In Search of Lost Time, Volume 5: The Captive, the Fugitive

by Marcel Proust

  “What else can a woman represent to Albertine,” I thought, and there indeed lay the cause of my anguish.

  “Decidedly, Baron,” said Brichot, “should the University Council ever think of founding a Chair of Homosexuality, I shall see that your name is the first to be submitted. Or rather, no; an Institute of Special Psychophysiology would suit you better. And I can see you, best of all, provided with a Chair in the College de France, which would enable you to devote yourself to personal researches the results of which you would deliver, like the Professor of Tamil or Sanskrit, to the handful of people who are interested in them. You would have an audience of two, with your beadle, not that I mean to cast the slightest aspersion upon our corps of ushers, whom I believe to be above suspicion.”

  “You know nothing about it,” the Baron retorted in a harsh and cutting tone. “Besides you’re wrong in thinking that so few people are interested in the subject. It’s just the opposite.” And without stopping to consider the incompatibility between the invariable trend of his own conversation and the reproaches he was about to level at others, “It is, on the contrary, most alarming,” said the Baron with a shocked and contrite air, “people talk about nothing else. It’s a disgrace, but I’m not exaggerating, my dear fellow! It appears that the day before yesterday, at the Duchesse d’Ayen’s, they talked about nothing else for two hours on end. Just imagine, if women have taken to discussing that sort of thing, it’s a positive scandal! The most revolting thing about it,” he went on with extraordinary fire and vigour, “is that they get their information from pests, real scoundrels like young Châtellerault, about whom there’s more to be told than anyone, who tell them stories about other men. I gather he’s been vilifying me, but I don’t care; I’m convinced that the mud and filth flung by an individual who barely escaped being turned out of the Jockey for cheating at cards can only rebound on him. I know that if I were Jane d’Ayen, I should have sufficient respect for my salon not to allow such subjects to be discussed there, nor to allow my own flesh and blood to be dragged through the mire in my house. But society’s finished, there are no longer any rules, any proprieties, in conversation any more than in dress. Ah, my dear fellow, it’s the end of the world. Everyone has become so malicious. People vie with one another in speaking ill of their fellows. It’s appalling!”

  As cowardly still as I had been long ago in my boyhood at Combray when I used to run away in order not to see my grandfather tempted with brandy and the vain efforts of my grandmother imploring him not to drink it, I had but one thought, which was to leave the Verdurins’ house before the execution of M. de Charlus occurred.

  “I simply must go,” I said to Brichot.

  “I’m coming with you,” he replied, “but we can’t just slip away, English fashion. Come and say good-bye to Mme Verdurin,” the Professor concluded, as he made his way to the drawing-room with the air of a man who, in a parlour game, goes to find out whether he may “come back.”

  While we had been talking, M. Verdurin, at a signal from his wife, had taken Morel aside. Even if Mme Verdurin had decided on reflexion that it was wiser to postpone Morel’s enlightenment, she was powerless now to prevent it. There are certain desires, sometimes confined to the mouth, which, as soon as we have allowed them to grow, insist upon being gratified, whatever the consequences may be; one can no longer resist the temptation to kiss a bare shoulder at which one has been gazing for too long and on which one’s lips pounce like a snake upon a bird, or to bury one’s sweet tooth in a tempting cake; nor can one deny oneself the satisfaction of seeing the amazement, anxiety, grief or mirth to which one can move another person by some unexpected communication. So, drunk with melodrama, Mme Verdurin had ordered her husband to take Morel out of the room and at all costs to explain matters to him. The violinist had begun by deploring the departure of the Queen of Naples before he had had a chance of being presented to her. M. de Charlus had told him so often that she was the sister of the Empress Elizabeth and of the Duchesse d’Alençon that the sovereign had assumed an extraordinary importance in his eyes. But the Master explained to him that they were not there to talk about the Queen of Naples, and then went straight to the point. “Listen,” he had concluded after a long explanation, “if you like, we can go and ask my wife what she thinks. I give you my word of honour, I’ve said nothing to her about it. We’ll see what she thinks of it all. My advice may not be right, but you know how sound her judgment is, and besides, she has an immense affection for you; let’s go and submit the case to her.” And as Mme Verdurin, impatiently looking forward to the excitement that she would presently be relishing when she talked to the musician, and then, after he had gone, when she made her husband give her a full report of their conversation, went on repeating to herself: “But what in the world can they be doing? I do hope that Gustave, in keeping him all this time, has managed to give him his cue,” M. Verdurin reappeared with Morel, who seemed extremely agitated.

  “He’d like to ask your advice,” M. Verdurin said to his wife, in the tone of a man who does not know whether his request will be granted. Instead of replying to M. Verdurin, it was to Morel that, in the heat of her passion, Mme Verdurin addressed herself.

  “I agree entirely with my husband. I consider that you cannot put up with it any longer,” she exclaimed vehemently, discarding as a useless fiction her agreement with her husband that she was supposed to know nothing of what he had been saying to the violinist.

  “How do you mean? Put up with what?” stammered M. Verdurin, endeavouring to feign astonishment and seeking, with an awkwardness that was explained by his dismay, to defend his falsehood.

  “I guessed what you’d been saying to him,” replied Mme Verdurin, undisturbed by the improbability of this explanation, and caring little what the violinist might think of her veracity when he recalled this scene. “No,” Mme Verdurin continued, “I feel that you cannot possibly persist in this degrading promiscuity with a tainted person whom nobody will have in their house,” she went on, regardless of the fact that this was untrue and forgetting that she herself entertained him almost daily. “You’re the talk of the Conservatoire,” she added, feeling that this was the argument that would carry most weight. “Another month of this life and your artistic future will be shattered, whereas without Charlus you ought to be making at least a hundred thousand francs a year.”

  “But I’d never heard a thing, I’m astounded, I’m very grateful to you,” Morel murmured, the tears starting to his eyes. But, being obliged at once to feign astonishment and to conceal his shame, he had turned redder and was sweating more abundantly than if he had played all Beethoven’s sonatas in succession, and tears welled from his eyes which the Bonn Master would certainly not have drawn from him.

  “If you’ve never heard anything, you’re unique in that respect. He is a gentleman with a vile reputation and has been mixed up in some very nasty doings. I know that the police have their eye on him and that is perhaps the best thing for him if he’s not to end up like all such men, murdered by ruffians,” she went on, for as she thought of Charlus the memory of Mme de Duras recurred to her, and in the intoxication of her rage she sought to aggravate still further the wounds that she was inflicting on the unfortunate Charlie, and to avenge those that she herself had received in the course of the evening. “Anyhow, even financially he can be of no use to you; he’s completely ruined since he has become the prey of people who are blackmailing him, and who can’t even extract from him the price of the tune they call, any more than you can extract the price for yours, because everything’s mortgaged up to the hilt, town house, country house, everything.”

  Morel was all the more inclined to believe this lie since M. de Charlus liked to confide in him his relations with ruffians, a race for which the son of a valet, however villainous himself, professes a feeling of horror as strong as his attachment to Bonapartist principles.

  Already, in his cunning mind, a scheme had begun to take shape analogous to what was called in the
eighteenth century a reversal of alliances. Resolving never to speak to M. de Charlus again, he would return on the following evening to Jupien’s niece, and see that everything was put right with her. Unfortunately for him this plan was doomed to failure, M. de Charlus having made an appointment for that same evening with Jupien, which the ex-tailor dared not fail to keep in spite of recent events. Other events, as we shall see, having occurred as regards Morel, when Jupien in tears told his tale of woe to the Baron, the latter, no less woeful, assured him that he would adopt the forsaken girl, that she could take one of the titles that were at his disposal, probably that of Mlle d’Oloron, that he would see that she received a thorough finishing and married a rich husband. Promises which filled Jupien with joy but left his niece unmoved, for she still loved Morel, who, from stupidity or cynicism, would come into the shop and tease her in Jupien’s absence. “What’s the matter with you,” he would say with a laugh, “with those big circles under your eyes? A broken heart? Dammit, time passes and things change. After all, a man has a right to try on a shoe, and all the more so a woman, and if she doesn’t fit him …”He lost his temper once only, because she cried, which he considered cowardly, unworthy of her. People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked.

  But we have looked too far ahead, for all this did not happen until after the Verdurin reception which we interrupted, and which we must take up again at the point where we left off.

  “I’d never have suspected,” Morel groaned, in answer to Mme Verdurin.

  “Naturally people don’t say it to your face, but that doesn’t prevent your being the talk of the Conservatoire,” Mme Verdurin went on spitefully, seeking to make it plain to Morel that it was not only M. de Charlus who was being criticised, but himself too. “I’m quite prepared to believe that you know nothing about it; all the same, people are talking freely. Ask Ski what they were saying the other day at Chevillard’s concert within a few feet of us when you came into my box. In other words, people are pointing a finger at you. Personally I don’t pay the slightest attention, but what I do feel is that it makes a man supremely ridiculous and that he becomes a public laughing-stock for the rest of his life.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” said Charlie in the tone in which one speaks to a dentist who has just caused one the most excruciating pain without one’s daring to show it, or to a too bloodthirsty second who has forced one into a duel on account of some casual remark of which he has said: “You can’t swallow that.”

  “I believe that you have plenty of character, that you’re a man,” replied Mme Verdurin, “and that you will be capable of speaking out boldly, although he tells everybody that you’d never dare, that he’s got you under his thumb.”

  Charlie, seeking a borrowed dignity in which to cloak the tatters of his own, found in his memory something that he had read or, more probably, heard quoted, and at once proclaimed: “I wasn’t brought up to stomach such an affront. This very evening I shall break with M. de Charlus. The Queen of Naples has gone, hasn’t she? Otherwise, before breaking with him, I’d have asked him …”

  “It isn’t necessary to break with him altogether,” said Mme Verdurin, anxious to avoid a disruption of the little nucleus. “There’s no harm in your seeing him here, among our little group, where you are appreciated, where no one speaks ill of you. But you must insist upon your freedom, and not let him drag you about among all those silly women who are friendly to your face; I wish you could have heard what they were saying behind your back. Anyhow, you need feel no regret. Not only are you getting rid of a stain which would have marked you for the rest of your life, but from the artistic point of view, even without this scandalous presentation by Charlus, I don’t mind telling you that debasing yourself like this in these sham society circles would give the impression that you aren’t serious, would earn you the reputation of being an amateur, a mere salon performer, which is a terrible thing at your age. I can understand that to all those fine ladies it’s highly convenient to be able to return their friends’ hospitality by making you come and play for nothing, but it’s your future as an artist that would foot the bill. I don’t say that there aren’t one or two. You mentioned the Queen of Naples—who has left, for she had to go on to another party—now she’s a nice woman, and I may tell you that I think she has a poor opinion of Charlus. I’m sure she came here chiefly to please me. Yes, yes, I know she was longing to meet M. Verdurin and myself. That is a house in which you might play. And then of course if I take you—because the artists all know me, you understand, they’ve always been very sweet to me, and regard me almost as one of themselves, as their Mistress—that’s quite a different matter. But whatever you do, you must never go near Mme de Duras! Don’t go and make a bloomer like that! I know several artists who have come here and told me all about her. They know they can trust me,” she said, in the sweet and simple tone which she knew how to adopt instantaneously, imparting an appropriate air of modesty to her features, an appropriate charm to her eyes, “they come here, just like that, to tell me all their little troubles; the ones who are said to be most taciturn go on chatting to me sometimes for hours on end, and I can’t tell you how interesting they are. Poor Chabrier always used to say: ‘There’s nobody like Mme Verdurin for getting them to talk.’ Well, do you know, I’ve seen them all, every one of them without exception, literally in tears after having gone to play for Mme de Duras. It’s not only the way she enjoys making her servants humiliate them, but they could never get an engagement anywhere else again. The agents would say: ‘Oh yes, the fellow who plays at Mme de Duras’s.’ That settled it. There’s nothing like that for ruining a man’s future. You see, with society people it doesn’t seem serious; you may have all the talent in the world, it’s a sad thing to have to say, but one Mme de Duras is enough to give you the reputation of an amateur. And artists, you realise—and after all I know them, I’ve been moving among them for forty years, launching them, taking an interest in them—well, when they say that somebody’s an amateur, that’s the end of it. And people were beginning to say it of you. Indeed, the number of times I’ve been obliged to take up the cudgels on your behalf, to assure them that you wouldn’t play in some absurd drawing-room! Do you know what the answer was: ‘But he’ll be forced to. Charlus won’t even consult him, he never asks him for his opinion.’ Somebody wanted to pay him a compliment by saying: ‘We greatly admire your friend Morel.’ Do you know the answer he gave, with that insolent air which you know so well? ‘But what do you mean by calling him my friend. We’re not of the same class. Say rather that he is my creature, my protégé.’”

  At this moment there stirred beneath the domed forehead of the musical goddess the one thing that certain people cannot keep to themselves, a word which it is not merely abject but imprudent to repeat. But the need to repeat it is stronger than honour or prudence. It was to this need that, after a few convulsive twitches of her spherical and sorrowful brow, the Mistress succumbed: “Someone actually told my husband that he had said ‘my servant,’ but for that I cannot vouch,” she added. It was a similar need that had impelled M. de Charlus, shortly after he had sworn to Morel that nobody should ever know the story of his birth, to say to Mme Verdurin: “His father was a valet.” A similar need again, now that the word had been said, would make it circulate from one person to another, each of whom would confide it under the seal of a secrecy which would be promised and not kept by the hearer, as by the informant himself. These words would end, as in the game called hunt-the-thimble, by being traced back to Mme Verdurin, bringing down upon her the wrath of the person concerned, who would finally have heard them. She knew this, but could not repress the word that was burning her tongue. “Servant” could not but offend Morel. She said “servant” nevertheless, and if she added that she could not vouch for the word, this was so as to appear certain of the rest, thanks to this hint of uncertainty, and to show her impartiality. She herself found this impartiality so touching tha
t she began to speak tenderly to Charlie: “Because, don’t you see, I don’t blame him. He’s dragging you down into his abyss, it is true, but it’s not his fault since he wallows in it himself, since he wallows in it,” she repeated in a louder tone, having been struck by the aptness of the image which had taken shape so quickly that her attention only now caught up with it and sought to make the most of it. “No, what I do reproach him for,” she went on in a melting tone—like a woman drunk with her own success—“is a want of delicacy towards you. There are certain things that one doesn’t say in public. For instance, this evening he was betting that he would make you blush with joy by telling you (stuff and nonsense, of course, for his recommendation would be enough to prevent your getting it) that you were to have the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Even that I could overlook, although I’ve never much liked,” she went on with a delicate and dignified air, “seeing someone make a fool of his friends, but, don’t you know, there are certain little things that do stick in one’s gullet. Such as when he told us, with screams of laughter, that if you want the Cross it’s to please your uncle and that your uncle was a flunkey.”

  “He told you that!” cried Charlie, believing, on the strength of this adroitly interpolated remark, in the truth of everything that Mme Verdurin had said. Mme Verdurin was overwhelmed with the joy of an old mistress who, just as her young lover is on the point of deserting her, succeeds in breaking up his marriage. And perhaps the lie had not been a calculated one, perhaps she had not even consciously lied. A sort of sentimental logic, or perhaps, more elementary still, a sort of nervous reflex, that impelled her, in order to brighten up her life and preserve her happiness, to sow discord in the little clan, may have brought impulsively to her lips, without giving her time to check their veracity, these assertions that were so diabolically effective if not strictly accurate.