“Of course I don’t think I have more influence with Mme Verdurin than you do,” Brichot emphatically declared, afraid that he might have aroused the Baron’s suspicions. And seeing that I was anxious to leave, he sought to detain me with the bait of the promised entertainment: “There is one thing which the Baron seems to me not to have taken into account when he speaks of the reputation of these two ladies, namely that a person’s reputation may be at the same time appalling and undeserved. Thus for instance, in the more notorious of these groups which I may venture to call unofficial, it is certain that miscarriages of justice are many and that history has recorded convictions for sodomy against illustrious men who were wholly innocent of the charge. The recent discovery of Michelangelo’s passionate love for a woman is a fresh fact which should entitle the friend of Leo X to the benefit of a posthumous retrial. The Michelangelo case seems to me to be eminently calculated to excite the snobs and mobilise the underworld when another case, in which anarchy was all the rage and became the fashionable sin of our worthy dilettantes, but which must not even be mentioned now for fear of stirring up quarrels, shall have run its course.”
From the moment Brichot had begun to speak of masculine reputations, M. de Charlus had betrayed all over his features that special sort of impatience which one sees on the face of a medical or military expert when society people who know nothing about the subject begin to talk nonsense about points of therapeutics or strategy.
“You don’t know the first thing about these matters,” he finally said to Brichot. “Give me a single example of an undeserved reputation. Mention a few names … Yes, I know it all,” he retorted vehemently to a timid interruption by Brichot, “the people who tried it once long ago out of curiosity, or out of affection for a dead friend, and the person who’s afraid he has gone too far, and if you speak to him of the beauty of a man, replies that it’s all Greek to him, that he can no more distinguish between a beautiful man and an ugly one than between the engines of two motor-cars, mechanics not being in his line. That’s all stuff and nonsense. Mind you, I don’t mean to say that a bad (or what is conventionally so called) and yet undeserved reputation is absolutely impossible. But it’s so exceptional, so rare, that for practical purposes it doesn’t exist. At the same time, I who am by nature inquisitive and enjoy ferreting things out, have known cases which were not mythical. Yes, in the course of my life I have verified (I mean scientifically verified—I’m not talking hot air) two unjustified reputations. They generally arise from a similarity of names, or from certain outward signs, a profusion of rings, for instance, which persons who are not qualified to judge imagine to be characteristic of what you were mentioning, just as they think that a peasant never utters a sentence without adding jarniguié, ‘I d’ny God,’ or an Englishman ‘Goddam.’ It’s the conventionalism of the boulevard theatre.”
M. de Charlus surprised me greatly when he cited among the inverts the “friend of the actress” whom I had seen at Balbec and who was the leader of the little society of the four friends.
“But this actress, then?”
“She serves him as a cover, and besides he has relations with her, perhaps more than with men, with whom he has hardly any.”
“Does he have relations with the other three?”
“No, not at all! They’re not at all friends in that way! Two are entirely for women. One of them is, but isn’t sure about his friend, and in any case they hide their doings from each other. What will surprise you is that the unjustified reputations are those most firmly established in the eyes of the public. You yourself, Brichot, who would stake your life on the virtue of some man or other who comes to this house and whom the initiated would recognise a mile away, you feel obliged to believe like everyone else what is said about someone in the public eye who is the incarnation of those propensities to the common herd, when as a matter of fact he doesn’t care a sou for that sort of thing. I say a sou, because if we were to offer twenty-five louis, we should see the number of plaster saints dwindle down to nothing. As things are, the average rate of sanctity, if you see any sanctity in that sort of thing, is somewhere between three and four out of ten.”
If Brichot had transferred to the male sex the question of bad reputations, in my case, conversely, it was to the female sex that, thinking of Albertine, I applied the Baron’s words. I was appalled at his statistic, even when I bore in mind that he probably inflated his figures in accordance with what he himself would have wished, and based them moreover on the reports of persons who were scandalmongers and possibly liars, and had in any case been led astray by their own desire, which, added to that of M. de Charlus himself, doubtless falsified his calculations.
“Three out of ten!” exclaimed Brichot. “Why, even if the proportions were reversed I should still have to multiply the guilty a hundredfold. If it is as you say, Baron, and you are not mistaken, then we must confess that you are one of those rare visionaries who discern a truth which nobody round them has ever suspected. Just as Barrès made discoveries as to parliamentary corruption the truth of which was afterwards established, like the existence of Leverrier’s planet. Mme Verdurin would cite for preference men whom I would rather not name who detected in the Intelligence Bureau, in the General Staff, activities inspired, I’m sure, by patriotic zeal but which I had never imagined. On freemasonry, German espionage, drug addiction, Leon Daudet concocts day by day a fantastic fairy-tale which turns out to be the barest truth. Three out of ten!” Brichot repeated in stupefaction. And it is true to say that M. de Charlus taxed the great majority of his contemporaries with inversion, excepting, however, the men with whom he himself had had relations, their case, provided there had been some element of romance in those relations, appearing to him more complex. So it is that we see Lotharios who refuse to believe in women’s honour making an exception in the case of one who has been their mistress and of whom they protest sincerely and with an air of mystery: “No, no, you’re mistaken, she isn’t a whore.” This unlooked-for tribute is dictated partly by their own vanity for which it is more flattering that such favours should have been reserved for them alone, partly by their gullibility which all too easily swallows everything that their mistress has led them to believe, partly from that sense of the complexity of life whereby, as soon as one gets close to other people, other lives, ready-made labels and classifications appear unduly crude. “Three out of ten! But have a care, Baron: less fortunate than the historians whose conclusions the future will justify, if you were to present to posterity the statistics that you offer us, it might find them erroneous. Posterity judges only on documentary evidence, and will insist on being shown your files. But as no document would be forthcoming to authenticate this sort of collective phenomenon which the initiated are only too concerned to leave in obscurity, the tender-hearted would be moved to indignation, and you would be regarded as nothing more than a slanderer or a lunatic. After having won top marks and unquestioned supremacy in the social examinations on this earth, you would taste the sorrows of being blackballed beyond the grave. The game is not worth the candle, to quote—may God forgive me—our friend Bossuet.”
“I’m not interested in history,” replied M. de Charlus, “this life is sufficient for me, it’s quite interesting enough, as poor Swann used to say.”
“What, you knew Swann, Baron? I didn’t know that. Tell me, was he that way inclined?” Brichot inquired with an air of misgiving.
“What a mind the man has! So you think I only know men of that sort? No, I don’t think so,” said Charlus, looking at the ground and trying to weigh the pros and cons. And deciding that, since he was dealing with Swann whose contrary tendencies had always been so notorious, a half-admission could only be harmless to him who was its object and flattering to him who let it out in an insinuation: “I don’t deny that long ago in our schooldays, once in a while,” said the Baron, as though in spite of himself and thinking aloud; then pulling himself up: “But that was centuries ago. How do you expect me to remember
? You’re embarrassing me,” he concluded with a laugh.
“In any case he was never what you’d call a beauty!” said Brichot who, himself hideous, thought himself good-looking and was always ready to pronounce other men ugly.
“Hold your tongue,” said the Baron, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. In those days he had a peaches-and-cream complexion, and,” he added, finding a fresh note for each syllable, “he was as pretty as a cherub. Besides he was always charming. The women were madly in love with him.”
“But did you ever know his wife?”
“Why, it was through me that he came to know her. I had thought her charming in her boyish get-up one evening when she played Miss Sacripant; I was with some club-mates, and each of us took a woman home with him, and although all I wanted was to go to sleep, slanderous tongues alleged—it’s terrible how malicious people are—that I went to bed with Odette. In any case she took advantage of the slanders to come and bother me, and I thought I might get rid of her by introducing her to Swann. From that moment on she never let me go. She couldn’t spell the simplest word, it was I who wrote all her letters for her. And it was I who, later on, was responsible for taking her out. That, my boy, is what comes of having a good reputation, you see. Though I only half deserved it. She used to force me to get up the most dreadful orgies for her, with five or six men.”
And the lovers whom Odette had had in succession (she had been with this, that and the other man, not one of whose names had ever been guessed by poor Swann, blinded by jealousy and by love, by turns weighing up the chances and believing in oaths, more affirmative than a contradiction which the guilty woman lets slip, a contradiction far more elusive and yet far more significant, of which the jealous lover might take advantage more logically than of the information which he falsely pretends to have received, in the hope of alarming his mistress), these lovers M. de Charlus began to enumerate with as absolute a certainty as if he had been reciting the list of the Kings of France. And indeed the jealous lover, like the contemporaries of a historical event, is too close, he knows nothing, and it is for strangers that the chronicle of adultery assumes the precision of history, and prolongs itself in lists which are a matter of indifference to them and become painful only to another jealous lover, such as I was, who cannot help comparing his own case with that which he hears spoken of and wonders whether the woman he suspects cannot boast an equally illustrious list. But he can never find out; it is a sort of universal conspiracy, a “blind man’s buff” in which everyone cruelly participates, and which consists, while his mistress flits from one to another, in holding over his eyes a bandage which he is perpetually trying to tear off without success, for everyone keeps him blindfold, poor wretch, the kind out of kindness, the cruel out of cruelty, the coarse-minded out of their love of coarse jokes, the well-bred out of politeness and good-breeding, and all alike respecting one of those conventions which are called principles.
“But did Swann ever know that you had enjoyed her favours?”
“What an idea! Confess such a thing to Charles! It’s enough to make one’s hair stand on end. Why, my dear fellow, he would have killed me on the spot, he was as jealous as a tiger. Any more than I ever confessed to Odette, not that she would have minded in the least, that … But you mustn’t make my tongue run away with me. And the joke of it is that it was she who fired a revolver at him, and nearly hit me. Oh! I used to have a fine time with that couple; and naturally it was I who was obliged to act as his second against d’Osmond, who never forgave me. D’Osmond had carried off Odette, and Swann, to console himself, had taken as his mistress, or make-believe mistress, Odette’s sister. But really you mustn’t start making me tell you Swann’s story, or we should be here all night—nobody knows more about it than I do. It was I who used to take Odette out when she didn’t want to see Charles. It was all the more awkward for me as I have a very close kinsman who bears the name Crécy, without of course having any sort of right to it, but still he was none too well pleased. For she went by the name of Odette de Crécy, as she perfectly well could, being merely separated from a Crécy whose wife she still was—an extremely authentic one, he, a most estimable gentleman out of whom she had drained his last farthing. But why should I have to tell you about this Crécy? I’ve seen you with him on the twister, you used to have him to dinner at Balbec. He must have needed it, poor fellow, for he lived on a tiny allowance that Swann made him, and I’m very much afraid that, since my friend’s death, that income must have stopped altogether. What I do not understand,” M. de Charlus said to me, “is that, since you used often to go to Charles’s, you didn’t ask me this evening to present you to the Queen of Naples. In fact I can see that you’re not interested in people as curiosities, and that always surprises me in someone who knew Swann, in whom that sort of interest was so highly developed that it’s impossible to say whether it was I who initiated him in these matters or he me. It surprises me as much as if I met a person who had known Whistler and remained ignorant of what is meant by taste. However, it was chiefly important for Morel to meet her. He was passionately keen to as well, for he’s nothing if not intelligent. It’s a nuisance that she’s gone. However, I shall effect the conjunction one of these days. It’s inevitable that he’ll get to know her. The only possible obstacle would be if she were to die in the night. Well, it’s to be hoped that that won’t happen.”
All of a sudden Brichot, who was still suffering from the shock of the proportion “three out of ten” which M. de Charlus had revealed to him, and had continued to pursue the idea all this time, burst out with an abruptness which was reminiscent of an examining magistrate seeking to make a prisoner confess but which was in reality the result of the Professor’s desire to appear perspicacious and of the misgivings that he felt about launching so grave an accusation: “Isn’t Ski like that?” he inquired of M. de Charlus with a sombre air. He had chosen Ski in order to show off his alleged intuitive powers, telling himself that since there were only three innocents in every ten, he ran little risk of being mistaken if he named Ski, who seemed to him a trifle odd, suffered from insomnia, used scent, in short was not entirely normal.
“But not in the least!” exclaimed the Baron with bitter, dogmatic, exasperated irony. “What you say is so wrong, so absurd, so wide of the mark! Ski is like that precisely to the people who know nothing about it. If he was, he wouldn’t look so like it, be it said without any intention to criticise, for he has a certain charm, indeed I find there’s something very engaging about him.”
“But give us a few names, then,” Brichot persisted. M. de Charlus drew himself up with a haughty air.
“Ah! my dear Sir, I, as you know, live in the world of the abstract; all this interests me only from a transcendental point of view,” he replied with the querulous touchiness peculiar to men of his kind, and the affectation of grandiloquence that characterised his conversation. “To me, you understand, it’s only general principles that are of any interest. I speak to you of this as I might of the law of gravity.” But these moments of irritable retraction in which the Baron sought to conceal his true life lasted but a short time compared with the hours of continual progression in which he allowed it to betray itself, flaunted it with an irritating complacency, the need to confide being stronger in him than the fear of disclosure. “What I meant to say,” he went on, “is that for one bad reputation that is unjustified there are hundreds of good ones which are no less so. Obviously, the number of those who don’t deserve their reputations varies according to whether you rely on what is said by their own kind or by others. And it is true that if the malevolence of the latter is limited by the extreme difficulty they would find in believing that a vice as horrible to them as robbery or murder can be practised by people whom they know to be sensitive and kind, the malevolence of the former is stimulated to excess by the desire to regard as—how shall I put it?—accessible, men who attract them, on the strength of information given them by people who have been led astray by a
similar desire, in fact by the very aloofness with which they are generally regarded. I’ve heard a man who was somewhat ill thought of on account of these tastes say that he supposed that a certain society figure shared them. And his sole reason for believing it was that this society figure had been polite to him! All the more reason for optimism,” said the Baron artlessly, “in the computation of the number. But the true reason for the enormous disparity between the number calculated by the layman and the number calculated by the initiated arises from the mystery with which the latter surround their actions, in order to conceal them from the rest, who, lacking any means of knowing, would be literally stupefied if they were to learn merely a quarter of the truth.”
“So in our day things are as they were among the Greeks,” said Brichot.
“What do you mean, among the Greeks? Do you suppose that it hasn’t been going on ever since? Take the reign of Louis XIV. You have Monsieur, young Vermandois, Molière, Prince Louis of Baden, Brunswick, Charolais, Boufflers, the Great Condé, the Duc de Brissac.”
“Stop a moment. I knew about Monsieur, I knew about Brissac from Saint-Simon, Vendôme of course, and many others as well. But that old pest Saint-Simon often refers to the Great Condé and Prince Louis of Baden and never mentions it.”
“It seems rather deplorable, I must say, that I should have to teach a Professor of the Sorbonne his history. But, my dear fellow, you’re as ignorant as a carp.”
“You are harsh, Baron, but just. But wait a moment, now this will please you: I’ve just remembered a song of the period composed in macaronic verse about a storm in which the Great Condé was caught as he was going down the Rhone in the company of his friend the Marquis de La Moussaye. Condé says:
The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle Page 300