once interpreted by him as meaning a deliberate coldness.

And so I have never believed that his most violent outbursts as a

friend, or in later years as a writer, went very deep. They rose to a

paroxysm if one replied to them with an icy dignity, or by a platitude

which encouraged him to redouble his onslaught, but yielded often to a

warmly sympathetic attitude; “As for being good,” went on Saint-Loup,

“you say I have been to you, but I haven’t been good at all, my aunt

tells me that it’s you who avoid her, that you never said a word to her.

She wondered whether you had anything against her.”

Fortunately for myself, if I had been taken in by this speech, our

departure, which I believed to be imminent, for Balbec would have

prevented my making any attempt to see Mme. Guermantes again, to assure

her that I had nothing against her, and so to put her under the

necessity of proving that it was she who had something against me. But I

had only to remind myself that she had not even offered to let me see

her Elstirs. Besides, this was not a disappointment; I had never

expected her to begin talking to me about them; I knew that I did not

appeal to her, that I need have no hope of ever making her like me; the

most that I had been able to look forward to was that, thanks to her

kindness, I might there and then receive, since I should not be seeing

her again before I left Paris, an entirely pleasing impression, which I

could take with me to Balbec indefinitely prolonged, intact, instead of

a memory broken by anxiety and sorrow.

Mme. de Marsantes kept on interrupting her conversation with Robert to

tell me how often he had spoken to her about me, how fond he was of me;

she treated me with a deference which almost hurt me because I felt it

to be prompted by her fear of being embroiled, on my account, with this

son whom she had not seen all day, with whom she was eager to be alone,

and over whom she must accordingly have supposed that the influence

which she wielded was not equal to and must conciliate mine. Having

heard me, earlier in the afternoon, make some reference to Bloch’s

uncle, M. Nissim Bernard, Mme. de Marsantes inquired whether it was he

who had at one time lived at Nice.

“In that case, he knew M. de Marsantes there before our marriage,” she

told me. “My husband used often to speak of him as an excellent man,

with such a delicate, generous nature.”

“To think that for once in his life he wasn’t lying! It’s incredible,”

would have been Bloch’s comment.

All this time I should have liked to explain to Mme. de Marsantes that

Robert felt infinitely more affection for her than for myself, and that

had she shewn any hostility towards me it was not in my nature to

attempt to set him against her, to detach him from her. But now that

Mme. de Guermantes had left the room, I had more leisure to observe

Robert, and I noticed then for the first time that, once again, a sort

of flood of anger seemed to be coursing through him, rising to the

surface of his stern and sombre features. I was afraid lest, remembering

the scene in the theatre that afternoon, he might be feeling humiliated

in my presence at having allowed himself to be treated so harshly by his

mistress without making any rejoinder.

Suddenly he broke away from his mother, who had put her arm round his

neck, and, coming towards me, led me behind the little flower-strewn

counter at which Mme. de Villeparisis had resumed her seat, making a

sign to me to follow him into the smaller room. I was hurrying after him

when M. de Charlus, who must have supposed that I was leaving the house,

turned abruptly from Prince von Faffenheim, to whom he had been talking,

and made a rapid circuit which brought him face to face with me. I saw

with alarm that he had taken the hat in the lining of which were a

capital ‘G’ and a ducal coronet. In the doorway into the little room he

said, without looking at me:

“As I see that you have taken to going into society, you must do me the

pleasure of coming to see me. But it’s a little complicated,” he went on

with a distracted, calculating air, as if the pleasure had been one that

he was afraid of not securing again once he had let slip the opportunity

of arranging with me the means by which it might be realised. “I am very

seldom at home; you will have to write to me. But I should prefer to

explain things to you more quietly. I am just going. Will you walk a

short way with me? I shall only keep you a moment.”

“You’ld better take care, sir,” I warned him; “you have picked up the

wrong hat by mistake.”

“Do you want to stop me taking my own hat?” I assumed, a similar mishap

having recently occurred to myself, that someone else having taken his

hat he had seized upon one at random, so as not to go home bare-headed,

and that I had placed him in a difficulty by exposing his stratagem. I

told him that I must say a few words to Saint-Loup. “He is still talking

to that idiot the Duc de Guermantes,” I added. “That really is charming;

I shall tell my brother.” “Oh! you think that would interest M. de

Charlus?” (I imagined that, if he had a brother, that brother must be

called Charlus also. Saint-Loup had indeed explained his family tree to

me at Balbec, but I had forgotten the details.) “Who has been talking to

you about M. de Charlus?” replied the Baron in an arrogant tone. “Go to

Robert.”

“I hear,” he went on, “that you took part this morning in one of those

orgies that he has with a woman who is disgracing him. You would do well

to use your influence with him to make him realise the pain he is

causing his poor mother, and all of us, by dragging our name in the

dirt.”

I should have liked to reply that at this degrading luncheon the

conversation had been entirely about Emerson, Ibsen and Tolstoy, and

that the young woman had lectured Robert to make him drink nothing but

water. In the hope of bringing some balm to Robert, whose pride had, I

felt, been wounded, I sought to find an excuse for his mistress. I did

not know that at that moment, in spite of his anger with her, it was on

himself that he was heaping reproaches. But it always happens, even in

quarrels between a good man and a worthless woman, and when the right is

all on one side, that some trifle crops up which enables the woman to

appear not to have been in the wrong on one point. And as she ignores

all the other points, the moment the man begins to feel the need of her

company, or is demoralised by separation from her, his weakness will

make his conscience more exacting, he will remember the absurd

reproaches that have been flung at him and will ask himself whether they

have not some foundation in fact.

“I’ve come to the conclusion I was wrong about that matter of the

necklace,” Robert said to me. “Of course, I never meant for a moment to

do anything wrong, but, I know very well, other people don’t look at

things in the same way as oneself. She had a very hard time when she was

young. In her eyes, I was bound to appear just the rich man who thinks

he can get anything he wants with his money, and with whom a poor person

cannot compete, whether in trying to influence Boucheron or in a

lawsuit. Of course she has been horribly cruel to me, when I have never

thought of anything but her good. But I do see clearly, she believes

that I wanted to make her feel that one could keep a hold on her with

money, and that’s not true. And she’s so fond of me; what must she be

thinking of me? Poor darling, if you only knew, she has such charming

ways, I simply can’t tell you, she has often done the most adorable

things for me. How wretched she must be feeling now! In any case,

whatever happens in the long run, I don’t want to let her think me a

cad; I shall dash off to Boucheron’s and get the necklace. You never

know; very likely when she sees me with it, she will admit that she’s

been in the wrong. Don’t you see, it’s the idea that she is suffering at

this moment that I can’t bear. What one suffers oneself one knows;

that’s nothing. But with her—to say to oneself that she’s suffering and

not to be able to form any idea of what she feels—I think I shall go mad

in a minute—I’ld much rather never see her again than let her suffer.

She can be happy without me, if she must; that’s all I ask. Listen; you

know, to me everything that concerns her is enormously important, it

becomes something cosmic; I shall run to the jeweller’s and then go and

ask her to forgive me. But until I get down there what will she be

thinking of me? If she could only know that I was on my way! What about

your going down there and telling her? For all we know, that might

settle the whole business. Perhaps,” he went on with a smile, as though

he hardly ventured to believe in so idyllic a possibility, “we can all

three dine together in the country. But we can’t tell yet. I never know

how to handle her. Poor child, I shall perhaps only hurt her more than

ever. Besides, her decision may be irrevocable.”

Robert swept me back to his mother.

“Good-bye,” he said to her. “I’ve got to go now. I don’t know when I

shall get leave again. Probably not for a month. I shall write as soon

as I know myself.”

Certainly Robert was not in the least of the type of son who, when he

goes out with his mother, feels that an attitude of exasperation towards

her ought to balance the smiles and bows which he bestows on strangers.

Nothing is more common than this odious form of vengeance on the part of

those who appear to believe that rudeness to one’s own family is the

natural complement to one’s ceremonial behaviour. Whatever the wretched

mother may say, her son, as though he had been taken to the house

against his will and wished to make her pay dearly for his presence,

refutes immediately, with an ironical, precise, cruel contradiction, the

timidly ventured assertion; the mother at once conforms, though without

thereby disarming him, to the opinion of this superior being of whom she

will continue to boast to everyone, when he is not present, as having a

charming nature, and who all the same spares her none of his keenest

thrusts. Saint-Loup was not at all like this; but the anguish which

Rachel’s absence provoked in him brought it about that, for different

reasons, he was no less harsh with his mother than the sons I have been

describing are with theirs. And as she listened to him I saw the same

throb, like that of a mighty wing, which Mme. de Marsantes had been

unable to repress when her son first entered the room, convulse her

whole body once again; but this time it was an anxious face, eyes wide

with grief that she fastened on him.

“What, Robert, you’re going away? Seriously? My little son! The one day

I’ve seen anything of you!”

And then quite softly, in the most natural tone, in a voice from which

she strove to banish all sadness so as not to inspire her son with a

pity which would perhaps have been painful to him, or else useless and

might serve only to irritate him, like an argument prompted by plain

common sense she added:

“You know, it’s not at all nice of you.”

But to this simplicity she added so much timidity, to shew him that she

was not trespassing on his freedom, so much affection, so that he should

not reproach her with spoiling his pleasures, that Saint-Loup could not

fail to observe in himself as it were the possibility of a similar wave

of affection, that was to say an obstacle to his spending the evening

with his lady. And so he grew angry:

“It’s unfortunate, but, nice or not, that’s how it is.”

And he heaped on his mother the reproaches which no doubt he felt that

he himself perhaps deserved; thus it is that egoists have always the

last word; having laid down at the start that their determination is

unshakeable, the more the sentiment in them to which one appeals to make

them abandon it is touched, the more fault they find, not with

themselves who resist the appeal but with those persons who put them

under the necessity of resisting it, with the result that their own

firmness may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty, which only

aggravates all the more in their eyes the culpability of the person who

is so indelicate as to be hurt, to be in the right, and to cause them

thus treacherously the pain of acting against their natural instinct of

pity. But of her own accord Mme. de Marsantes ceased to insist, for she

felt that she would not be able to keep him.

“I shall leave you here,” he said to me, “but you’re not to keep him

long, Mamma, because he’s got to go somewhere else in a minute.”

I was fully aware that my company could not afford any pleasure to Mme.

de Marsantes, but I preferred, by not going with Robert, not to let her

suppose that I was involved in these pleasures which deprived her of

him. I should have liked to find some excuse for her son’s conduct, less

from affection for him than from pity for her. But it was she who spoke

first:

“Poor boy,” she began, “I am sure I must have hurt him dreadfully. You

see, Sir, mothers are such selfish creatures, after all he hasn’t many

pleasures, he comes so little to Paris. Oh, dear, if he hadn’t gone

already I should have liked to stop him, not to keep him of course, but

just to tell him that I’m not vexed with him, that I think he was quite

right. Will you excuse me if I go and look over the staircase?”

I accompanied her there.

“Robert! Robert!” she called. “No; he’s gone; we are too late.”

At that moment I would as gladly have undertaken a mission to make

Robert break with his mistress as, a few hours earlier, to make him go

and live with her altogether. In one case Saint-Loup would have regarded

me as a false friend, in the other his family would have called me his

evil genius. Yet I was the same man, at an interval of a few hours.

We returned to the drawing-room. Seeing that Saint-Loup was not with us,

Mme. de Villeparisis exchanged with M. de Norpois that dubious, derisive

and not too pitying glance with which people point out to one another an

over-jealous wife or an over-loving mother (spectacles which to

outsiders are amusing), as much as to say: “There now, there’s been

trouble.”

Robert went to his mistress, taking with him the splendid ornament

which, after what had been said on both sides, he ought not to have

given her. But it came to the same thing, for she would not look at it,

and even after their reconciliation he could never persuade her to

accept it. Certain of Robert’s friends thought that these proofs of

disinterestedness which she furnished were deliberately planned to draw

him closer to her. And yet she was not greedy about money, except

perhaps to be able to spend it without thought. I have seen her bestow

recklessly on people whom she believed to be in need the most insensate

charity. “At this moment,” Robert’s friends would say to him, seeking to

balance by their malicious words a disinterested action on Rachel’s

part, “at this moment she will be in the promenade at the

Folies-Bergères. She’s an enigma, that girl is, a regular sphinx.” After

all, how many women who are not disinterested, since they are kept by

men, have we not seen, with a delicacy that flowers from their sordid

existence, set with their own hands a thousand little limits to the

generosity of their lovers?

Robert knew of scarcely any of the infidelities of his mistress, and

tortured his mind over what were mere nothings compared with the real

life of Rachel, a life which began every day only after he had left her.

He knew of scarcely any of these infidelities. One could have told him

of them without shaking his confidence in Rachel. For it is a charming

law of nature which manifests itself in the heart of the most complex

social organisms, that we live in perfect ignorance of those we love. On

one side of the mirror the lover says to himself: “She is an angel, she

will never yield herself to me, I may as well die—and yet she does care

for me; she cares so much that perhaps—but no, it can never possibly

happen.” And in the exaltation of his desire, in the anguish of waiting,

what jewels he flings at the feet of this woman, how he runs to borrow

money to save her from inconvenience; meanwhile, on the other side of

the screen, through which their conversation will no more carry than

that which visitors exchange outside the glass wall of an aquarium, the

public are saying: “You don’t know her? I congratulate you, she has

robbed, in fact ruined I don’t know how many men. There isn’t a worse

girl in Paris. She’s a common swindler. And cunning isn’t the word!” And

perhaps the public are not entirely wrong in their use of the last

epithet, for indeed the sceptical man who is not really in love with the

woman and whom she merely attracts says to his friends: “No, no, my dear

fellow, she is not in the least a prostitute; I don’t say she hasn’t had

an adventure or two in her time, but she’s not a woman one pays, she’d

be a damned sight too expensive if she was. With her it’s fifty thousand

francs or nothing.” Well, he has spent fifty thousand francs on her, he

has had her once, but she (finding, moreover, a willing accomplice in

the man himself) has managed to persuade him that he is one of those who

have had her for nothing. Such is society, in which every one of us has

two aspects, in which the most obvious, the most notorious faults will

never be known by a certain other person save embedded in, under the

protection of a shell, a smooth cocoon, a delicious curiosity of nature.

There were in Paris two thoroughly respectable men to whom Saint-Loup no

longer bowed, and could not refer without a tremor in his voice, calling

them exploiters of women: this was because they had both been ruined by

Rachel.

“I blame myself for one thing only,” Mme. de Marsantes murmured in my

ear, “and that was my telling him that he wasn’t nice to me. He, such an

adorable, unique son, there’s no one else like him in the world, the

only time I see him, to have told him he wasn’t nice to me, I would far

rather he’d beaten me, because I am sure that whatever pleasure he may

be having this evening, and he hasn’t many, will be spoiled for him by

that unfair word. But, Sir, I mustn’t keep you, since you’re in a

hurry.”

Anxiously, Mme. de Marsantes bade me good-bye. These sentiments bore

upon Robert; she was sincere. But she ceased to be, to become a great

lady once more.

“I have been so _interested_, so _glad_ to have this little talk with

you. Thank you! Thank you!”

And with a humble air she fastened on me a look of gratitude, of

exhilaration, as though my conversation were one of the keenest

pleasures that she had experienced in her life. These charming glances

went very well with the black flowers on her white skirt; they were

those of a great lady who knew her business.

“But I am in no hurry,” I replied; “besides, I must wait for M. de

Charlus; I am going with him.”

Mme. de Villeparisis overheard these last words. They appeared to vex

her. Had the matter in question not been one which could not possibly

give rise to such a sentiment, it might have struck me that what seemed

to be at that moment alarmed in Mme. de Villeparisis was her modesty.

But this hypothesis never even entered my mind. I was delighted with

Mme. de Guermantes, with Saint-Loup, with Mme. de Marsantes, with M. de

Charlus, with Mme. de Villeparisis; I did not stop to reflect, and I

spoke light-heartedly and at random.

“You’re going from here with my nephew Palamède?” she asked me.

Thinking that it might produce a highly favourable impression on Mme. de

Villeparisis if she learned that I was on intimate terms with a nephew

whom she esteemed so greatly, “He has asked me to go home with him,” I

answered blithely. “I am so glad. Besides, we are greater friends than

you think, and I’ve quite made up my mind that we’re going to be better

friends still.”

From being vexed, Mme. de Villeparisis seemed to have grown anxious.

“Don’t wait for him,” she said to me, with a preoccupied air. “He is

talking to M. de Faffenheim. He’s certain to have forgotten what he said

to you. You’ld much better go, now, quickly, while his back is turned.”

The first emotion shewn by Mme. de Villeparisis would have suggested,

but for the circumstances, offended modesty. Her insistence, her

opposition might well, if one had studied her face alone, have appeared

to be dictated by virtue. I was not, myself, in any hurry to join Robert

and his mistress. But Mme. de Villeparisis seemed to make such a point

of my going that, thinking perhaps that she had some important business

to discuss with her nephew, I bade her good-bye. Next to her M. de

Guermantes, superb and Olympian, was ponderously seated. One would have

said that the notion, omnipresent in all his members, of his vast riches

gave him a particular high density, as though they had been melted in a

crucible into a single human ingot to form this man whose value was so

immense. At the moment of my saying good-bye to him he rose politely

from his seat, and I could feel the dead weight of thirty millions which

his old-fashioned French breeding set in motion, raised, until it stood

before me. I seemed to be looking at that statue of Olympian Zeus which

Pheidias is said to have cast in solid gold. Such was the power that

good breeding had over M. de Guermantes, over the body of M. de

Guermantes at least, for it had not an equal mastery over the ducal

mind. M. de Guermantes laughed at his own jokes, but did not unbend to

other people’s.

As I went downstairs I heard behind me a voice calling out to me:

“So this is how you wait for me, is it?”

It was M. de Charlus.

“You don’t mind if we go a little way on foot?” he asked dryly, when we

were in the courtyard. “We can walk until I find a cab that suits me.”

“You wished to speak to me about something, Sir?”

“Oh yes, as a matter of fact there were some things I wished to say to

you, but I am not so sure now whether I shall. As far as you are

concerned, I am sure that they might be the starting-point which would

lead you to inestimable benefits. But I can see also that they would

bring into my existence, at an age when one begins to value

tranquillity, a great loss of time, great inconvenience. I ask myself

whether you are worth all the pains that I should have to take with you,

and I have not the pleasure of knowing you well enough to be able to

say. Perhaps also to you yourself what I could do for you does not

appear sufficiently attractive for me to give myself so much trouble,

for I repeat quite frankly that for me it can only be trouble.”

I protested that, in that case, he must not dream of it. This summary

end to the discussion did not seem to be to his liking.

“That sort of politeness means nothing,” he rebuked me coldly. “There is

nothing so pleasant as to give oneself trouble for a person who is worth

one’s while. For the best of us, the study of the arts, a taste for old

things, collections, gardens are all mere ersatz, succedanea, alibis. In

the heart of our tub, like Diogenes, we cry out for a man. We cultivate

begonias, we trim yews, as a last resort, because yews and begonias

submit to treatment. But we should like to give our time to a plant of

human growth, if we were sure that he was worth the trouble. That is the

whole question: you must know something about yourself. Are you worth my

trouble or not?”

“I would not for anything in the world, Sir, be a cause of anxiety to

you,” I said to him, “but so far as I am concerned you may be sure that

everything which comes to me from you will be a very great pleasure to

me. I am deeply touched that you should be so kind as to take notice of

me in this way and try to help me.”

Greatly to my surprise, it was almost with effusion that he thanked me

for this speech, slipping his arm through mine with that intermittent

familiarity which had already struck me at Balbec, and was in such

contrast to the coldness of his tone.

“With the want of consideration common at your age,” he told me, “you

are liable to say things at times which would open an unbridgeable gulf

between us. What you have said just now, on the other hand, is exactly

the sort of thing that touches me, and makes me want to do a great deal

for you.”

As he walked arm in arm with me and uttered these words, which, albeit

tinged with contempt, were so affectionate, M. de Charlus now fastened

his gaze on me with that intense fixity which had struck me the first

morning, when I saw him outside the casino at Balbec, and indeed many

years before that, through the pink hawthorns, standing beside Mme.

Swann, whom I supposed then to be his mistress, in the park at

Tansonville; now let it stray around him and examine the cabs which at

this time of the day were passing in considerable numbers on the way to

their stables, looking so determinedly at them that several stopped, the

drivers supposing that he wished to engage them. But M. de Charlus

immediately dismissed them.

“They’re not what I want,” he explained to me, “it’s all a question of

the colour of their lamps, and the direction they’re going in. I hope,

Sir,” he went on, “that you will not in any way misinterpret the purely

disinterested and charitable nature of the proposal which I am going to

make to you.”

I was struck by the similarity of his diction to Swann’s, closer now

than at Balbec.

“You have enough intelligence, I suppose, not to imagine that it is from

want of society, from any fear of solitude and boredom that I have

recourse to you. I do not, as a rule, care to talk about myself, but you

may possibly have heard—it was alluded to in a leading article in _The

Times_, which made a considerable impression—that the Emperor of

Austria, who has always honoured me with his friendship, and is good

enough to insist on keeping up terms of cousinship with me, declared the

other day in an interview which was made public that if the Comte de

Chambord had had by his side a man as thoroughly conversant with the

undercurrents of European politics as myself he would be King of France

to-day. I have often thought, sir, that there was in me, thanks not to

my own humble talents but to circumstances which you may one day have

occasion to learn, a sort of secret record of incalculable value, of

which I have not felt myself at liberty to make use, personally, but

which would be a priceless acquisition to a young man to whom I would

hand over in a few months what it has taken me more than thirty years to

collect, what I am perhaps alone in possessing. I do not speak of the

intellectual enjoyment which you would find in learning certain secrets

which a Michelet of our day would give years of his life to know, and in

the light of which certain events would assume for him an entirely

different aspect. And I do not speak only of events that have already

occurred, but of the chain of circumstances.” (This was a favourite

expression with M. de Charlus, and often, when he used it, he joined his

hands as if in prayer, but with his fingers stiffened, as though to

illustrate by their complexity the said circumstances, which he did not

specify, and the chain that linked them.) “I could give you an

explanation that no one has dreamed of, not only of the past but of the

future.” M. de Charlus broke off to question me about Bloch, whom he had

heard discussed, though without appearing to be listening, in his aunt’s

drawing-room. And with that ironical accent he so skilfully detached

what he was saying that he seemed to be thinking of something else

altogether, and to be speaking mechanically, simply out of politeness.

He asked if my friend was young, good looking and so forth. Bloch, if he

had heard him, would have been more puzzled even than with M. de

Norpois, but for very different reasons, to know whether M. de Charlus

was for or against Dreyfus. “It is not a bad idea, if you wish to learn

about life,” went on M. de Charlus when he had finished questioning me,

“to include among your friends an occasional foreigner.” I replied that

Bloch was French. “Indeed,” said M. de Charlus, “I took him to be a

Jew.” His assertion of this incompatibility made me suppose that M. de

Charlus was more anti-Dreyfusard than anyone I had met. He protested,

however, against the charge of treason levelled against Dreyfus. But his

protest took this form: “I understand the newspapers to say that Dreyfus

has committed a crime against his country—so I understand, I pay no

attention to the newspapers, I read them as I wash my hands, without

finding that it is worth my while to take any interest in what I am

doing. In any case, the crime is non-existent, your friend’s compatriot

would have committed a crime if he had betrayed Judaea, but what has he

to do with France?” I pointed out that if there should be a war the Jews

would be mobilised just as much as anyone else. “Perhaps so, and I am

not sure that it would not be an imprudence. If we bring over Senegalese

and Malagasies, I hardly suppose that their hearts will be in the task

of defending France, which is only natural. Your Dreyfus might rather be

convicted of a breach of the laws of hospitality. But we need not

discuss that. Perhaps you could ask your friend to allow me to be

present at some great festival in the Temple, at a circumcision, with

Jewish chants. He might perhaps take a hall, and give me some biblical

entertainment, as the young ladies of Saint-Cyr performed scenes taken

from the Psalms by Racine, to amuse Louis XIV. You might even arrange

parties to give us a good laugh. For instance a battle between your

friend and his father, in which he would smite him as David smote

Goliath. That would make quite an amusing farce. He might even, while he

was about it, deal some stout blows at his hag (or, as my old nurse

would say, his ‘haggart’) of a mother. That would be an excellent show,

and would not be unpleasing to us, eh, my young friend, since we like

exotic spectacles, and to thrash that non-European creature would be

giving a well-earned punishment to an old camel.” As he poured out this

terrible, almost insane language, M. de Charlus squeezed my arm until it

ached. I reminded myself of all that his family had told me of his

wonderful kindness to this old nurse, whose Molieresque vocabulary he

had just quoted, and thought to myself that the connexions, hitherto, I

felt, little studied, between goodness and wickedness in the same heart,

various as they might be, would be an interesting subject for research.

I warned him that, anyhow, Mme. Bloch no longer existed, while as for M.

Bloch, I questioned to what extent he would enjoy a sport which might

easily result in his being blinded. M. de Charlus seemed annoyed.

“That,” he said, “is a woman who made a great mistake in dying. As for

blinding him, surely the Synagogue is blind, it does not perceive the

truth of the Gospel. In any case, think, at this moment, when all these

unhappy Jews are trembling before the stupid fury of the Christians,

what an honour it would be for him to see a man like myself condescend

to be amused by their sports.” At this point I caught sight of M. Bloch

senior, who was coming towards us, probably on his way to meet his son.

He did not see us, but I offered to introduce him to M. de Charlus. I

had no conception of the torrent of rage which my words were to let

loose. “Introduce him to me! But you must have singularly little idea of

social values! People do not get to know me as easily as that. In the

present instance, the awkwardness would be twofold, on account of the

youth of the introducer and the unworthiness of the person introduced.

At the most, if I am ever permitted to enjoy the Asiatic spectacle which

I suggested to you, I might address to the horrible creature a few words

indicative of generous feeling. But on condition that he allows himself

to be thoroughly thrashed by his son, I might go so far as to express my

satisfaction.” As it happened, M. Bloch paid no attention to us. He was

occupied in greeting Mme. Sazerat with a series of sweeping bows, which

were very favourably received. I was surprised at this, for in the old

days at Combray she had been indignant at my parents having young Bloch

in the house, so anti-semitic was she then. But Dreyfusism, like a

strong gust of wind, had, a few days before this, wafted M. Bloch to her

feet. My father’s friend had found Mme. Sazerat charming and was

particularly gratified by the anti-semitism of the lady, which he

regarded as a proof of the sincerity of her faith and the soundness of

her Dreyfusard opinions, and also as enhancing the value of the call

which she had authorised him to pay her. He had not even been offended

when she had said to him stolidly: “M. Drumont has the impudence to put

the Revisionists in the same bag as the Protestants and the Jews. A

delightful promiscuity!” “Bernard,” he had said with pride, on reaching

home, to M. Nissim Bernard, “you know, she has that prejudice!” But M.

Nissim Bernard had said nothing, only raising his eyes to heaven in an

angelic gaze. Saddened by the misfortunes of the Jews, remembering his

old friendships with Christians, grown mannered and precious with

increasing years, for reasons which the reader will learn in due course,

he had now the air of a pre-Raphaelite ghost on to which hair had been

incongruously grafted, like threads in the heart of an opal. “All this

Dreyfus business,” went on the Baron, still clasping me by the arm, “has

only one drawback. It destroys society (I do not say polite society;

society has long ceased to deserve that laudatory epithet) by the influx

of Mr. and Mrs. Camels and Camelries and Camelyards, astonishing

creatures whom I find even in the houses of my own cousins, because they

belong to the Patrie Française, or the Anti-Jewish, or some such league,

as if a political opinion entitled one to any social qualification.”

This frivolity in M. de Charlus brought out his family likeness to the

Duchesse de Guermantes. I remarked to him on the resemblance. As he

appeared to think that I did not know her, I reminded him of the evening

at the Opera when he had seemed to be trying to avoid me. He assured me

with such insistence that he had never even seen me there that I should

have begun to believe him, if presently a trifling incident had not led

me to think that M. de Charlus, in his excessive pride perhaps, did not

care to be seen with me.

“Let us return to yourself,” he said, “and my plans for you. There

exists among certain men, sir, a freemasonry of which I cannot now say

more than that it numbers in its ranks four of the reigning sovereigns

of Europe. Now, the courtiers of one of these are trying to cure him of

his fancy. That is a very serious matter, and may bring us to war. Yes,

sir, that is a fact. You remember the story of the man who believed that

he had the Princess of China shut up in a bottle. It was a form of

insanity. He was cured of it. But as soon as he ceased to be mad he

became merely stupid. There are maladies which we must not seek to cure

because they alone protect us from others that are more serious. A

cousin of mine had trouble with his stomach; he could not digest

anything. The most learned specialists on the stomach treated him, with

no effect. I took him to a certain doctor (another highly interesting

man, by the way, of whom I could tell you a great deal). He guessed at

once that the trouble was nervousness; he persuaded his patient, ordered

him to eat whatever he liked quite boldly and assured him that his

digestion would stand it. But my cousin had nephritis also. What the

stomach can digest perfectly well the kidneys cease, after a time, to

eliminate, and my cousin, instead of living to a good old age with an

imaginary disease of the stomach which obliged him to keep to a diet,

died at forty with his stomach cured but his kidneys ruined. Given a

very considerable advantage over people of your age, for all one knows,

you will perhaps become what some eminent man of the past might have

been if a good angel had revealed to him, in the midst of a humanity

that knew nothing of them, the secrets of steam and electricity. Do not

be foolish, do not refuse from discretion. Understand that, if I do you

a great service, I expect my reward from you to be no less great. It is

many years now since people in society ceased to interest me. I have but

one passion left, to seek to redeem the mistakes of my life by

conferring the benefit of my knowledge on a soul that is still virgin

and capable of being inflamed by virtue. I have had great sorrows, sir,

of which I may tell you perhaps some day; I have lost my wife, who was

the loveliest, the noblest, the most perfect creature that one could

dream of seeing. I have young relatives who are not—I do not say worthy,

but who are not capable of accepting the moral heritage of which I have

been speaking. For all I know, you may be he into whose hands it is to

pass, he whose life I shall be able to direct and to raise to so lofty a

plane. My own would gain in return. Perhaps in teaching you the great

secrets of diplomacy I might recover a taste for them myself, and begin

at last to do things of real interest in which you would have an equal

share. But before I can tell I must see you often, very often, every

day.”

I was thinking of taking advantage of this unexpected kindness on M. de

Charlus’s part to ask him whether he could not arrange for me to meet

his sister-in-law when, suddenly, I felt my arm violently jerked, as

though by an electric shock. It was M. de Charlus who had hurriedly

withdrawn his arm from mine. Although as he talked he had allowed his

eyes to wander in all directions he had only just caught sight of M.

d’Argencourt, who was coming towards us from a side street. On seeing

us, M. d’Argencourt appeared worried, cast at me a look of distrust,

almost that look intended for a creature of another race than one’s own

with which Mme. de Guermantes had quizzed Bloch, and tried to avoid us.

But one would have said that M. de Charlus was determined to shew him

that he was not at all anxious not to be seen by him, for he called to

him, simply to tell him something that was of no importance. And fearing

perhaps that M. d’Argencourt had not recognised me, M. de Charlus

informed him that I was a great friend of Mme. de Villeparisis, of the

Duchesse de Guermantes, of Robert de Saint-Loup, and that he himself,

Charlus, was an old friend of my grandmother, and glad to be able to

shew her grandson a little of the affection that he felt for her.

Nevertheless I observed that M. d’Argencourt, albeit I had barely been

introduced to him at Mme. de Villeparisis’s, and M. de Charlus had now

spoken to him at great length about my family, was distinctly colder to

me than he had been in the afternoon; and for a long time he shewed the

same aloofness whenever we met. He watched me now with a curiosity in

which there was no sign of friendliness, and seemed even to have to

overcome an instinctive repulsion when, on leaving us, after a moment’s

hesitation, he held out a hand to me which he at once withdrew.

“I am sorry about that,” said M. de Charlus. “That fellow Argencourt,

well born but ill bred, more than feeble as a diplomat, an impossible

husband, always running after women like a person in a play, is one of

those men who are incapable of understanding but perfectly capable of

destroying the things in life that are really great. I hope that our

friendship will be one of them, if it is ever to be formed, and I hope

also that you will honour me by keeping it—as I shall—well clear of the

heels of any of those donkeys who, from idleness or clumsiness or

deliberate wickedness trample upon what would seem to have been made to

endure. Unfortunately, that is the mould in which most of the men one

meets have been cast.”

“The Duchesse de Guermantes seems to be very clever. We were talking

this afternoon about the possibility of war. It appears that she is

specially well informed on that subject.”

“She is nothing of the sort,” replied M. de Charlus tartly. “Women, and

most men, for that matter, understand nothing of what I was going to

tell you. My sister-in-law is a charming woman who imagines that we are

still living in the days of Balzac’s novels, when women had an influence

on politics. Going to her house could at present have only a bad effect

on you, as for that matter going anywhere. That was one of the very

things I was just going to tell you when that fool interrupted me. The

first sacrifice that you must make for me—I shall claim them from you in

proportion to the gifts I bestow on you—is to give up going into

society. It distressed me this afternoon to see you at that idiotic

tea-party. You may remind me that I was there myself, but for me it was

not a social gathering, it was simply a family visit. Later on, when you

have established your position, if it amuses you to step down for a

little into that sort of thing, it may, perhaps, do no harm. And then, I

need not point out how invaluable I can be to you. The ‘Open Sesame’ to

the Guermantes house and any others that it is worth while throwing open

the doors of to you, rests with me. I shall be the judge, and intend to

remain master of the situation.”

I thought I would take advantage of what M. de Charlus had said about my

call on Mme. de Villeparisis to try to find out what position exactly

she occupied in society, but the question took another form on my lips

than I had intended, and I asked him instead what the Villeparisis

family was.

“That is absolutely as though you had asked me what the Nobody family

was,” replied M. de Charlus. “My aunt married, for love, a M. Thirion,

who was extremely rich, for that matter, and whose sisters had married

surprisingly well; and from that day onwards he called himself Marquis

de Villeparisis. It did no harm to anyone, at the most a little to

himself, and very little! What his reason was I cannot tell; I suppose

he was actually a ‘Monsieur de Villeparisis’, a gentleman born at

Villeparisis, which as you know is the name of a little place outside

Paris. My aunt tried to make out that there was such a Marquisate in the

family, she wanted to put things on a proper footing; I can’t tell you

why. When one takes a name to which one has no right it is better not to

copy the regular forms.”

Mme. de Villeparisis being merely Mme. Thirion completed the fall which

had begun in my estimation of her when I had seen the composite nature

of her party. I felt it to be unfair that a woman whose title and name

were of quite recent origin should be able thus to impose upon her

contemporaries, with the prospect of similarly imposing upon posterity,

by virtue of her friendships with royal personages. Now that she had

become once again what I had supposed her to be in my childhood, a

person who had nothing aristocratic about her, these distinguished

kinsfolk who gathered round her seemed to remain alien to her. She did

not cease to be charming to us all. I went occasionally to see her and

she sent me little presents from time to time. But I had never any

impression that she belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and if I had

wanted any information about it she would have been one of the last

people to whom I should have applied.

“At present,” went on M. de Charlus, “by going into society, you will

only damage your position, warp your intellect and character. Also, you

must be particularly careful in choosing your friends. Keep mistresses,

if your family have no objection, that doesn’t concern me, indeed I can

only advise it, you young rascal, young rascal who will soon have to

start shaving,” he rallied me, passing his fingers over my chin. “But

the choice of your men friends is more important. Eight out of ten young

men are little scoundrels, little wretches capable of doing you an

injury which you will never be able to repair. Wait, now, my nephew

Saint-Loup is quite a suitable companion for you, at a pinch. As far as

your future is concerned, he can be of no possible use to you, but for

that I am sufficient. And really, when all’s said and done, as a person

to go about with, at times when you have had enough of me, he does not

seem to present any serious drawback that I know of. At any rate he is a

man, not one of those effeminate creatures one sees so many of nowadays,

who look like little renters, and at any moment may bring their innocent

victims to the gallows.” I did not know the meaning of this slang word

“renter”; anyone who had known it would have been as greatly surprised

by his use of it as myself. People in society always like talking slang,

and people against whom certain things may be hinted like to shew that

they are not afraid to mention them. A proof of innocence in their eyes.

But they have lost their sense of proportion, they are no longer capable

of realising the point at which a certain pleasantry will become too

technical, too shocking, will be a proof rather of corruption than of

simplicity. “He is not like the rest of them; he has nice manners; he is

really serious.”

I could not help smiling at this epithet “serious”, to which the

intonation that M. de Charlus gave to it seemed to impart the sense of

“virtuous”, of “steady”, as one says of a little shop-girl that she is

“serious”. At this moment a cab passed, zigzagging along the street; a

young cabman, who had deserted his box, was driving it from inside,

where he lay sprawling upon the cushions, apparently half drunk. M. de

Charlus instantly stopped him. The driver began to argue:

“Which way are you going?”

“Yours.” This surprised me, for M. de Charlus had already refused

several cabs with similarly coloured lamps.

“Well, I don’t want to get up on the box. D’you mind if I stay down

here?”

“No; but you must put down the hood. Well, think over my proposal,” said

M. de Charlus, preparing to leave me, “I give you a few days to consider

my offer; write to me. I repeat, I shall need to see you every day, and

to receive from you guarantees of loyalty, of discretion which, for that

matter, you do appear, I must say, to furnish. But in the course of my

life I have been so often taken in by appearances that I never wish to

trust them again. Damn it, it’s the least you can expect that before

giving up a treasure I should know into what hands it is going to pass.

Very well, bear in mind what I’m offering you; you are like Hercules

(though, unfortunately for yourself, you do not appear to me to have

quite his muscular development) at the parting of the ways. Try not to

have to regret all your life not having chosen the way that leads to

virtue. Hallo!” he turned to the cabman, “haven’t you put the hood down?

I’ll do it myself. I think, too, I’ld better drive, seeing the state you

appear to be in.”

He jumped in beside the cabman, took the reins, and the horse trotted

off.

As for myself, no sooner had I turned in at our gate than I found the

pendant to the conversation which I had heard exchanged that afternoon

between Bloch and M. de Norpois, but in another form, brief, inverted

and cruel. This was a dispute between our butler, who believed in

Dreyfus, and the Guermantes’, who was an anti-Dreyfusard. The truths and

counter-truths which came in conflict above ground, among the

intellectuals of the rival Leagues, the Patrie Française and the Droits

de l’Homme, were fast spreading downwards into the subsoil of popular

opinion. M. Reinach was manipulating, by appeals to sentiment, people

whom he had never seen, while for himself the Dreyfus case simply

presented itself to his reason as an incontrovertible theory which he

proved in the sequel by the most astonishing victory for rational policy

(a victory against France, according to some) that the world has ever

seen. In two years he replaced a Billot by a Clemenceau Ministry,

revolutionised public opinion from top to bottom, took Picquart from his

prison to install him, ungrateful, in the Ministry of War. Perhaps this

rationalist manipulator of crowds was himself the puppet of his

ancestry. When we find that the systems of philosophy which contain the

most truths were dictated to their authors, in the last analysis, by

reasons of sentiment, how are we to suppose that in a simple affair of

politics like the Dreyfus case reasons of this order may not, unknown to

the reasoner, have controlled his reason. Bloch believed himself to have

been led by a logical sequence to choose Dreyfusism, yet he knew that

his nose, skin and hair had been imposed on him by his race. Doubtless

the reason enjoys more freedom; yet it obeys certain laws which it has

not prescribed for itself. The case of the Guermantes’ butler and our

own was peculiar. The waves of the two currents of Dreyfusism and

anti-Dreyfusism which now divided France from end to end were, on the

whole, silent, but the occasional echoes which they emitted were

sincere. When you heard anyone in the middle of a conversation which was

being deliberately kept off the Case announce furtively some piece of

political news, generally false, but always with a hopefulness of its

truth, you could induce from the nature of his predictions where his

heart lay. Thus there came into conflict on certain points, on one side

a timid apostolate, on the other a righteous indignation. The two

butlers whom I heard arguing as I came in furnished an exception to the

rule. Ours let it be understood that Dreyfus was guilty, the Guermantes’

butler that he was innocent. This was done not to conceal their personal

convictions, but from cunning, and in the keenness of their rivalry. Our

butler, being uncertain whether the fresh trial would be ordered, wished

beforehand, in the event of failure, to deprive the Duke’s butler of the

joy of seeing a just cause vanquished. The Duke’s butler thought that,

in the event of a refusal, ours would be more indignant at the detention

on the Devil’s Isle of an innocent man. The porter looked on. I had the

impression that it was not he who was the cause of dissension in the

Guermantes household.

I went upstairs, and found my grandmother not so well. For some time

past, without knowing exactly what was wrong, she had been complaining

of her health. It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to

recognise that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a

different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by

whom it is impossible to make ourself understood: our body. Say that we

met a brigand by the way; we might yet convince him by an appeal to his

personal interest, if not to our own plight. But to ask pity of our body

is like discoursing before an octopus, for which our words can have no

more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be

appalled to find ourself condemned to live. My grandmother’s attacks

passed, often enough, unnoticed by the attention which she kept always

diverted to ourselves. When the pain was severe, in the hope of curing

it, she would try in vain to understand what the trouble was. If the

morbid phenomena of which her body was the theatre remained obscure and

beyond the reach of her mind, they were clear and intelligible to

certain creatures belonging to the same natural kingdom as themselves,

creatures to which the human mind has learned gradually to have recourse

in order to understand what the body is saying to it, as when a

foreigner accosts us we try to find some one belonging to his country

who will act as interpreter. These can talk to our body, and tell us if

its anger is serious or will soon be appeased. Cottard, whom we had

called in to see my grandmother, and who had infuriated us by asking

with a dry smile, the moment we told him that she was ill: “Ill? You’re

sure it’s not what they call a diplomatic illness?” He tried to soothe

his patient’s restlessness by a milk diet. But incessant bowls of milk

soup gave her no relief, because my grandmother sprinkled them liberally

with salt (the toxic effects of which were as yet, Widal not having made

his discoveries, unknown). For, medicine being a compendium of the

successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we

summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be

relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a

few years’ time. So that to believe in medicine would be the height of

folly, if not to believe in it were not greater folly still, for from

this mass of errors there have emerged in the course of time many

truths. Cottard had told us to take her temperature. A thermometer was

fetched. Throughout almost all its length it was clear of mercury.

Scarcely could one make out, crouching at the foot of the tube, in its

little cell, the silver salamander. It seemed dead. The glass reed was

slipped into my grandmother’s mouth. We had no need to leave it there

for long; the little sorceress had not been slow in casting her

horoscope. We found her motionless, perched half-way up her tower, and

declining to move, shewing us with precision the figure that we had

asked of her, a figure with which all the most careful examination that

my grandmother’s mind could have devoted to herself would have been

incapable of furnishing her; 101 degrees. For the first time we felt

some anxiety. We shook the thermometer well, to erase the ominous line,

as though we were able thus to reduce the patient’s fever simultaneously

with the figure shewn on the scale. Alas, it was only too clear that the

little sibyl, unreasoning as she was, had not pronounced judgment

arbitrarily, for the next day, scarcely had the thermometer been

inserted between my grandmother’s lips when almost at once, as though

with a single bound, exulting in her certainty and in her intuition of a

fact that to us was imperceptible, the little prophetess had come to a

halt at the same point, in an implacable immobility, and pointed once

again to that figure 101 with the tip of her gleaming wand. Nothing more

did she tell us; in vain might we long, seek, pray, she was deaf to our

entreaties; it seemed as though this were her final utterance, a warning

and a menace. Then, in an attempt to constrain her to modify her

response, we had recourse to another creature of the same kingdom, but

more potent, which is not content with questioning the body but can

command it, a febrifuge of the same order as the modern aspirin, which

had not then come into use. We had not shaken the thermometer down below

99.5, and hoped that it would not have to rise from there. We made my

grandmother swallow this drug and then replaced the thermometer in her

mouth. Like an implacable warder to whom one presents a permit signed by

a higher authority whose protecting influence one has sought, and who,

finding it to be in order, replies: “Very well; I have nothing to say;

if it’s like that you may pass,” this time the watcher in the tower did

not move. But sullenly she seemed to be saying: “What use will that be

to you? Since you are friends with quinine, she may give me the order

not to go up, once, ten times, twenty times. And then she will grow

tired of telling me, I know her; get along with you. This won’t last for

ever. And then you’ll be a lot better off.” Thereupon my grandmother

felt the presence within her of a creature which knew the human body

better than herself, the presence of a contemporary of the races that

have vanished from the earth, the presence of earth’s first

inhabitant—long anterior to the creation of thinking man—she felt that

aeonial ally who was sounding her, a little roughly even, in the head,

the heart, the elbow; he found out the weak places, organized everything

for the prehistoric combat which began at once to be fought. In a moment

a trampled Python, the fever, was vanquished by the potent chemical

substance to which my grandmother, across the series of kingdoms,

reaching out beyond all animal and vegetable life, would fain have been

able to give thanks. And she remained moved by this glimpse which she

had caught, through the mists of so many centuries, of a climate

anterior to the creation even of plants. Meanwhile the thermometer, like

a Weird Sister momentarily vanquished by some more ancient god, held

motionless her silver spindle. Alas! other inferior creatures which man

has trained to the chase of the mysterious quarry which he cannot pursue

within the pathless forest of himself, reported cruelly to us every day

a certain quantity of albumen, not large, but constant enough for it

also to appear to bear relation to some persistent malady which we could

not detect. Bergotte had shocked that scrupulous instinct in me which

made me subordinate my intellect when he spoke to me of Dr. du Boulbon

as of a physician who would not bore me, who would discover methods of

treatment which, however strange they might appear, would adapt

themselves to the singularity of my mind. But ideas transform themselves

in us, they overcome the resistance with which we at first meet them,

and feed upon rich intellectual reserves which we did not know to have

been prepared for them. So, as happens whenever anything we have heard

said about some one whom we do not know has had the faculty of awakening

in us the idea of great talent, of a sort of genius, in my inmost mind I

gave Dr. du Boulbon the benefit of that unlimited confidence which he

inspires in us who with an eye more penetrating than other men’s

perceives the truth. I knew indeed that he was more of a specialist in

nervous diseases, the man to whom Charcot before his death had predicted

that he would reign supreme in neurology and psychiatry. “Ah! I don’t

know about that. It’s quite possible,” put in Françoise, who was in the

room, and heard Charcot’s name, as she heard du Boulbon’s, for the first

time. But this in no way prevented her from saying “It’s possible.” Her

“possibles”, her “perhapses”, her “I don’t knows” were peculiarly

irritating at such a moment. One wanted to say to her: “Naturally you

didn’t know, since you haven’t the faintest idea of what we are talking

about, how can you even say whether it’s possible or not; you know

nothing about it. Anyhow, you can’t say now that you don’t know what

Charcot said to du Boulbon. You do know because we have just told you,

and your ‘perhapses’ and ‘possibles’ don’t come in, because it’s a

fact.”

In spite of this more special competence in cerebral and nervous

matters, as I knew that du Boulbon was a great physician, a superior

man, of a profound and inventive intellect, I begged my mother to send

for him, and the hope that, by a clear perception of the malady, he

might perhaps cure it, carried the day finally over the fear that we had

of (if we called in a specialist) alarming my grandmother. What decided

my mother was the fact that, encouraged unconsciously by Cottard, my

grandmother no longer went out of doors, and scarcely rose from her bed.

In vain might she answer us in the words of Mme. de Sévigné’s letter on

Mme. de la Fayette: “Everyone said she was mad not to wish to go out. I

said to these persons, so headstrong in their judgment: ‘Mme. de la

Fayette is not mad!’ and I stuck to that. It has taken her death to

prove that she was quite right not to go out.” Du Boulbon when he came

decided against—if not Mme. de Sévigné, whom we did not quote to him—my

grandmother, at any rate. Instead of sounding her chest, fixing on her

steadily his wonderful eyes, in which there was perhaps the illusion

that he was making a profound scrutiny of his patient, or the desire to

give her that illusion, which seemed spontaneous but must be

mechanically produced, or else not to let her see that he was thinking

of something quite different, or simply to obtain the mastery over her,

he began talking about Bergotte.

“I should think so, indeed, he’s magnificent, you are quite right to

admire him. But which of his books do you prefer? Indeed! Well, perhaps

that is the best after all. In any case it is the best composed of his

novels. Claire is quite charming in it; of his male characters which

appeals to you most?”

I supposed at first that he was making her talk like this about

literature because he himself found medicine boring, perhaps also to

display his breadth of mind and even, with a more therapeutic aim, to

restore confidence to his patient, to shew her that he was not alarmed,

to take her mind from the state of her health. But afterwards I realised

that, being distinguished particularly as an alienist and by his work on

the brain, he had been seeking to ascertain by these questions whether

my grandmother’s memory was in good order. As though reluctantly he

began to inquire about her past life, fixing a stern and sombre eye on

her. Then suddenly, as though catching sight of the truth and determined

to reach it at all costs, with a preliminary rubbing of his hands, which

he seemed to have some difficulty in wiping dry of the final hesitations

which he himself might feel and of all the objections which we might

have raised, looking down at my grandmother with a lucid eye, boldly and

as though he were at last upon solid ground, punctuating his words in a

quiet, impressive tone, every inflexion of which bore the mark of

intellect, he began. (His voice, for that matter, throughout this visit

remained what it naturally was, caressing. And under his bushy brows his

ironical eyes were full of kindness.)

“You will be quite well, Madame, on the day—when it comes, and it rests

entirely with you whether it comes to-day—on which you realise that

there is nothing wrong with you, and resume your ordinary life. You tell

me that you have not been taking your food, not going out?”

“But, sir, I have a temperature.”

He laid a finger on her wrist.

“Not just now, at any rate. Besides, what an excuse! Don’t you know that

we keep out in the open air and overfeed tuberculous patients with

temperatures of 102?”

“But I have a little albumen as well.”

“You ought not to know anything about that. You have what I have had

occasion to call ‘mental albumen’. We have all of us had, when we have

not been very well, little albuminous phases which our doctor has done

his best to make permanent by calling our attention to them. For one

disorder that doctors cure with drugs (as I am told that they do

occasionally succeed in doing) they produce a dozen others in healthy

subjects by inoculating them with that pathogenic agent a thousand times

more virulent than all the microbes in the world, the idea that one is

ill. A belief of that sort, which has a disturbing effect on any

temperament, acts with special force on neurotic people. Tell them that

a shut window is open behind heir back, they will begin to sneeze; make

them believe that you have put magnesia in their soup, they will be

seized with colic; that their coffee is stronger than usual, they will

not sleep a wink all night. Do you imagine, Madame, that I needed to do

any more than look into your eyes, listen to the way in which you

express yourself, look, if I may say so, at this lady, your daughter,

and at your grandson, who takes so much after you, to learn what was the

matter with you?” “Your grandmother might perhaps go and sit, if the

Doctor allows it, in some quiet path in the Champs-Elysées, near that

laurel shrubbery where you used to play when you were little,” said my

mother to me, thus indirectly consulting Dr. du Boulbon, her voice for

that reason assuming a tone of timid deference which it would not have

had if she had been addressing me alone. The Doctor turned to my

grandmother and, being apparently as well-read in literature as in

science, adjured her as follows: “Go to the Champs-Elysées, Madame, to

the laurel shrubbery which your grandson loves. The laurel you will find

health-giving. It purifies. After he had exterminated the serpent

Python, it was with a bough of laurel in his hand that Apollo made his

entry into Delphi. He sought thus to guard himself from the deadly germs

of the venomous monster. So you see that the laurel is the most ancient,

the most venerable and, I will add—what is of therapeutic as well as of

prophylactic value—the most beautiful of antiseptics.”

Inasmuch as a great part of what doctors know is taught them by the

sick, they are easily led to believe that this knowledge which patients

exhibit is common to them all, and they pride themselves on taking the

patient of the moment by surprise with some remark picked up at a

previous bedside. Thus it was with the superior smile of a Parisian who,

in conversation with a peasant, might hope to surprise him by using

suddenly a word of the local dialect that Dr. du Boulbon said to my

grandmother: “Probably a windy night will make you sleep when the

strongest soporifics would have no effect.” “On the contrary, Sir, when

the wind blows I can never sleep at all.” But doctors are touchy people.

“Ach!” muttered du Boulbon, knitting his brows, as if some one had

trodden on his toe, or as if my grandmother’s sleeplessness on stormy

nights were a personal insult to himself. He had not, however, an undue

opinion of himself, and since, in his character as a “superior” person,

he felt himself bound not to put any faith in medicine, he quickly

recovered his philosophic serenity.

My mother, in her passionate longing for reassurance from Bergotte’s

friend, added in support of his verdict that a first cousin of my

grandmother, who suffered from a nervous complaint, had lain for seven

years cloistered in her bedroom at Combray, without leaving her bed more

than once or twice a week.

“You see, Madame, I didn’t know that, and yet I could have told you.”

“But, Sir, I am not in the least like her; on the contrary, my doctor

complains that he cannot get me to stay in bed,” said my grandmother,

whether because she was a little annoyed by the doctor’s theories, or

was anxious to submit to him any objections that might be raised to

them, in the hope that he would refute these and that, after he had

gone, she would no longer find any doubt lurking in her own mind as to

the accuracy of his encouraging diagnosis.

“Why, naturally, Madame, you cannot have all the forms of—if you’ll

excuse my saying so—mania at once; you have others, but not that

particular one. Yesterday I visited a home for neurasthenics. In the

garden, I saw a man standing on a seat, motionless as a fakir, his neck

bent in a position which must have been highly uncomfortable. On my

asking him what he was doing there, he replied, without turning his

head, or moving a muscle: ‘You see, Doctor, I am extremely rheumatic and

catch cold very easily; I have just been taking a lot of exercise, and

while I was getting hot, like a fool, my neck was touching my flannels.

If I move it away from my flannels now before letting myself cool down,

I am certain to get a stiff neck, and possibly bronchitis.’ Which he

would, in fact, have done. ‘You’re a fine specimen of neurasthenia,

that’s what you are,’ I told him. And do you know what argument he

advanced to prove that I was mistaken? It was this; that while all the

other patients in the place had a mania for testing their weight, so

much so that the weighing machine had to be padlocked so that they

should not spend the whole day on it, he had to be lifted on to it

bodily, so little did he care to be weighed. He prided himself on not

sharing the mania of the others without thinking that he had also one of

his own, and that it was this which saved him from the other. You must

not be offended by the comparison, Madame, for the man who dared not

turn his neck for fear of catching a chill is the greatest poet of our

day. That poor maniac is the most lofty intellect that I know. Submit to

being called a neurotic. You belong to that splendid and pitiable family

which is the salt of the earth. All the greatest things we know have

come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded

religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be

conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have

suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. We enjoy fine music,

beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things, but we do not know what

they cost those who wrought them in sleeplessness, tears, spasmodic

laughter, rashes, asthma, epilepsy, a terror of death which is worse

than any of these, and which you perhaps have felt, Madame,” he added

with a smile at my grandmother, “for confess now, when I came into the

room, you were not feeling very confident. You thought that you were

ill; dangerously ill, perhaps. Heaven only knows what the disease was of

which you thought you had detected the symptoms. And you were not

mistaken; they were there. Neurosis has an absolute genius for

malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly.

It will produce lifelike imitations of the dilatations of dyspepsia, the

sicknesses of pregnancy, the broken rhythm of the cardiac, the

feverishness of the consumptive. If it is capable of deceiving the

doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient? No, no; you mustn’t

think I’m making fun of your sufferings. I should not undertake to heal

them unless I understood them thoroughly. And, well, they say there’s no

good confession unless it’s mutual. I have told you that without nervous

trouble there can be no great artist. What is more,” he added, raising a

solemn forefinger, “there can be no great scientist either. I will go

farther, and say that, unless he himself is subject to nervous trouble,

he is not, I won’t say a good doctor, but I do say the right doctor to

treat nervous troubles. In nervous pathology a doctor who doesn’t say

too many foolish things is a patient half-cured, just as a critic is a

poet who has stopped writing verse and a policeman a burglar who has

retired from practice. I, Madame, I do not, like you, fancy myself to be

suffering from albuminuria, I have not your nervous fear of food, nor of

fresh air, but I can never go to sleep without getting out of bed at

least twenty times to see if my door is shut. And in that home where I

found the poet yesterday who would not move his neck, I had gone to

secure a room, for—this is between ourselves—I spend my holidays there

looking after myself when I have increased my own trouble by wearing

myself out in the attempt to cure other people.”

“But do you want me to take a cure like that, Sir?” came in a frightened

voice from my grandmother.

“It is not necessary, Madame. The symptoms which you describe will

vanish at my bidding. Besides, you have with you a very efficient person

whom I appoint as your doctor from now onwards. That is your trouble

itself, the super-activity of your nerves. Even if I knew how to cure

you of that, I should take good care not to. All I need do is to control

it. I see on your table there one of Bergotte’s books. Cured of your

neurosis you would no longer care for it. Well, I might feel it my duty

to substitute for the joys that it procures for you a nervous stability

which would be quite incapable of giving you those joys. But those joys

themselves are a strong remedy, the strongest of all perhaps. No; I have

nothing to say against your nervous energy. All I ask is that it should

listen to me; I leave you in its charge. It must reverse its engines.

The force which it is now using to prevent you from getting up, from

taking sufficient food, let it employ in making you eat, in making you

read, in making you go out, and in distracting you in every possible

way. You needn’t tell me that you are fatigued. Fatigue is the organic

realisation of a preconceived idea. Begin by not thinking it. And if

ever you have a slight indisposition, which is a thing that may happen

to anyone, it will be just as if you hadn’t it, for your nervous energy

will have endowed you with what M. de Talleyrand, in an expression full

of meaning, called ‘imaginary health’. See, it has begun to cure you

already, you have been sitting up in bed listening to me without once

leaning back on your pillows; your eye is bright, your complexion is

good, I have been talking to you for half an hour by the clock and you

have never noticed the time. Well, Madame, I shall now bid you

good-day.”

When, after seeing Dr. du Boulbon to the door, I returned to the room in

which my mother was by herself, the oppression that had been weighing on

me for the last few weeks lifted, I felt that my mother was going to

break out with a cry of joy and would see my joy, I felt that inability

to endure the suspense of the coming moment at which a person is going

to be overcome with emotion in our presence, which in another category

is a little like the thrill of fear that goes through one when one knows

that somebody is going to come in and startle one by a door that is

still closed; I tried to speak to Mamma but my voice broke, and,

bursting into tears, I stayed for a long time, my head on her shoulder,

crying, tasting, accepting, relishing my grief, now that I knew that it

had departed from my life, as we like to exalt ourselves by forming

virtuous plans which circumstances do not permit us to put into

execution. Françoise annoyed me by her refusal to share in our joy. She

was quite overcome because there had just been a terrible scene between

the lovesick footman and the tale-bearing porter. It had required the

Duchess herself, in her unfailing benevolence, to intervene, restore an

apparent calm to the household and forgive the footman. For she was a

good mistress, and that would have been the ideal “place” if only she

didn’t listen to “stories”.

During the last few days people had begun to hear of my grandmother’s

illness and to inquire for news of her. Saint-Loup had written to me: “I

do not wish to take advantage of a time when your dear grandmother is

unwell to convey to you what is far more than mere reproaches, on a

matter with which she has no concern. But I should not be speaking the

truth were I to say to you, even out of politeness, that I shall ever

forget the perfidy of your conduct, or that there can ever be any

forgiveness for so scoundrelly a betrayal.” But some other friends,

supposing that my grandmother was not seriously ill (they may not even

have known that she was ill at all), had asked me to meet them next day

in the Champs-Elysées, to go with them from there to pay a call

together, ending up with a dinner in the country, the thought of which

appealed to me. I had no longer any reason to forego these two

pleasures. When my grandmother had been told that it was now imperative,

if she was to obey Dr. du Boulbon’s orders, that she should go out as

much as possible, she had herself at once suggested the Champs-Elysées.

It would be easy for me to escort her there; and, while she sat reading,

to arrange with my friends where I should meet them later; and I should

still be in time, if I made haste, to take the train with them to Ville

d’Avray. When the time came, my grandmother did not want to go out; she

felt tired. But my mother, acting on du Boulbon’s instructions, had the

strength of mind to be firm and to insist on obedience. She was almost

in tears at the thought that my grandmother was going to relapse again

into her nervous weakness, which she might never be able to shake off.

Never again would there be such a fine, warm day for an outing. The sun

as it moved through the sky interspersed here and there in the broken

solidity of the balcony its unsubstantial muslins, and gave to the

freestone ledge a warm epidermis, an indefinite halo of gold. As

Françoise had not had time to send a “tube” to her daughter, she left us

immediately after luncheon. She very kindly consented, however, to call

first at Jupien’s, to get a stitch put in the cloak which my grandmother

was going to wear. Returning at that moment from my morning walk I

accompanied her into the shop. “Is it your young master who brings you

here,” Jupien asked Françoise, “is it you who are bringing him to see

me, or is it some good wind and fortune that bring you both?” For all

his want of education, Jupien respected the laws of grammar as

instinctively as M. de Guermantes, in spite of every effort, broke them.

With Françoise gone and the cloak mended, it was time for my grandmother

to get ready. Having obstinately refused to let Mamma stay in the room

with her, she took, left to herself, an endless time over her dressing,

and now that I knew her to be quite well; with that strange indifference

which we feel towards our relatives so long as they are alive, which

makes us put everyone else before them, I felt it to be very selfish of

her to take so long, to risk making me late when she knew that I had an

appointment with my friends and was dining at Ville d’Avray. In my

impatience I finally went downstairs without waiting for her, after I

had twice been told that she was just ready. At last she joined me,

without apologising to me, as she generally did, for having kept me

waiting, flushed and bothered like a person who has come to a place in a

hurry and has forgotten half her belongings, just as I was reaching the

half-opened glass door which, without warming them with it in the least,

let in the liquid, throbbing, tepid air from the street (as though the

sluices of a reservoir had been opened) between the frigid walls of the

passage.

“Oh, dear, if you’re going to meet your friends I ought to have put on

another cloak. I look rather poverty-stricken in this one.”

I was startled to see her so flushed, and supposed that having begun by

making herself late she had had to hurry over her dressing. When we left

the cab at the end of the Avenue Gabriel, in the Champs-Elysées, I saw

my grandmother, without a word to me, turn aside and make her way to the

little old pavilion with its green trellis, at the door of which I had

once waited for Françoise. The same park-keeper who had been standing

there then was still talking to Françoise’s “Marquise” when, following

my grandmother who, doubtless because she was feeling sick, had her hand

in front of her mouth, I climbed the steps of that little rustic

theatre, erected there among the gardens. At the entrance, as in those

circus booths where the clown, dressed for the ring and smothered in

flour, stands at the door and takes the money himself for the seats, the

“Marquise”, at the receipt of custom, was still there in her place with

her huge, uneven face smeared with a coarse plaster and her little

bonnet of red flowers and black lace surmounting her auburn wig. But I

do not suppose that she recognised me. The park-keeper, abandoning his

watch over the greenery, with the colour of which his uniform had been

designed to harmonise, was talking to her, on a chair by her side.

“So you’re still here?” he was saying. “You don’t think of retiring?”

“And what have I to retire for, Sir? Will you kindly tell me where I

shall be better off than here, where I should live more at my ease, and

with every comfort? And then there’s all the coming and going, plenty of

distraction; my little Paris, I call it; my customers keep me in touch

with everything that’s going on. Just to give you an example, there’s

one of them who went out not more than five minutes ago; he’s a

magistrate, in the very highest position there is. Very well, Sir,” she

cried with ardour, as though prepared to maintain the truth of this

assertion by violence, should the agent of civic authority shew any sign

of challenging its accuracy, “for the last eight years, do you follow

me, every day God has made, regularly on the stroke of three he’s been

here, always polite, never saying one word louder than another, never

making any mess; and he stays half an hour and more to read his papers

and do his little jobs. There was one day he didn’t come. I never

noticed it at the time, but that evening, all of a sudden I said to

myself: ‘Why, that gentleman never came to-day; perhaps he’s dead!’ And

that gave me a regular turn, you know, because, of course, I get quite

fond of people when they behave nicely. And so I was very glad when I

saw him come in again next day, and I said to him, I did: ‘I hope there

was nothing wrong yesterday, Sir?’ Then he told me that it was his wife

that had died, and he’d been so put out, poor gentleman, what with one

thing and another, he hadn’t been able to come. He had that really sad

look, you know, people have when they’ve been married five-and-twenty

years, and then the parting, but he seemed pleased, all the same, to be

back here. You could see that all his little habits had been quite

upset. I did what I could to make him feel at home. I said to him: ‘Y’

mustn’t let go of things, Sir. Just come here the same as before, it

will be a little distraction for you in your sorrow.’”

The “Marquise” resumed a gentler tone, for she had observed that the

guardian of groves and lawns was listening to her complacently and with

no thought of contradiction, keeping harmlessly in its scabbard a sword

which looked more like a horticultural implement or some symbol of a

garden-god.

“And besides,” she went on, “I choose my customers, I don’t let everyone

into my little parlours, as I call them. And doesn’t the place just look

like a parlour with all my flowers? Such friendly customers I have;

there’s always some one or other brings me a spray of nice lilac, or

jessamine or roses; my favourite flowers, roses are.”

The thought that we were perhaps despised by this lady because we never

brought any sprays of lilac or fine roses to her bower made me redden,

and in the hope of making a bodily escape—or of being condemned only by

default—from an adverse judgment, I moved towards the exit. But it is

not always in this world the people who brings us fine roses to whom we

are most friendly, for the “Marquise”, thinking that I was bored, turned

to me:

“You wouldn’t like me to open a little place for you?”

And, on my declining:

“No? You’re sure you won’t?” she persisted, smiling. “Well, just as you

please. You’re welcome to it, but I know quite well, not having to pay

for a thing won’t make you want to do it if you don’t want to.”

At this moment a shabbily dressed woman hurried into the place who

seemed to be feeling precisely the want in question. But she did not

belong to the “Marquise’s” world, for the latter, with the ferocity of a

snob, flung at her:

“I’ve nothing disengaged, Ma’am.”

“Will they be long?” asked the poor lady, reddening beneath the yellow

flowers in her hat.

“Well, Ma’am, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll try somewhere else; you

see, there are still these two gentlemen waiting, and I’ve only one

closet; the others are out of order.”

“Not much money there,” she explained when the other had gone. “It’s not

the sort we want here, either; they’re not clean, don’t treat the place

with respect, it would be your humble here that would have to spend the

next hour cleaning up after her ladyship. I’m not sorry to lose her

penny.”

Finally my grandmother emerged, and feeling that she probably would not

seek to atone by a lavish gratuity for the indiscretion that she had

shewn by remaining so long inside, I beat a retreat, so as not to have

to share in the scorn which the “Marquise” would no doubt heap on her,

and began strolling along a path, but slowly, so that my grandmother

should not have to hurry to overtake me; as presently she did. I

expected her to begin: “I am afraid I’ve kept you waiting; I hope you’ll

still be in time for your friends,” but she did not utter a single word,

so much so that, feeling a little hurt, I was disinclined to speak

first; until looking up at her I noticed that as she walked beside me

she kept her face turned the other way. I was afraid that her heart

might be troubling her again. I studied her more carefully and was

struck by the disjointedness of her gait. Her hat was crooked, her cloak

stained; she had the confused and worried look, the flushed, slightly

dazed face of a person who has just been knocked down by a carriage or

pulled out of a ditch.

“I was afraid you were feeling sick, Grandmamma; are you feeling better

now?” I asked her.

Probably she thought that it would be impossible for her, without

alarming me, not to make some answer.

“I heard the whole of her conversation with the keeper,” she told me.

“Could anything have been more typical of the Guermantes, or the

Verdurins and their little circle? Heavens, what fine language she put

it all in!” And she quoted, with deliberate application, this sentence

from her own special Marquise, Mme. de Sévigné: “As I listened to them I

thought that they were preparing for me the pleasures of a farewell.”

Such was the speech that she made me, a speech into which she had put

all her critical delicacy, her love of quotations, her memory of the

classics, more thoroughly even than she would naturally have done, and

as though to prove that she retained possession of all these faculties.

But I guessed rather than heard what she said, so inaudible was the

voice in which she muttered her sentences, clenching her teeth more than

could be accounted for by the fear of being sick again.

“Come!” I said lightly, so as not to seem to be taking her illness too

seriously, “since your heart is bothering you, shall we go home now? I

don’t want to trundle a grandmother with indigestion about the

Champs-Elysées.”

“I didn’t like to suggest it, because of your friends,” she replied.

“Poor boy! But if you don’t mind, I think it would be wiser.”

I was afraid of her noticing the strange way in which she uttered these

words.

“Come!” I said to her sharply, “you mustn’t tire yourself talking; if

your heart is bad, it’s silly; wait till we get home.”

She smiled at me sorrowfully and gripped my hand. She had realised that

there was no need to hide from me what I had at once guessed, that she

had had a slight stroke.

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