Alas, if for me meeting any person other than herself would have been a matter of indifference, I felt that, for her, meeting anyone in the world except myself would have been only too endurable. It happened that, in the course of her morning walks, she received the salutations of plenty of fools whom she regarded as such. But the appearance of these in her path seemed to her, if not to hold out any promise of pleasure, to be at any rate the result of mere accident. And she stopped them at times, for there are moments in which one wants to escape from oneself, to accept the hospitality offered by the soul of another, provided always that this soul, however modest and plain it may be, is a different soul, whereas in my heart she felt with exasperation that what she would have found was herself. And so, even when I had another reason for taking the same route than my desire to see her, I trembled like a guilty man as she came past; and sometimes, in order to neutralise what might seem to be excessive in my overtures, I would barely acknowledge her salute, or would stare at her without raising my hat, and succeed only in irritating her even more and making her begin to regard me as insolent and ill-bred besides.
She was now wearing lighter, or at any rate brighter clothes, and would come strolling down the street in which already, as though it were spring, in front of the narrow shops that were squeezed in between the spacious fronts of the old aristocratic mansions, over the booths of the butter-woman and the fruit-woman and the vegetable-woman, awnings were spread to protect them from the sun. I told myself that the woman whom I could see in the distance, walking, opening her sunshade, crossing the street, was, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge, the greatest living exponent of the art of performing those movements and of making of them something exquisite. Meanwhile she advanced towards me, and, unconscious of this widespread reputation, her narrow, refractory body, which had absorbed nothing of it, was arched forward under a scarf of violet silk; her clear, sullen eyes looked absently in front of her, and had perhaps caught sight of me; she was biting the corner of her lip; I watched her adjust her muff, give alms to a beggar, buy a bunch of violets from a flower-seller, with the same curiosity that I should have felt in watching the brush-strokes of a great painter. And when, as she passed me, she gave me a bow that was accompanied sometimes by a faint smile, it was as though she had sketched for me, adding a personal dedication, a water-colour that was a masterpiece of art. Each of her dresses seemed to me her natural and necessary setting, like the projection of a particular aspect of her soul. On one of these Lenten mornings, when she was on her way out to lunch, I met her wearing a dress of bright red velvet, cut slightly low at the neck. Her face appeared dreamy beneath its pile of fair hair. I was less sad than usual because the melancholy of her expression, the sort of claustration which the startling hue of her dress set between her and the rest of the world, made her seem somehow lonely and unhappy, and this comforted me. The dress struck me as being the materialisation round about her of the scarlet rays of a heart which I did not recognise in her and might perhaps have been able to console; sheltered in the mystical light of the garment with its soft folds, she reminded me of some saint of the early ages of Christianity. After which I felt ashamed of inflicting my presence on this holy martyr. “But, after all, the streets belong to everybody.”
The streets belong to everybody, I repeated to myself, giving a different meaning to the words, and marvelling that indeed in the crowded street, often soaked with rain, which gave it a precious lustre like the streets, at times, in the old towns of Italy, the Duchesse de Guermantes mingled with the public life of the world moments of her own secret life, showing herself thus in all her mystery to everyone, jostled by all and sundry, with the splendid gratuitousness of the greatest works of art. As I often went out in the morning after staying awake all night, in the afternoon my parents would tell me to lie down for a little and try to get some sleep. There is no need, when one is trying to find sleep, to give much thought to the quest, but habit is very useful, and even the absence of thought. But in these afternoon hours I lacked both. Before going to sleep, I devoted so much time to thinking that I should be unable to do so that even after I was asleep a little of my thought remained. It was no more than a glimmer in the almost total darkness, but it was enough to cast a reflexion in my sleep, first of the idea that I could not sleep, and then, a reflexion of this reflexion, that it was in my sleep that I had had the idea that I was not asleep, then, by a further refraction, my awakening … to a fresh doze in which I was trying to tell some friends who had come into my room that, a moment earlier, when I was asleep, I had imagined that I was not asleep. These shadows were barely distinguishable; it would have required a keen—and quite useless—delicacy of perception to seize them. Similarly, in later years, in Venice, long after the sun had set, when it seemed to be quite dark, I have seen, thanks to the echo, itself imperceptible, of a last note of light held indefinitely on the surface of the canals as though by the effect of some optical pedal, the reflexions of the palaces displayed as though for all time in a darker velvet on the crepuscular greyness of the water. One of my dreams was the synthesis of what my imagination had often sought to depict, in my waking hours, of a certain seagirt place and its mediaeval past. In my sleep I saw a Gothic city rising from a sea whose waves were stilled as in a stained-glass window. An arm of the sea divided the town in two; the green water stretched to my feet; on the opposite shore it washed round the base of an oriental church, and beyond it houses which existed already in the fourteenth century, so that to go across to them would have been to ascend the stream of time. This dream in which nature had learned from art, in which the sea had turned Gothic, this dream in which I longed to attain, in which I believed that I was attaining to the impossible, was one that I felt I had often dreamed before. But as it is the nature of what we imagine in sleep to multiply itself in the past, and to appear, even when new, to be familiar, I supposed that I was mistaken. I noticed, however, that I did indeed frequently have this dream.
The diminutions, too, that characterise sleep were reflected in mine, but in a symbolic manner; I could not in the darkness make out the faces of the friends who were in the room, for we sleep with our eyes shut; I, who could carry on endless verbal arguments with myself while I dreamed, as soon as I tried to speak to these friends felt the words stick in my throat, for we do not speak distinctly in our sleep; I wanted to go to them, and I could not move my limbs, for we do not walk when we are asleep either; and, suddenly, I was ashamed to be seen by them, for we sleep without our clothes. So, my eyes blinded, my lips sealed, my limbs fettered, my body naked, the image of sleep which my sleep itself projected had the appearance of those great allegorical figures where Giotto has portrayed Envy with a serpent in her mouth, and which Swann had given me.
Saint-Loup came to Paris for a few hours only. While affirming that he had not yet had an opportunity of speaking to his cousin, “She’s not at all nice, Oriane,” he told me with innocent self-betrayal. “She’s not my old Oriane any longer, they’ve gone and changed her, I assure you it’s not worth while bothering your head about her. You pay her far too great a compliment. You wouldn’t care to meet my cousin Poictiers?” he went on, without stopping to reflect that this could not possibly give me any pleasure. “There’s an intelligent young woman whom you’d like. She’s married to my cousin, the Duc de Poictiers, who is a good fellow, but a bit slow for her. I’ve told her about you. She said I was to bring you to see her. She’s much prettier than Oriane, and younger, too. She’s a really nice person, you know, a really excellent person.” Then there were expressions newly—and all the more ardently—adopted by Robert, which meant that the person in question had a delicate nature. “I don’t go so far as to say she’s a Dreyfusard, you must remember her background; still, she did say to me: ‘If he was innocent, how ghastly for him to have been shut up on Devil’s Island.’ You see what I mean, don’t you? And then she’s the sort of woman who does a tremendous lot for her old governesses; she’s given orders
that they’re never to be made to use the servants’ staircase. She’s a very good sort, I assure you. Oriane doesn’t really like her because she feels she’s more intelligent.”
Although completely absorbed in the pity which she felt for one of the Guermantes footmen—who could not go to see his girl, even when the Duchess was out, because it would immediately have been reported to her from the lodge—Françoise was heartbroken at not having been in the house at the moment of Saint-Loup’s visit, but this was because now she herself paid visits too. She never failed to go out on the days when I most needed her. It was always to see her brother, her niece and, more particularly, her own daughter, who had recently come to live in Paris. The family nature of these visits itself increased the irritation that I felt at being deprived of her services, for I foresaw that she would speak of them as being among those duties which could not be avoided, according to the laws laid down at Saint-André-des-Champs. And so I never listened to her excuses without an ill humour which was highly unjust to her, and was brought to a head by Françoise’s way of saying not: “I’ve been to see my brother,” or “I’ve been to see my niece,” but: “I’ve been to see the brother,” “I just looked in to say good-day to the niece” (or “to my niece the butcheress”). As for her daughter, Françoise would have been glad to see her return to Combray. But the latter, who went in for abbreviations like a woman of fashion, though hers were of a vulgar kind, protested that the week she was shortly going to spend at Combray would seem quite long enough without so much as a sight of “the Intran.”7 She was even less willing to go to Françoise’s sister, who lived in a mountainous region, for “mountains aren’t really interesting,” said the daughter, giving to the adjective a new and terrible meaning. She could not make up her mind to go back to Méséglise, where “the people are so stupid,” where in the market the gossips at their stalls would claim cousinhood with her and say “Why, it’s never poor Bazireau’s daughter?” She would sooner die than go back and bury herself down there, now that she had “tasted the life of Paris,” and Françoise, traditionalist as she was, smiled complacently nevertheless at the spirit of innovation embodied in this new “Parisian” when she said: “Very well, mother, if you don’t get your day off, you’ve only to send me a wire.”
The weather had turned chilly again. “Go out? What for? To catch your death?” said Françoise, who preferred to remain in the house during the week which her daughter and brother and the butcher-niece had gone to spend at Combray. Being, moreover, the last adherent in whom survived obscurely the doctrine of my aunt Léonie in matters of natural philosophy, Françoise would add, speaking of this unseasonable weather: “It’s the remains of the wrath of God!” But I responded to her complaints only with a languid smile; all the more indifferent to these predictions in that whatever happened it would be fine for me; already, I could see the morning sun shining on the slope of Fiesole, and I warmed myself smilingly in its rays; their strength obliged me to half-open and half-shut my eyelids, which, like alabaster lamps, were filled with a roseate glow. It was not only the bells that came from Italy, Italy had come with them. My faithful hands would not lack flowers to honour the anniversary of the pilgrimage which I ought to have made long ago, for since, here in Paris, the weather had turned cold again as in another year at the time of our preparations for departure at the end of Lent, in the liquid, freezing air which bathed the chestnuts and planes on the boulevards and the tree in the courtyard of our house, the narcissi, the jonquils, the anemones of the Ponte Vecchio were already opening their petals as in a bowl of pure water.
My father had informed us that he now knew, through his friend A.J., where M. de Norpois went when he met him about the place.
“It’s to see Mme de Villeparisis. They’re great friends; I never knew anything about it. It seems she’s a delightful person, a most superior woman. You ought to go and call on her,” he told me. “Another thing that surprised me very much: he spoke to me of M. de Guermantes as a most distinguished man; I’d always taken him for a boor. It seems he knows an enormous amount, and has perfect taste, only he’s very proud of his name and his connexions. But as a matter of fact, according to Norpois, he has a tremendous position, not only here but all over Europe. It appears the Austrian Emperor and the Tsar treat him just like one of themselves. Old Norpois told me that Mme de Villeparisis had taken quite a fancy to you, and that you meet all sorts of interesting people in her house. He praised you very highly. You’ll see him if you go there, and he may have some good advice for you even if you are going to be a writer. For I can see you won’t do anything else. It might turn out quite a good career; it’s not what I should have chosen for you myself, but you’ll be a man in no time now, we shan’t always be here to look after you, and we mustn’t prevent you from following your vocation.”
If only I had been able to start writing! But, whatever the conditions in which I approached the task (as, too, alas, the undertakings not to touch alcohol, to go to bed early, to sleep, to keep fit), whether it was with enthusiasm, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing it and keeping it in reserve as a reward for industry, taking advantage of an hour of good health, utilising the inactivity forced on me by a day’s illness, what always emerged in the end from all my efforts was a virgin page, undefiled by any writing, ineluctable as that forced card which in certain tricks one invariably is made to draw, however carefully one may first have shuffled the pack. I was merely the instrument of habits of not working, of not going to bed, of not sleeping, which must somehow be realised at all costs; if I offered them no resistance, if I contented myself with the pretext they seized from the first opportunity that the day afforded them of acting as they chose, I escaped without serious harm, I slept for a few hours after all towards morning, I read a little, I did not over-exert myself; but if I attempted to thwart them, if I decided to go to bed early, to drink only water, to work, they grew restive, they adopted strong measures, they made me really ill, I was obliged to double my dose of alcohol, did not lie down in bed for two days and nights on end, could not even read, and I vowed that another time I would be more reasonable, that is to say less wise, like the victim of an assault who allows himself to be robbed for fear, should he offer resistance, of being murdered.
My father, in the meantime, had met M. de Guermantes once or twice, and, now that M. de Norpois had told him that the Duke was a remarkable man, had begun to pay more attention to what he said. As it happened, they met in the courtyard and discussed Mme de Villeparisis. “He tells me she’s his aunt; ‘Viparisi,’ he pronounces it. He tells me, too, she’s an extraordinarily able woman. In fact he said she kept a School of Wit,” my father added, impressed by the vagueness of this expression, which he had indeed come across now and then in volumes of memoirs, but without attaching to it any definite meaning. My mother had so much respect for him that when she saw that he did not dismiss as of no importance the fact that Mme de Villeparisis kept a School of Wit, she decided that this must be of some consequence. Although she had always known through my grandmother the Marquise’s intellectual worth, it was immediately enhanced in her eyes. My grandmother, who was not very well just then, was not in favour at first of the suggested visit, and afterwards lost interest in the matter. Since we had moved into our new flat, Mme de Villeparisis had several times asked my grandmother to call upon her. And invariably my grandmother had replied that she was not going out just at present, in one of those letters which, by a new habit of hers which we did not understand, she no longer sealed herself but employed Françoise to stick down for her. As for myself, without any very clear picture in my mind of this School of Wit, I should not have been greatly surprised to find the old lady from Balbec installed behind a desk, as, for that matter, I eventually did.
My father would in addition have been glad to know whether the Ambassador’s support would be worth many votes to him at the Institut, for which he had thoughts of standing as an independent candidate. To tel
l the truth, while he did not venture to doubt that he would have M. de Norpois’s support, he was by no means certain of it. He had thought it merely malicious gossip when he was told at the Ministry that M. de Norpois, wishing to be himself the only representative there of the Institut, would put every possible obstacle in the way of my father’s candidature, which would moreover embarrass him at the moment since he was supporting another candidate. And yet, when M. Leroy-Beaulieu had first advised him to stand, and had calculated his chances, my father had been struck by the fact that, among the colleagues upon whom he could count for support, the eminent economist had not mentioned M. de Norpois. He dared not ask the Ambassador point-blank, but hoped that I would return from my visit to Mme de Villeparisis with his election as good as secured. This visit was now imminent. M. de Norpois’s endorsement, capable of ensuring my father the votes of at least two thirds of the Academy,8 seemed to him all the more probable since the Ambassador’s willingness to oblige was proverbial, those who liked him least admitting that no one else took such pleasure in being of service. And besides, at the Ministry, his patronage was extended to my father far more markedly than to any other official.
My father had another encounter about this time, which caused him extreme indignation as well as astonishment. One day he ran into Mme Sazerat, whose life in Paris was restricted by her comparative poverty to occasional visits to a friend. There was no one who bored my father quite so intensely as did Mme Sazerat, so much so that Mamma was obliged, once a year, to intercede with him in sweet and suppliant tones: “My dear, I really must invite Mme Sazerat to the house, just once; she won’t stay long”; and even: “Listen, dear, I’m going to ask you to make a great sacrifice; do go and call on Mme Sazerat. You know I hate bothering you, but it would be so nice of you.” He would laugh, raise various objections, and go to pay the call. And so, for all that Mme Sazerat did not appeal to him, on catching sight of her in the street my father went towards her, doffing his hat; but to his profound astonishment Mme Sazerat confined her greeting to the frigid bow enforced by politeness towards a person who is guilty of some disgraceful action or has been condemned to live henceforth in another hemisphere. My father had come home speechless with rage. Next day my mother met Mme Sazerat in someone’s house. She did not offer my mother her hand, but merely smiled at her with a vague and melancholy air as one smiles at a person with whom one used to play as a child, but with whom one has since severed all connexions because she has led an abandoned life, has married a jailbird or (what is worse still) a divorced man. Now, from time immemorial my parents had accorded to Mme Sazerat, and inspired in her, the most profound respect. But (and of this my mother was ignorant) Mme Sazerat, alone of her kind at Combray, was a Dreyfusard. My father, a friend of M. Méline,9 was convinced that Dreyfus was guilty. He had sharply sent about their business those colleagues who had asked him to sign a petition for a retrial. He refused to speak to me for a week after learning that I had chosen to take a different line. His opinions were well known. He came near to being looked upon as a Nationalist. As for my grandmother, who alone of the family seemed likely to be stirred by a generous doubt, whenever anyone spoke to her of the possible innocence of Dreyfus, she gave a shake of her head the meaning of which we did not at the time understand, but which was like the gesture of a person who has been interrupted while thinking of more serious things. My mother, torn between her love for my father and her hope that I might turn out to have brains, preserved an impartiality which she expressed by silence. Finally my grandfather, who adored the Army (albeit his duties with the National Guard had been the bugbear of his riper years), could never see a regiment march past the garden railings at Combray without baring his head as the colonel and the colours passed. All this was quite enough to make Mme Sazerat, who was thoroughly aware of the disinterestedness and integrity of my father and grandfather, regard them as pillars of Injustice. We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime. As soon as she knew my father to be an anti-Dreyfusard she put continents and centuries between herself and him. Which explains why, across such an interval of time and space, her greeting had been imperceptible to my father, and why it had not occurred to her to shake hands or to say a few words which would never have carried across the worlds that lay between.
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