“Oh, but she must be wonderful,” he said with a naive, sincere enthusiasm as he sought to form a mental picture of the person who was capable of plunging me into such despair and agitation. “I’m angry with her for hurting you, but at the same time one can’t help seeing that someone who’s an artist to his fingertips as you are, someone who loves beauty in all its forms and with so passionate a love, that you were predestined to suffer more than an ordinary person when you found it in a woman.”
At last I had found the photograph. “She’s bound to be wonderful,” Robert was still saying, not yet having seen that I was holding out the photograph to him. All at once he caught sight of it, and held it for a moment between his hands. His face expressed a stupefaction which amounted to stupidity. “Is this the girl you love?” he said at length in a tone in which astonishment was curbed by his fear of offending me. He made no comment, but he had assumed the reasonable, prudent, unavoidably somewhat disdainful air which one assumes in front of a sick person—even if he is a man of outstanding gifts, and your friend—who is now nothing of the sort, for, raving mad, he speaks to you of a celestial being who has appeared to him, and continues to behold this being where you, being sane, can see nothing but a quilt on the bed. I at once understood Robert’s astonishment, realising that it was the same as that which the sight of his mistress had provoked in me, the only difference being that I had recognised in her a woman whom I already knew, where he imagined that he had never seen Albertine. But no doubt the difference between our respective impressions of the same person was equally great. The time was long past when I had all too tentatively begun at Balbec by adding to my visual sensations when I gazed at Albertine sensations of taste, of smell, of touch. Since then, other more profound, more tender, more indefinable sensations had been added to them, and afterwards painful sensations. In short, Albertine was merely, like a stone round which snow has gathered, the generating centre of an immense structure which rose above the plane of my heart. Robert, to whom all this stratification of sensations was invisible, grasped only a residue which it prevented me, on the contrary, from perceiving. What had struck Robert when his eyes fell upon Albertine’s photograph was not the thrill of wonderment that overcame the Trojan elders seeing Helen go by and saying:
One single glance from her eclipses all our ills25
but precisely the opposite impression which may be expressed by: “What, it’s for this that he has worked himself into such a state, has grieved himself so, has done so many idiotic things!” It must indeed be admitted that this sort of reaction at the sight of the person who has caused the suffering, upset the life, sometimes brought about the death of someone we love, is infinitely more frequent than that of the Trojan elders, indeed to all intents and purposes the habitual one. This is not merely because love is individual, nor because, when we ourselves do not feel it, finding it avoidable and philosophising about the folly of others comes naturally to us. No, it is because, when it has reached the stage at which it causes such misery, the edifice of the sensations interposed between the face of the woman and the eyes of her lover—the huge egg of pain which encases it and conceals it as a mantle of snow conceals a fountain—is already raised so high that the point at which the lover’s gaze comes to rest, the point at which he finds his pleasure and his sufferings, is as far from the point which other people see as is the real sun from the place in which its refracted light enables us to see it in the sky. And what is more, during this time, beneath the chrysalis of grief and tenderness which renders the worst metamorphoses of the beloved object invisible to the lover, her face has had time to grow old and to change. With the result that, if the face which the lover saw for the first time is very far removed from that which he has seen since he has loved and suffered, it is, in the opposite sense, equally far from the face which may now be seen by the indifferent onlooker. (What would have happened if, instead of the photograph of one who was still a girl, Robert had seen the photograph of an elderly mistress?) And indeed, in order to feel this astonishment, we have no need to see for the first time the woman who has caused such ravages. Often we know her already, as my great-uncle knew Odette. So the difference in optics extends not only to people’s physical appearance but to their character, and to their individual importance. It is more likely than not that the woman who is causing the man who loves her to suffer has always behaved good-naturedly towards someone who was indifferent to her, as Odette, who was so cruel to Swann, had been the kind, attentive “lady in pink” to my great-uncle, or indeed that the person whose every decision is computed in advance by the man who loves her, with as much dread as that of a deity, appears as a person of no consequence, only too glad to do anything he asks, in the eyes of the man who does not love her, as Saint-Loup’s mistress had appeared to me who saw in her merely that “Rachel when from the Lord” who had so repeatedly been offered to me. I recalled my own amazement, the first time I met her with Saint-Loup, at the thought that anybody could be tormented by not knowing what such a woman had been doing one evening, what she might have whispered to someone, why she had desired a rupture. And I felt that all this past existence—but, in this case, Albertine’s—towards which every fibre of my heart, of my life, was directed with a throbbing and importunate pain, must appear just as insignificant to Saint-Loup, and would one day, perhaps, appear so to me; I felt that I might gradually pass, so far as the insignificance or gravity of Albertine’s past was concerned, from the state of mind in which I was at the moment to that of Saint-Loup, for I was under no illusion as to what Saint-Loup might be thinking, as to what anyone else than the lover himself may think. And I was not unduly distressed. Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination. I recalled that tragic explanation of so many lives which is furnished by an inspired but not lifelike portrait such as Elstir’s portrait of Odette, which is a portrait not so much of a mistress as of the distortions of love. All that it lacked was—what so many portraits have—the fact of coming at once from a great painter and from a lover (and even then it was said that Elstir had been Odette’s). The whole life of a lover, of a lover whose folly nobody understands—the whole life of a Swann—goes to prove this disparity. But let the lover be embodied in a painter like Elstir and then we have the clue to the enigma, we have at last before our eyes those lips which the common herd have never perceived, that nose which nobody has ever seen, that unsuspected carriage. The portrait says: “What I have loved, what has made me suffer, what I have never ceased to behold, is this.” By an inverse gymnastic, I who had made a mental effort to add to Rachel all that Saint-Loup had added to her of himself, I now attempted to subtract the contribution of my heart and mind from the composition of Albertine and to picture her to myself as she must appear to Saint-Loup, as Rachel had appeared to me. But how much importance does all this have? Would we give credence to these differences, even if we could see them ourselves? When, in the summer at Balbec, Albertine used to wait for me beneath the arcades of Incarville and jump into my carriage, not only had she not yet “thickened,” but, as a result of too much exercise, she had lost weight; thin, made plainer by an ugly hat which left visible only the tip of an ugly nose and, at a side-view, pale cheeks like white slugs, there was very little of her that I recognised, enough, however, to know, when she sprang into the carriage, that it was she, that she had been punctual in keeping our appointment and had not gone somewhere else; and this was enough; what we love is too much in the past, consists too much in the time that we have wasted together for us to require the whole woman; we wish only to be sure that it is she, not to be mistaken as to her identity, a thing far more important than beauty to those who love; her cheeks may grow hollow, her body thin, even to those who were originally proudest, in the eyes of the world, of their domination over a beauty, and yet that little tip of nose, that sign which epitomises the permanent personality of a woman, that algebraical formula, that constant factor, is sufficient to prevent a man who is courted in the highest society, and was
once fond of it, from having a single evening free because he spends his time combing and uncombing, until it is time to go to sleep, the hair of the woman he loves, or simply sitting by her side, in order to be with her, or in order that she may be with him, or merely in order that she may not be with other men.
“Are you sure,” Robert asked me, “that I can offer this woman thirty thousand francs just like that for her husband’s election committee? She’s as dishonest as all that? If you’re right, three thousand francs would be enough.”
“No, I beg of you, don’t be cheeseparing about a thing that matters so much to me. This is what you’re to say to her (and it’s to some extent true): ‘My friend had borrowed these thirty thousand francs from a relative for the election expenses of the uncle of the girl he was engaged to marry. It was because of this engagement that the money was given him. And he had asked me to bring it to you so that Albertine should know nothing about it. And now Albertine has left him. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s obliged to pay back the thirty thousand francs if he doesn’t marry Albertine. And if he is going to marry her, then if only to keep up appearances she ought to return immediately, because it will make a very bad impression if she stays away for long.’ You think I’ve deliberately made all this up?”
“Not at all,” Saint-Loup assured me out of kindness, out of tact, and also because he knew that circumstances are often stranger than one supposes.
After all, it was by no means impossible that in this tale of the thirty thousand francs there might be, as I assured him, a large element of truth. It was possible, but it was not true, and this element of truth was in fact a lie. But we lied to each other, Robert and I, as in every conversation when one friend is genuinely anxious to help another who is unhappy in love. The friend who is being counsellor, prop, comforter, may pity the other’s distress but cannot share it, and the kinder he is to him the more he lies. And the other confesses to him as much as is necessary in order to secure his help, but, precisely in order to secure that help, perhaps, conceals many things from him. And the happy one of the two is, when all is said, he who takes trouble, goes on a journey, carries out a mission, but has no inner anguish. I was at this moment the person Robert had been at Doncières when he thought that Rachel had left him.
“Very well, just as you like; if I get a snub, I accept it in advance for your sake. And even if it does seem a bit queer to make such an undisguised bargain, I know that in our world there are plenty of duchesses, even the stuffiest of them, who if you offered them thirty thousand francs would do things far more difficult than telling their nieces not to stay in Touraine. Anyhow, I’m doubly glad to be doing you a service, since it’s the only thing that will make you agree to see me. If I marry,” he went on, “don’t you think we might see more of one another, won’t you regard my house as your own? …”
He suddenly stopped short, the thought having occurred to him (as I supposed at the time) that, if I too were to marry, Albertine might not be a suitable friend for his wife. And I remembered what the Cambremers had said to me about the probability of his marrying a niece of the Prince de Guermantes.
He consulted the timetable, and found that he could not leave Paris until the evening. Françoise inquired: “Am I to take Mlle Albertine’s bed out of the study?” “On the contrary,” I said, “you must make it for her.” I hoped that she would return any day and did not wish Françoise to suppose that there could be any doubt of this. Albertine’s departure must appear to have been agreed between ourselves, and not in any way to imply that she loved me less than before. But Françoise looked at me with an air, if not of incredulity, at any rate of doubt. She too had her alternative hypotheses. Her nostrils flared, she scented a quarrel, she must have felt it in the air for a long time past. And if she was not absolutely sure of it, this was perhaps only because, like myself, she hesitated to believe unconditionally what would have given her too much pleasure. Now the weight of the affair no longer rested on my overtaxed mind but on Saint-Loup. I was buoyed up with gladness because I had made a decision, because I told myself: “I have answered quick as a flash.”
Saint-Loup could scarcely have been in the train when I ran into Bloch in my hall. I had not heard his ring, and was obliged to let him stay with me for a while. He had met me recently with Albertine (whom he had known at Balbec) on a day when she was in a bad mood. “I met M. Bontemps at dinner,” he told me, “and as I have a certain influence over him, I told him that I was grieved that his niece was not nicer to you, and that he ought to have a word with her about it.” I choked with rage; these remonstrations and complaints would destroy the whole effect of Saint-Loup’s intervention and involve me directly in the eyes of Albertine, whom I now seemed to be imploring to return. To make matters worse, Françoise, who was lingering in the hall, could hear every word. I heaped every imaginable reproach upon Bloch, telling him that I had never authorised him to do anything of the sort and that, besides, the whole thing was nonsense. From then on, Bloch never left off smiling, less, I think, from joy than from embarrassment at having annoyed me. He laughingly expressed his surprise at having provoked such anger. Perhaps he said this in the hope of minimising in my eyes the importance of his indiscreet intervention, perhaps because he was of a cowardly nature and lived gaily and idly in an atmosphere of falsehood, as jellyfish float upon the surface of the sea, perhaps because, even if he had been a man of a different kind, other people can never see things from our point of view and therefore do not realise the magnitude of the injury that words uttered at random can do us. I had barely shown him out, unable to think of any remedy for the mischief he had done, when the bell rang again and Françoise brought me a summons from the head of the Sûreté. The parents of the little girl whom I had brought into the house for an hour had decided to bring a charge against me for abduction of a minor. There are moments in life when a sort of beauty is born of the multiplicity of the troubles that assail us, intertwined like Wagnerian leitmotifs, and also from the notion, which then emerges, that events are not situated in the sum of the reflexions portrayed in the wretched little mirror which the mind holds in front of it and which it calls the future, that they are somewhere outside and spring up as suddenly as a person who comes to catch us in the act. Even when left to itself, an event becomes modified, whether frustration amplifies it for us or satisfaction reduces it. But it is rarely unaccompanied. The feelings aroused by each one of them contradict one another, and fear, to a certain extent, as I felt on my way to see the head of the Sûreté, is an at least temporary and fairly efficacious counter-irritant for sentimental miseries.
At the Sûreté, I found the girl’s parents, who insulted me and with the words “We’d rather starve” handed me back the five hundred francs which I did not want to take, and the head of the Sûreté who, setting himself the inimitable example of the judicial facility in repartee, seized upon a word in each sentence that I uttered for the purpose of concocting a witty and crushing retort. My innocence of the alleged crime was never taken into consideration, for that was the sole hypothesis which nobody was willing to accept for an instant. Nevertheless the difficulty of proving the charge enabled me to escape with this castigation, which was extremely violent for as long as the parents were in the room. But as soon as they had gone, the head of the Sûreté, who had a weakness for little girls, changed his tone and admonished me as man to man: “Next time, you must be more careful. Good God, you can’t pick them up as easily as that, or you’ll get into trouble. Anyhow, you’ll find dozens of little girls who are better-looking than that one, and far cheaper. It was a perfectly ridiculous amount to pay.” I was so certain that he would fail to understand me if I attempted to tell him the truth that without saying a word I took advantage of his permission to withdraw. Every passer-by, until I was safely at home, seemed to me an inspector appointed to spy on my every movement. But this leitmotif, like that of my anger with Bloch, died away, leaving the field clear for that of Albertine’s departure.
/> The latter resumed on an almost joyous note now that Saint-Loup had set out. Since he had undertaken to go and see Mme Bontemps, my sufferings had been dispelled. I believed that this was because I had acted, and I believed it sincerely, for we never know what is concealed in our hearts of hearts. But what really made me happy was not, as I supposed, that I had unburdened my indecisions on to Saint-Loup. I was not in fact entirely mistaken; the specific for curing an unfortunate event (and three events out of four are unfortunate) is a decision; for it has the effect, by a sudden reversal of our thoughts, of interrupting the flow of those that come from the past event and prolong its vibration, and breaking it with a counter-flow of thoughts from the outside, from the future. But these new thoughts are most of all beneficial to us (and this was the case with the thoughts that assailed me at this moment) when from the depths of that future it is a hope that they bring us. What really made me so happy was the secret certainty that Saint-Loup’s mission could not fail and that Albertine was bound to return. I realised this; for not having received any word from Saint-Loup on the following day, I began to suffer anew. My decision, my transference to him of plenipotentiary powers, was not, therefore, the cause of my joy, which in that case would have persisted; its cause was rather the “Success is certain” which had been in my mind when I said “Come what may.” And the thought, aroused by his delay, that after all his mission might not prove successful, was so hateful to me that all my gaiety evaporated. It is in reality our anticipation, our hope of happy events that fills us with a joy which we ascribe to other causes and which ceases, plunging us once more into misery, if we are no longer so certain that what we desire will come to pass. It is always an invisible belief that sustains the edifice of our sensory world and deprived of which it totters. We have seen that it created for us the merit or the nullity of other people, our excitement or boredom at seeing them. It similarly creates the possibility of enduring a grief which seems to us trivial simply because we are convinced that it will presently be brought to an end, or its sudden intensification to the point where a person’s presence matters to us as much as, sometimes even more than, life itself.
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