In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

by Marcel Proust

  ‘You try to stop me getting it and we’ll see who wins.’

  She held it behind her back and I put my hands behind her neck, lifting the long plaits which hung on her shoulders, either because it was a hair-style which suited her age, or because her mother wanted her to appear younger than she was, so as not to age too rapidly herself; and in that strained posture, we tussled with each other. I kept trying to draw her closer to me; she kept resisting. Flushed with the effort, her cheeks were as red and round as cherries; she laughed as though I was tickling her. I had her pinned between my legs as though she was the bole of a little tree I was trying to climb. In the middle of all my exertions, without my breathing being quickened much more than it already was by muscular exercise and the heat of the playful moment, like a few drops of sweat produced by the effort, I shed my pleasure, before I even had time to be aware of the nature of it, and managed to snatch the letter away from her. Gilberte said in a friendly tone:

  ‘If you like, we could wrestle a bit more.’

  Perhaps she had obscurely sensed that my antics had an ulterior motive, though she may have been unable to notice that my aim was now fulfilled. However, fearing that she might have detected it (a slight movement that she made a moment later, hinting at restraint or withdrawal, as though her sense of delicacy was offended, made me suspect I was right), I agreed to wrestle with her again, in case she might think my only purpose, now achieved, had been the pleasure which left me feeling no desire other than to sit quietly beside her.

  On the way home, I suddenly recognized the hitherto hidden memory of the impression which I had been drawn towards by the cool, almost sooty air of the little trellised booth, but without being able to glimpse it or identify it. It was the memory of my uncle Adolphe’s little room in the house at Combray, which was full of the same dampish redolence. I could not understand, and I postponed the effort of finding out, why the memory of such an insignificant impression should have filled me with such bliss. This made me feel that I really did deserve the disdain of M. de Norpois: not only was my favourite writer someone he dismissed as a ‘flute-player’, but I had experienced a moment of genuine rapture, not from some idea of importance, but from a musty smell.

  For some time, if a visitor chanced to mention the gardens of the Champs-Élysées in certain family circles, the name had been greeted by the mothers with the jaundiced look with which they might deprecate a mention of a highly regarded doctor who they claim has made too many mistakes of diagnosis for them to place any trust in him – these gardens, it was said, were not good for children, and were responsible for too many cases of sore throats, measles and different sorts of fevers. When my mother did not forbid my visits to the Champs-Élysées, some of her friends, though not openly questioning her love for me, did at least doubt her wisdom.

  Neurotics are perhaps, pace accepted wisdom, those who ‘coddle themselves’ the least: they are so used to detecting disorders in themselves, which they later come to realize were quite harmless, that they reach the stage of paying no attention to any of them. Their nervous system has so often cried wolf, as though it is faced with a serious illness, when it has nothing more untoward to contend with than a fall of snow or a move to a new flat, that they come to ignore these warnings, as easily as a soldier in the heat of battle can avert his mind from them and, for another few days, even though he is dying, go on leading the life of a healthy man. One forenoon, with my habitual disorders in their usual state of coordination, my mind paying as little attention to their constant circulation within me as to the circulation of my blood, I ran cheerfully into the dining-room to join my parents at the table and sat down, with the customary thought that feeling cold may mean, not that you should try to get warm, but only that you have been told off for something, and that not feeling hungry may mean it is going to rain, rather than that you should avoid eating. As soon as I started to swallow my first mouthful of an appetizing chop, I was overcome by a wave of vertigo and nausea, the feverish response of my body to an illness which had already begun, to which my indifference had turned a blind eye, masking and delaying the symptoms, but which was now adamantly refusing the food which I was in no state to absorb. At the same instant, like a wounded man’s instinct of self-preservation, the thought that, if I was seen to be unwell, I would not be allowed out, gave me the strength to drag myself to my room, take my temperature (it was 104) and get ready to go to the Champs-Élysées. My smiling soul, through the permeable and sickly body that surrounded it, was already there, insisting on the sweet pleasure of a game of prisoners’ base with Gilberte; and an hour later, barely able to stand, but happy to be with her, I still had enough strength left to enjoy it.

  When we got back home, Françoise announced that I had ‘had a turn’, that I must have caught ‘a touch of the chill’; and the doctor, who was immediately summoned, announced that he ‘preferred’ the ‘fierce onset’ and the ‘virulence’ of the attack of fever accompanying my congestion of the lungs, which he said would turn out to be nothing but a ‘flash in the pan’, to a more ‘insidious’ or ‘lurking’ form of it. For years I had suffered from attacks of shortness of breath; and our doctor, despite the disapproval of my grandmother, who was convinced I would go to an alcoholic’s early grave, had recommended that, in addition to the caffeine already prescribed as an aid to my breathing, I should have a drink of beer, champagne or brandy each time I felt an attack coming on. The ‘euphoria’ brought on by the alcohol would, he said, ‘nip it in the bud’. Rather than conceal the state of breathlessness I was in, I was often obliged almost to exaggerate it, before my grandmother would allow me to have such a drink. Also, as soon as I felt an attack coming on, my uncertainty about how serious it might or might not be became a more acute anxiety because of my grandmother’s sorrow, which always upset me more than the fit itself. However, my body, whether because it was too infirm to bear the stress of keeping this secret to itself, or because it feared that someone unaware of the imminence of the attack might require me to make an effort that would prove impossible or harmful to it, made me need to inform my grandmother of my discomfort with a degree of accuracy which I eventually came to invest with a sort of physiological realism. If I noticed within me a bothersome symptom which I had never before identified, my body remained distressed until I could let my grandmother know. If she pretended not to pay attention, my body required me to persevere. Sometimes I went too far; and wincing with pain, the loved face, which was not as skilled as it had once been at concealing its emotions, showed an expression of pity. The sight of her grief cut me to the quick, and I fell into her arms, as though my kisses might take the grief away, as though my love for her could cause her as much joy as my being well and happy. My anxiety being now lessened by the knowledge that she was aware of the discomfort I had been in, my body had no objection to my reassuring her. I told her there was nothing distressing in the discomfort, that she must not feel sorry for me, that she could be sure I was happy. My body had been trying to receive as much sympathy as it deserved; and as long as it was known that it had a pain in its right side, it did not mind if I stated that the pain was neither severe nor an impediment to my happiness. My body did not take itself for a philosopher; philosophy was not its province. During my convalescence, I had fits of breathlessness like this almost every day. On one occasion, when my grandmother had seen me quite well earlier in the evening, she came back into my room much later; and when she saw how short of breath I was, her face was stricken with grief and she moaned, ‘Oh dear, oh dear! You’re so ill!’ She went straight out, I heard the porte cochère and she came back in a little while with a bottle of brandy which, as we had none in the house, she had gone out to buy. I soon started to feel better. My grandmother was rather flushed and looked embarrassed; and her eyes were full of an expression of weariness and discouragement.

  ‘I think I’ll leave you, now that it’s doing you a little good,’ she said, turning quickly away. I had time to kiss her and to feel somet
hing wet on her cool cheek, which I thought might have been a trace of the damp night air out of doors. The following day she did not come in to see me till the evening, as she had had to go out, I was told. I thought to myself that this showed a fairly indifferent attitude towards my well-being; and I had a good mind to tell her so.

  When my attacks of breathlessness went on inexplicably, long after my pleurisy had cleared up, my parents called in Dr Cottard. A doctor consulted in a case like this must be more than just well versed. In the face of symptoms which may be those of three or four different illnesses, the thing that enables him to decide which of them he is most likely to be dealing with, behind appearances which are very similar, is ultimately his flair, the sharpness of his eye. This mysterious gift implies no superiority in other aspects of the mind, and may be found even in a person of the utmost vulgarity, someone who is devoid of intellectual curiosity and who enjoys the most dreadful painting or music. In my case, what was externally observable might have been caused by nervous spasms, the early stages of tuberculosis, asthma, a toxi-alimentary dyspnœea with renal insufficiency, chronic bronchitis or even a complex condition comprising several of these factors. The nervous spasms needed to be treated with disdain, the tuberculosis with great care and a form of over-nutrition, which could have been bad for an arthritic condition like asthma, and possibly dangerous for a toxi-alimentary dyspnœea, which in its turn requires a regimen quite harmful to a patient suffering from tuberculosis. But Dr Cottard barely hesitated before issuing the imperious command: ‘Drastic, violent purgatives. Milk and nothing but milk for several days. No meat. No alcohol.’ My mother murmured that I really needed building up, that I was highly strung enough as it was, that this draconian purging and such a regimen would be hard on me. From Dr Cottard’s eyes, which looked as anxious as though he was afraid of missing a train, I could see he was wondering whether he might not have behaved with his natural mildness of manner. He was trying to remember whether he had made sure of putting on his mask of frigidity, the way one looks for a mirror to see whether one has not neglected to knot one’s tie. In this uncertainty, and so as to compensate just in case, he barked rudely, ‘I am not in the habit of repeating my prescriptions. Get me a pen. Milk, milk, that’s the main thing. After a while, once we’ve dealt with the breathless attacks and the insomnia, we can start taking some clear soup, then some broth, but always and still with milk in – milk, that’s the thing! You’ll like that, because Spain is fashionable these days – olé! au lait!27 (His students were familiar with this pun, which he trotted out whenever he prescribed a milk diet for a cardiac case or a patient with a liver disorder.) Then we can gradually come back to the ordinary family diet. But if ever the cough and the breathlessness come back, purgatives, enemas, bed and milk!’ With an icy demeanour, he heard out my mother’s final objections, saying nothing in return, then took his leave without so much as a word to explain why he had chosen this treatment. My parents, taking the view that it was irrelevant to my condition and needlessly debilitating, decided not to try it. They naturally sought to keep the Professor in ignorance of their lack of compliance; and to make sure of this, they stayed away from any of the houses where they might have run the risk of meeting him. Then, my condition having worsened, they decided to follow Dr Cottard’s instructions to the letter: three days later, all the rattling in my chest had gone, my cough had cleared up and I could breathe properly. We came to understand that Cottard, though, as he said later, he had thought I was asthmatic and especially ‘not quite right in the head’, had seen clearly that what predominated in me at that moment was a toxic reaction, that the liver and kidneys had therefore to be washed out, thus decongesting the bronchial tubes and enabling me to breathe and sleep again, and regain my strength. So it was we realized that Cottard the buffoon was a great doctor. At length I was able to get up. But the talk now was of not allowing me to go back to the Champs-Élysées. The reason given was the unhealthy air. But I was sure this was just an excuse for them to keep me away from Mlle Swann; and I made myself say over and over the name of Gilberte, as though it was a native tongue and I one of those captives in exile who endeavour to keep it alive, so as not to forget the homeland they will never see again. Sometimes my mother would stroke my forehead and say:

  ‘Don’t little boys tell their sorrows to their Mamas any more?’

  Every day, Françoise would come in and say: ‘Ooh, young master don’t look so good! You should take a look at yourself, you should – you’re like death warmed up!’ Of course, if I had had the merest cold, Françoise would have been just as lugubrious. Her lamentations were inspired by her ‘class’ rather than by my ill-health. At that time I could not be sure whether Françoise was a pessimist more in sorrow than in satisfaction. I decided provisionally that she was a social and professional pessimist.

  One day, when the postman had just been, my mother laid a letter on my bed. I opened it, my mind elsewhere, as it could not possibly contain the only signature which would have made me happy, that of Gilberte Swann, because I never had any contact with her away from the Champs-Élysées. Yet, there at the bottom of the page, which was stamped with a silver seal in the form of a helmeted knight surmounting a scrolled motto Per viam rectam, at the end of a letter in an expansive hand, which seemed to have underlined nearly all the sentences, because the cross-bar of every t was dashed above the letter and not through it, thus scratching a line under the corresponding word in the line above, the signature I read was Gilberte’s! However, because I knew this signature to be impossible in a letter addressed to me, the sight of it, unaccompanied as it was by any belief in it, brought me no happiness. For a moment, all it did was cast an unreal light on everything around me. At dizzying speed, the improbable signature jumbled the things in my room, the bed, the fireplace, the walls. Everything I looked at was wobbling, as though I had had a fall from a horse; and I wondered whether there might not be some other mode of existence quite different from the one known to me, at variance with it but more real than it, which in the glimpse I had just caught of it had filled me with the hesitancy which sculptors depicting the Last Judgment show on the faces of the awakened dead, who stand already on the threshold of the Other World. The letter said: ‘Dear Friend, I hear you have been very ill and are not going to the Champs-Élysées now. I’ve almost stopped going there too, because of everybody falling ill. But my girl-friends come to tea with me every Monday and Friday. My mother wants you to know we should be very pleased if you could come too, as soon as you are well again. We could have nice chats at home the way we used to at the Champs-Élysées! So, in the hope that your parents will allow you to come to afternoon tea very soon, I say good-bye and send you all my best wishes. Gilberte.’

  While I was reading these words, my nervous system, with admirable diligence, was receiving the news that a great joy was descending upon me. But my inner self, the one most closely concerned after all, was still in ignorance of it. Happiness, happiness from Gilberte, was something I had constantly thought about, something that existed only in thought, something which was like what Leonardo da Vinci said about painting, cosa mentale. And thought cannot instantly assimilate a sheet of paper covered in letters. But as soon as I had finished reading it, I thought about it, and it became an object of reflection; it too became cosa mentale, and I felt such love for it that every five minutes I had to read it again and kiss it. It was then that I became aware of my happiness.

  Such miracles lie in wait for the lover, who may expect one at any time. This particular one may have been arranged by my mother, who, seeing that for some time past I had lost all pleasure in living, had perhaps had a message transmitted to Gilberte, asking her to write to me, much as, in earlier days, when I was learning to swim in the sea, she would, unknown to me, to make me enjoy swimming under water, which I hated, as it prevented me from breathing, give wonderful boxes covered in sea-shells and branches of coral to my swimming-instructor, so that when I came upon them lying on the sea-b
ed, I could believe they were my own discoveries. In any case, it is best not to inquire into how life, with all its contrasting developments, can impinge upon our love: the laws which govern such things, whether their workings are inexorable or just unexpected, seem to be those of magic rather than of rationality. When a woman who is plain and without money of her own leaves a multimillionaire with whom she has been living, a man of charm despite his wealth, and when he in his despair summons up all the powers of his wealth and sets in motion all the influences of this world, but fails to have her come back to him, rather than seeking a logical explanation, it is better to assume, in the face of the wilful mistress’s resolve, that Destiny wishes to crush him and make him die of a broken heart. The obstacles against which such a lover has to struggle, and which his imagination, over-stimulated by suffering, tries vainly to identify, may lie in a singularity of character of the wayward woman, in her stupidity, in the influence now exercised on her by people whom the lover does not know, in fears they may have put into her mind, in appetites she is briefly bent on satisfying, which may be of the sort that her lover, with all his fortune, cannot satisfy. Moreover, the lover who seeks to know the nature of such obstacles is handicapped: the woman’s guile will hide it from him; and his own judgment, biassed by his love, prevents him from assessing it accurately. Obstacles of this kind are like the tumours which a doctor may succeed at last in reducing, without ever knowing what caused them: though temporary, they remain mysterious. However, such obstacles generally last longer than love. And as love is not a disinterested passion, the erstwhile lover no longer strives to find out why, in her need and obstinacy, the flighty woman whom he once loved declined for years to let him go on keeping her.