In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

by Marcel Proust

  At length I felt a first surge of admiration within me – it was brought on by a sudden outburst of frantic clapping from the other members of the audience. I clapped and clapped too, keeping on as long as possible, in the hope that La Berma might excel herself out of gratitude, and I could then be certain of having seen her on one of her best days. The remarkable thing is that the moment when that storm of applause broke out was, as I later learned, one of those when her acting was at its most inspired. Certain transcendent realities seem to give off a sort of radiation which the crowd can pick up. From the unclear reports of certain great events, such as a danger threatening an army on a national frontier, a defeat or a great victory, the educated man may be unable to make much sense, but the crowd thrills with an excitement which surprises him and which, once he has been authoritatively informed of the military situation, he recognizes as their perception of that ‘aura’ surrounding events of great moment and visible from hundreds of miles away. We learn of a victory either after the war is over or at once from the janitor’s jubilation. A touch of genius in the acting of La Berma is revealed to us by the reviews a week after we have seen her on stage, or by the cheers from the back stalls. But as this immediate communal responsiveness also expresses itself in many mistaken outbursts, here people usually applauded at the wrong moments; and the waves of clapping were often mechanical consequences of previous applause, just as in a gale the waves may go on rising, once the surface of the sea is disturbed enough, even though the wind is no stronger. So the longer I went on clapping, the better La Berma’s acting seemed to have become. ‘Say what you like,’ a rather common woman sitting near by said, ‘you’ve got to admit she throws herself into it. She really hits herself, you know. And she runs about! That’s real acting!’ Relieved to learn of these grounds for believing in the genius of La Berma – though suspecting they were as inadequate to account for it as were the words of the peasant on seeing the Mona Lisa or Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus: ‘Well, it’s pretty good, eh? It’s all gold! Good stuff, eh? A lot of work went into that!’ – I let the cheap wine of this popular enthusiasm go to my head. Even so, once the curtain had fallen, I was aware of being disappointed that the enjoyment I had longed for had not been greater, but also of wishing that, such as it was, it would continue, and that I was not obliged to leave behind me for ever, as I walked out of the auditorium, this life of the theatre in which I had just shared for a few hours. To part from it and go straight home would have been as heart-rending as going into exile, had I not looked forward to learning a lot about La Berma from the admirer of hers to whom I owed the fact of having been allowed to go and see Phèdre, M. de Norpois. To introduce me, my father called me into his study before dinner. When I entered the room, the former ambassador stood up, bowed from his full height, gave me his hand and the careful scrutiny of his blue eyes. During his period as France’s representative abroad, with each passing stranger introduced to him (all of them, not excluding well-known singers, being people of more or less note, of whom he knew as he met them that he would be able to say, if he should happen in the future to hear mention of their names in Paris or St Petersburg, that he well remembered the evening spent in their company in Munich or Sofia), he had cultivated the habit of making a show of affability, so as to let them see how pleased he was to make their acquaintance; and, in his belief that life in capital cities, where one is thrown into constant contact both with the personalities of interest who pass through and with the customs of the local population, affords one a thorough knowledge of history, of geography, of the ways of different peoples and of the intellectual life of Europe, which no book can give, he also turned upon every new-comer his acute proficiency in observation, so as to see for himself what manner of man he was dealing with. It was a long time since the government had appointed him to a posting in a foreign capital; but when people were introduced to him, his eyes, as though they had not been notified of his removal from the active list, still took up their work of profitful observation, while his whole demeanour set about assuring such persons that their names were not unknown to him. So as M. de Norpois spoke to me with the kindly and important air of the man who is aware of his own vast experience, he examined me with a perceptive curiosity calculated to derive all possible benefit from me, as though I was some outlandish custom, an instructive landmark or a star on a foreign tour. In this, he treated me with both the majestic considerateness of wise Mentor and the studious curiosity of young Anacharsis.

  However, he made me no promise of good offices with the Revue des Deux Mondes, although he did ask me certain questions on my past life and studies, as well as on the things I liked, this being the first time anybody had mentioned such things in a way which, rather than giving me the idea that it was my duty to resist them, suggested they might be perfectly respectable. Seeing that I was inclined towards literature, M. de Norpois, rather than try to put me off it, spoke of it with deference, as though it was a charming dowager whose select company one remembers well from having been admitted to it in Rome or Dresden, and whom one would be glad to see more of, were it not for the unavoidable impediments of life. More favoured and freer than himself, I could be sure of having a good time with her, or so a hint of envious naughtiness in his smile seemed to suggest. But the very words he used showed me that Literature was utterly different from the image I had had of it in Combray; and I realized how right I had been to abandon all notion of it. Until that moment, my only thought had been that I had no gift for writing; but M. de Norpois now freed me of the very urge to write. I tried to explain what my dreams had been; I was trembling with emotion, in my anxiety to find the most accurate words to express what I had felt but had never before tried to put into words; and that was why what I did say was so garbled. It may have been a professional habit with him, it may have been the acquired composure of any important man being asked for advice who, knowing that control of the conversation remains in his hands, lets you meander about and exhaust yourself looking for the best words, or it may have been so as to display at its best the style of his head, which he saw as Grecian notwithstanding his great muttonchop whiskers, but M. de Norpois, while you held forth, kept as straight a face as if you were haranguing an ancient (and stone deaf) bust in the Glyptothek at Munich or Copenhagen. Then, as conclusive as an auctioneer’s gavel or the Oracle at Delphi, his voice as he replied struck you with unexpected force, nothing in his expression having let you guess at the effect you had been making, or what view he would give.

  ‘Quite,’ he said suddenly, as though the matter was closed, having let me flounder about under his unmoving stare. ‘I know of the case of the son of a friend of mine who, mutatis mutandis, is just like you.’ (His tone, as he spoke of our shared hankerings after the writing life, was reassuring, as though we had a predisposition towards rheumatism rather than literature, and he wanted me to know it was not fatal.) ‘So, he preferred to leave the Quai d’Orsay, despite the fact that, thanks to his father, his career path was clear, and then, without caring so much as a fig for any views which others might have on the matter, he started to publish. He is not likely to repine at having done so, believe you me. Two years ago now he wrote a book – he’s a fair bit older than yourself, of course – on the Sentiment of the Infinite on the western shore of Lake Victoria-Nyanza, and then this very year a work of lesser scope, but still written with a nimble, nay sometimes a sharp nib, on the repeating rifle in the Bulgarian army, and these two productions have really put him in a class all his own. So he has already gone a fair way. He’s not a man to do things by halves, and I can assure you that, though no firm nomination of him for the Académie des sciences morales is yet being envisaged, his name has cropped up once or twice in conversation, and that in a manner which was far from disadvantageous to him. In a word, though it would be untrue to say he has yet scaled the highest peak, it must be said that, by dint of meritorious endeavour, he has contrived to make a pretty fine position for himself, and that his worthy efforts ha
ve been duly crowned by success – for success, you know, does not always go to the muddle-pates and scatter-brains of this world, nor indeed to the upsetters of apple-carts, who usually turn out to be in it for show, anyway.’

  By this time, my father had no doubt I would be a member of the Académie in a very few years; and his satisfaction was increased when M. de Norpois, after a momentary pause, in which he appeared to ponder the consequences of such an act, handed me a card and said, ‘Go and see him, tell him I sent you – I warrant he’ll have some good advice to give you,’ words which caused me as much heartache and alarm as if he had told me I was to be taken on the very next day as a cabin-boy on a clipper.

  I had inherited from my Aunt Léonie, as well as many more objects and furniture than I knew what to do with, almost the whole of her money, the posthumous display of an affection for me which I had never noticed while she lived. My father, who was charged with managing this money until I came of age, sought M. de Norpois’s advice on a certain number of investments. M. de Norpois recommended certain low-yield shares which he looked on as rock-solid, notably English Consolidated and the Russian four per cents: ‘With first-rate stock like those, though the return may not be very high, at least you are sure that your capital will never suffer.’ My father told him succinctly about the other stock he had bought. M. de Norpois’s smile of congratulation was all but imperceptible: like all rentiers, he saw money as a desirable thing, but deemed it tactful to restrict his compliments on what anyone owned to a veiled glance of understanding; as well as which, being himself hugely wealthy, he believed good taste required him to appear impressed by the lesser incomes of others, while enjoying a quiet reminder of the superiority of his own. However, he did not hesitate to congratulate my father on the ‘composition’ of his portfolio, ‘very stylish, very neat, very handsome’. It sounded as though he endowed the differences between the market values of shares, and even the shares themselves, with something like aesthetic merit. When my father mentioned one of these securities, quite a new one, not very well known, M. de Norpois, like the man who has read a book that you thought you were the only one to have read, said, ‘Yes, yes! I enjoyed following it in the Share List – good buy, wasn’t it?’ And he smiled with the reminiscent appreciation of the subscriber to a review who has read its latest serialized novel, instalment by instalment. ‘I would not advise you against buying up some of the issue to be floated in the coming days. It’s very tempting, they’re offering the shares at attractive prices.’ My father, referring to certain older shares but not quite remembering their names, which were easily confused with other similar ones, opened a drawer and showed the ambassador the certificates themselves. I was delighted by the appearance of them, all decorated with cathedral spires and allegorical figures, looking like old publications from the Romantic period which I had once looked at. All the productions of a particular time look alike; the artists who illustrate the poems of a certain period are the same ones who are employed by its banking houses. There is nothing more evocative of certain episodes of Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, or works by Gérard de Nerval, as I used to see them displayed outside the grocer’s shop in Combray, than the river divinities wielding the beflowered rectangle which frames a share certificate issued by the Compagnie des Eaux.