In Search of Lost Time

by Marcel Proust

  ‘Poor Marquis,’ she would say, although she was unable to persuade herself that he had not done everything he could to avoid going to the front and, once mobilized, to keep well away from any danger, ‘Poor lady,’ she would say, thinking about Mme de Marsantes, ‘how she must have cried when she heard about the death of her boy! If only she could have seen him one more time, but perhaps it’s better that she couldn’t because his nose was split in two, he was all disfigured.’ And Françoise’s eyes would fill with tears, through which, though, shone the cruel curiosity of the peasant woman. No doubt Françoise pitied Mme de Marsantes’s sorrow with all her heart, but she regretted not knowing the form that sorrow had taken and not being able to enjoy the distressing spectacle of it. And as she would dearly have loved to weep, and to have me see her weep, she said, as a stimulus to her tears: ‘Oh, it’s really affected me, this has!’ And she watched for signs of grief in me with such avidity that I feigned a degree of brusqueness when speaking of Robert. And largely, I’m sure, out of a spirit of imitation and because she had heard other people say it, for there are clichés among servants just as there are in literary circles, she would repeat, not however without a poor person’s note of satisfaction: ‘All his wealth didn’t prevent him from dying like anyone else, and it’s no good to him now.’ The butler took advantage of the opportunity to tell Françoise that it was sad, of course, but that it hardly counted beside the millions of men who were falling every day despite the government’s efforts to hide the fact. This time, however, the butler did not succeed in increasing Françoise’s grief as he had hoped to. For she replied: ‘It’s true they are dying for France too, but they’re strangers; it’s always more interesting when it’s people you know.’ And Françoise, who enjoyed crying, added: ‘Do make sure to tell me if there’s anything about the Marquis’s death in the paper.’

  Robert had often said sadly to me, long before the war: ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about my life, I’ve been condemned in advance.’ Was he alluding to the vice which he had succeeded up to that point in concealing from the world, but of which he was aware, and whose seriousness he perhaps exaggerated, as children making love for the first time, or even before that seeking solitary pleasure, imagine that they are like plants, unable to scatter their pollen without dying immediately afterwards? Perhaps this exaggeration, for Saint-Loup as for children, stemmed as much from the idea of a sin with which one is still unfamiliar, as from the fact that an entirely new sensation has an almost terrible power which only time and repetition will diminish. Or did he really have, to be justified if necessary by his father’s death at an early age, an intimation of his own premature end? Intimations of that sort would seem to be impossible, of course. Yet death does seem to be subject to certain laws. Often, for instance, it seems that children born to parents who died either very old or very young are almost forced to disappear at the same age, the former extending incurable sorrows and illnesses into their hundredth year, the others, despite a happy and healthy life, carried off at the premature but inevitable date by an illness so opportune and so accidental (however deeply rooted it may have been in their temperament) that it seems no more than the formality necessary for the achievement of death. And might it not be possible that even accidental death – like that of Saint-Loup himself, which may have been linked to his character in more ways than perhaps I have thought it necessary to describe – is also inscribed in advance, known only to the gods, invisible to men, but revealed by a sadness, half unconscious, half-conscious (and even, in this last respect, expressed to others with that complete sincerity with which we predict misfortunes which we believe in our heart of hearts we can escape, and which will happen nevertheless), specific to each person who is permanently aware that within himself, like a heraldic device, he carries the fateful date?

  He must have been magnificent during those final hours. The man who throughout his life had seemed, even when sitting down, or walking across a room, to be keeping in check the impulse to charge, concealing behind a smile the indomitable will that lurked within his triangular-shaped head, had charged at last. Stripped of its books, the feudal turret had regained its military function. By dying this Guermantes had become more completely himself, or rather more completely part of his race, into which he melted, becoming simply a Guermantes, as was symbolically visible at his burial in the church of Saint-Hilaire at Combray, which was completely hung with black draperies on which stood out in red, under the sealed crown, without the initials of titles or forenames, the G of the Guermantes that in death he had once again become.

  Before going to the burial, which did not take place straight away, I wrote to Gilberte. I ought perhaps to have written to the Duchesse de Guermantes, but I told myself that she would greet Robert’s death with the same indifference that I had seen her display towards the deaths of so many others whose lives had seemed so closely bound up with her own, and that perhaps, with her Guermantes cast of mind, she would even seek to show that she was not superstitious about ties of blood. Besides, I was too unwell to write to everybody. I had thought, once, that she and Robert were fond of one another, in the sense in which the term is used in society, that is that they told each other affectionate things that they happened to be thinking at the time. But when he was not with her he had no hesitation in declaring her an idiot, and although she may sometimes have taken a selfish pleasure in seeing him, I saw her as quite incapable of taking the slightest pains, and extremely reluctant to use what credit she had in order to do him a service, or even to save him from trouble. The maliciousness she had revealed by refusing to recommend him to General Saint-Joseph, when Robert was going to have to leave for Morocco, showed that the devotion she had shown on the occasion of his marriage was no more than a kind of compensation, which had cost her nothing. I was therefore very surprised to learn that, as she had been unwell when Robert was killed, they had felt obliged for several days, on the most spurious of pretexts, to hide from her eyes the newspapers which might have apprised her of his death, in order to spare her the shock she would have felt. My surprise was even greater, though, when I learned that, when they had finally had to tell her the truth, the Duchesse cried for a whole day, fell ill, and for a long time – for more than a week, which was a long time for her – was inconsolable. When I heard about her grief, I was touched by it. It meant that the whole of society could say, and I can attest, that there was a great friendship between them. But then, when I remember how much malicious gossip and reluctance to help were wrapped up in this friendship, I cannot help thinking how little a great friendship means in society.

  A little while after this, however, in circumstances of greater historical, though less personal importance, Mme de Guermantes showed herself, I thought, in a still more favourable light. She, who when she was a girl had shown such outspoken impertinence, if you remember, towards the Imperial Russian family and who, when married, had always spoken so freely to them that they had sometimes accused her of a lack of tact, was perhaps the only person, after the Russian Revolution, to show unlimited devotion to the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses. Just a year before the war, she had considerably annoyed the Grand Duchess Vladimir by referring continually to the Countess of Hohenfelsen, the morganatic wife of the Grand Duke Paul, as ‘the Grand Duchess Paul’. But despite that, the Revolution had hardly broken out before our ambassador in St Petersburg, M. Paléologue (known as ‘Paléo’ in diplomatic circles, which have their witty abbreviations like any others), was harassed by telegrams from the Duchesse de Guermantes, who wanted news of the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. And, for a long time, the only regular marks of sympathy and respect that this princess received came exclusively from Mme de Guermantes.

  Saint-Loup caused, if not by his death, at least by what he did in the few weeks preceding it, greater grief than that of the Duchesse. On the day after the evening when I saw him, and two days after Charlus had told Morel: ‘I shall take my revenge,’ Saint-Loup’s attempts to locate Morel met with s
uccess. That is, they were successful in that the general, under whose command Morel ought to have been, had learned that he was a deserter, had had him found and arrested and, in order to apologize to Saint-Loup for the punishment which someone in whom he took an interest was about to undergo, had written to Saint-Loup to tell him about it. Morel was convinced that his arrest had been provoked by the resentment of M. de Charlus. He remembered the words: ‘I shall take my revenge’, thought that this was indeed that revenge, and asked to make certain revelations. ‘It’s true, he declared, that I deserted. But is it altogether my fault if I’ve been led astray?’ He recounted stories about M. de Charlus and M. d’Argencourt, with whom he had also quarrelled, in none of which he had actually been involved directly, but all of which they, with the twofold expansiveness of lovers and inverts, had told him, which led to the arrest of both M. de Charlus and M. d’Argencourt. The arrest itself was probably less distressing to each man than their discovery of the fact, previously unknown to them, that the other was their rival, while the preparation of the case also revealed a huge number of others, unknown, ordinary men, casually picked up in the street. But they were soon released. Morel was, too, because the letter the general had sent to Saint-Loup was returned bearing the legend: ‘Deceased. Killed in action.’ Out of respect for the dead man, the general simply had Morel sent to the front, where he showed great gallantry, survived every danger and came back, at the end of the war, with the medal that M. de Charlus had once vainly solicited for him, and which he owed indirectly to the death of Saint-Loup.

  I have often thought since then, remembering the croix de guerre lost at Jupien’s, that if Saint-Loup had lived he might easily have been elected a Deputy in the post-war elections, with all its froth of nonsense and the ray of glory that came in its wake, when a single missing finger, wiping out centuries of prejudice, was an entry permit into a brilliant marriage into an aristocratic family, the croix de guerre, even if awarded for clerical duties, was enough for entry, after a triumphant election, into the Chamber of Deputies, almost to the Académie française. The election of Saint-Loup, because of his ‘holy’ family, would have caused M. Arthur Meyer79 to pour out floods of tears and ink. Perhaps, though, he was too sincerely fond of the people to succeed in winning the popular vote, although they would probably, on account of his noble pedigree, have forgiven him his democratic ideas. He would doubtless have expounded these with success to a chamber composed of aviators. Certainly those heroes would have understood him, as would the few very intelligent minds. But thanks to the pompous self-satisfaction of the National Bloc, the old political hacks were dug out, the ones who were always re-elected. Those who could not enter a chamber of aviators begged, at least in the case of entry to the Académie française, the votes of marshals, the President of the Republic, a President of the Chamber, etc. They would not have been in favour of Saint-Loup, but were enthusiastic about another of Jupien’s regulars, the Action libérale Deputy, who was re-elected unopposed. He continued to wear the uniform of a Territorial, even though the war was long over. His election was greeted with rapture by all the newspapers that had ‘united’ to support his nomination, by rich and noble ladies who now wore nothing but rags, out of a sense of propriety, and a fear of taxes, while the men of the Bourse were ceaselessly buying up diamonds, not for their wives but because, having lost all confidence in the credit of any country, they were taking refuge in this tangible form of wealth, and incidentally sending up de Beers stock by a thousand francs. So much stupidity was somewhat annoying, but people were less hostile to the National Bloc when they suddenly saw the victims of Bolshevism, Grand Duchesses in rags, their husbands murdered by the barrow-load, while their sons were killed by the stones thrown down on them after they had been kept without food, made to work amidst jeers of scorn, then pushed down wells because people thought they had the plague and might pass it on. The ones who had managed to escape suddenly reappeared…

  *

  The new sanatorium to which I retired cured me no more than the first; and many years passed before I left it. During the train journey, when I eventually did return to Paris, the thought of my lack of literary talent, which, as I believed, I had discovered long ago on the Guermantes way, of which I had become even more mournfully aware during my daily walks with Gilberte, before we returned to dine, very late, at Tansonville, and which I had almost identified, the night before I left that house, as I read those pages of the Goncourts’ journal, with the pointlessness and falsity of literature, this thought, perhaps less painful now but more dismaying than ever, its subject being not an infirmity peculiar to myself alone, but the non-existence of the ideal in which I had for so long believed, this thought which for so long had not troubled my mind, struck me once again with a more lamentable force than ever. The train, I remember, had come to a halt in open countryside. The sun’s rays illuminated the upper half of the trunks of a line of trees that followed the railway. ‘Trees, I thought, you have nothing to say to me any longer, my heart has grown cold and no longer responds to you. Here I am, after all, in the middle of nature, my eyes noting the line which separates your glowing foliage from your shaded trunks, and I feel only coolness and boredom. If ever I could have thought of myself as a poet, I now know that I am not. Perhaps in this new era of my life which, however desiccated, is now opening, human beings may be able to inspire in me what nature no longer says to me. But the days when I might perhaps have been capable of singing its song will never come back.’ Yet by consoling myself with the thought that social observation might come to take the place of vanished inspiration, I knew that I was just trying to find some consolation, and that I knew myself to be worthless. If I truly had the soul of an artist, what pleasure should I not experience at the sight of this screen of trees lit by the setting sun, these little flowers on the embankment that reached almost up to the carriage step, whose petals I could count, and whose colours I was careful not to describe, as so many good men of letters would, for could one hope to transmit to the reader a pleasure one has not felt oneself?

  A little later I had seen with the same indifference the flecks of orange and gold with which it splashed the windows of a house; and finally, later still, I had seen another house, which looked as though it were built of some strange pink material. But I made these observations with the same absolute indifference as if, walking in a garden with a lady, I had seen a piece of glass and a little further on an object made of some alabaster-like substance, the unusual colour of which would not normally have been enough to rouse me from my languorous boredom but none the less, out of politeness to the lady, in order to say something and also to show that I had noticed the colour, I had pointed out in passing the coloured glass and the fragment of stucco. In the same way, to put my mind at rest, I pointed out to myself, as to somebody who might have accompanied me and might have been more capable than I of taking pleasure from it, the fiery reflections in the windows and the translucent pink of the house. But the companion to whom I had pointed out these curious effects was of a nature no doubt less enthusiastic than plenty of good-natured people who would be ravished by such a view, for he had registered the colours without a trace of pleasure.

  My name being still on their lists, my long absence from Paris had not prevented old friends from continuing faithfully to send me invitations, and when upon my return I found, alongside one to a tea-party given for her daughter and son-in-law by La Berma, another for an afternoon reception to be held the following day at the house of the Prince de Guermantes, the melancholy reflections that had assailed me in the train were not the least of the motives advising me to go there. There is really no point in depriving myself of the life of a man of the world, I told myself, since the famous ‘work’ which I have so long hoped each day to begin the next day, is one that I am not, or am no longer, fitted to, and perhaps corresponds to no reality whatever. In fact this reasoning was entirely negative, and simply removed the value of the counter-arguments which might have put me o
ff going to this society concert. The real reason I decided to go was the Guermantes name, for so long out of my mind that when I read it on the invitation card it re-awakened a ray of my attention which was to lift from the depths of my memory a section of their past, accompanied by all the images of seigneurial forest and tall flowers which had then accompanied it, and took on again for me all the magic and significance which I used to find at Combray when, as I passed by on my way home, in the rue de l’Oiseau, I would see from outside, like dark lacquer, the stained-glass window dedicated to Gilbert the Bad, ancestor of the Guermantes. For a moment the Guermantes had once again seemed completely different from the rest of society, not to be compared with them or with any living being, even royalty, creatures sprung from the impregnation of the sour and windy air of the sombre town of Combray, where my childhood was spent, by the past, visible there in the narrow street, at the level of the stained-glass window. I had wanted to go to the Guermantes’ house as if that might have been able to bring me closer to my childhood and to the depths of my memory in which I saw it. And I had continued to read and reread the invitation until the letters composing that name, at once so familiar and so mysterious, like that of Combray itself, rebelled, regained their independent life and reorganized themselves before my exhausted eyes into something like an unknown name. It just so happened that Mama was going to afternoon tea with Mme Sazerat, an event which she knew beforehand would be extremely tedious, so I had no scruples about going to the Princesse de Guermantes’s party.