When Bloch spoke of the fit of snobbery I must be having and invited me to own up to being a snob, I could have answered: ‘If I was a snob, I wouldn’t be mixing with you.’ But all I said was that it was not a very nice thing to say. He made an attempt at an apology; but it was of the sort often favoured by the ill-mannered man, who is glad to revisit words of his which have given offence, as it gives him the chance to compound the latter. ‘Do forgive me, he would say thereafter. I was a brute, I was horrible to you, I revelled in being nasty to you. And yet, mankind in general and your good friend in particular being such a singular animal, you have no idea of the depth of affection for you harboured in this heart of mine. Though I tease you unmercifully, it has been known to move me to tears.’ These words he accompanied with a little sob.
There was a thing about Bloch that surprised me more than his tactlessness, and that was how uneven his conversation was. This fellow, who could dismiss the most up-to-the-minute writer with, ‘The chap’s a dismal imbecile, an out-and-out idiot!’ was capable of revelling in unfunny anecdotes and judging a complete mediocrity to be ‘somebody really interesting’. This dual standard of judgment, applied to the mind, the merit and the interestingness of people, was something of a mystery to me until the day I met M. Bloch senior.
I had assumed we might never have the privilege of being introduced to him, Bloch the younger having spoken ill of me to Saint-Loup and of Saint-Loup to me. In particular, he had told Saint-Loup that I was (still) a dreadful snob. ‘Yes he is, he is, I tell you! He’s beside himself at being acquainted with M. LLLLegrandin.’ This habit of Bloch’s, of stressing a certain word, was a marker of both irony and literature. Saint-Loup, who had never heard of Legrandin, said in surprise, ‘Really? Who’s he? – Oh, he’s really someone!’ said Bloch with a laugh, slipping his hands as though for warmth into his jacket pockets and convinced that what he was witnessing was the quainter side of a petty provincial gentleman more preposterous than any in the pages of Barbey d’Aurevilly.46 In his inability to describe M. Legrandin, he contented himself with multiplying his initial consonant and savouring the flavour of the name, like a connoisseur with a mouthful of a fine old vintage. This, however, was a private pleasure, to which others had no access. Having spoken ill of me to Saint-Loup, Bloch then did the same about Saint-Loup to me. It was no later than the following day that each of us learned all about what had been said – not that either of us had repeated Bloch’s statements to the other (that would have seemed too reprehensible to both of us), but Bloch himself thought it would be only natural and inevitable for us to do that; so, in his uneasiness, and in the conviction that he was telling us something we were bound to find out anyway, he chose to take the initiative. Taking Saint-Loup aside, he told him he had spoken ill of him on purpose, but only so that it would get back to him; and he swore ‘by the Kroniôn Zeus, keeper of oaths’,47 that he was much attached to him, that he would willingly die for him, then wiped away a little tear. That same day, he made a point of seeing me alone, owned up to what he had said about me, insisting that he had acted only for my benefit, because he was firmly of the belief that, for me, there were certain social relations from which nothing good could ever come, and that I ‘deserved better’. He took my hand, as maudlin as a drunkard, though his intoxication was purely nervous: ‘Do believe me! May the black Ker carry me off this instant and bear me beyond the gates of Hades, detestable to men, if I did not spend last night weeping for you, in memory of Combray, my inexhaustible affection for you, and certain afternoons at school which you won’t even remember. Yes, there I was, crying all night long! I swear it – but alas, I speak as one who knows what men are like, and I know you won’t believe me.’ I did not believe him, of course; and no great weight was added to words which I knew had been invented on the spot by his invocation of ‘the black Ker’, as Bloch’s Hellenic cult was a purely literary thing. Besides, every time he felt a touch of maudlin coming over him and wanted you to share a moment’s bogus emotion, he always said, ‘I swear it!’ not so much with the aim of having you believe he was telling the truth, but rather for the hysterical delight he took in telling a lie. So I did not believe him; but I bore him no ill-will, as my mother and grandmother had handed down to me not only their inability to bear a grudge, even against those who deserved it more than he did, but their reluctance to condemn anybody.
Not that Bloch was irredeemably flawed; he was in fact capable of acts of great kindness. Now that the Combray breed, the strain from which there once sprang people of utter integrity like my grandmother and mother, seems all but extinct, and if one’s choice among men is more or less reduced, on the one hand, to uncomplicated troglodytes, unfeeling, straightforward creatures the mere sound of whose voice tells you they have not the slightest interest in any of your concerns, and on the other, a race of men who, while they are in your company, can sympathize with you, cherish you, be moved to tears by you, and then a few hours later will contradict all this by making a cruel joke about you, but who can go on being charming towards you, full of understanding, still on the same footing of momentary closeness, then I am inclined to think that, of the two, I prefer men of the latter breed, if not for their human value, at least for their company.
‘You’ve no idea, Bloch would say, how sad it makes me to think of you. There really is a Jewish streak in me somewhere,’ he added with an ironic narrowing of the eyes, as though trying to measure by microscope a minute drop of ‘Jewish blood’, as might be said (but most certainly never would be) by a great French aristocrat whose exclusively Christian ancestors might just have included a Samuel Bernard,48 or even more remotely the Virgin Mary herself, from whom all people called Lévy descend, it is said. ‘Yes, just my Jewish streak coming out. Among my various emotions, I do quite like to be aware of the feeble few which may just derive from my Jewish origins.’ He made this statement because it seemed to him both witty and bold to speak the truth about his racial origins, while making sure to mitigate them somewhat, like a miser who, having decided to pay his accumulated debts, can pluck up the courage to settle only half of them. The type of fraudulence which consists of being bold enough to utter a difficult truth, while diluting it with enough untruths to falsify it, is more widespread than one might think; and even those who do not make a habit of this may now and then have recourse to it, if some critical episode of life, in particular one involving a love affair, gives them the opportunity.
The outcome of all these confidential diatribes of Bloch’s to Saint-Loup against me, and to me against Saint-Loup, was an invitation to dinner. I think he may even have made a preliminary attempt to invite only Saint-Loup. Everything I know about him makes for the plausibility of this hypothesis; but it was unsuccessful, and it was in the presence of both Saint-Loup and myself that Bloch said one day, ‘Good my lord, and you, knight favoured of Ares, de Saint-Loup-en-Bray, subduer of steeds, since I have met you on this surf-resounding strand of Amphitrite, close by the tents of Menier of the swift ships,49 would you both please come to dinner one evening during the week, at the table of my illustrious father of irreproachable heart?’ Bloch issued this invitation because of his desire for closer relations with Saint-Loup, who he hoped would give him access to aristocratic circles. If I had been the one to have such a desire, with such an intent, Bloch would have seen it as a mark of the most detestable snobbery, in keeping with the view he had formed of an aspect of my character (an aspect which, at least for the moment, he did not consider to be my most important feature); but the same desire on his part struck him as proof of his own mind’s commendable curiosity about social explorations of a kind which might afford him some literary material. When he informed his father that he was bringing a friend of his to dinner, a friend whose name and title he announced in a tone charged with sarcastic satisfaction: ‘The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray’, M. Bloch senior had been seized by a fit of vehement emotion. ‘The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray!’ he gasped. ‘Egad!’ This was the exclamation w
hich, for him, best expressed deference towards one’s social superiors. The gaze he turned upon this son of his, who was capable of having such friends, was full of admiration and clearly meant: ‘What an amazing boy! Can such a prodigy really be a son of mine?’ The younger Bloch basked in this glory, and looked as though his monthly allowance had just been increased by fifty francs. Within the family, he lived usually in a state of some unease, feeling that his father believed he had gone to the dogs, with his admiration of poets like Leconte de Lisle, Heredia50 and other such ‘Bohemians’. But to be friendly with Saint-Loup-en-Bray, whose father had been the president of the Suez Canal Company (Egad!), was an ‘incontrovertible’ advantage. What a pity that the stereoscope, which might have suffered some damage in transit, had been left in Paris! M. Bloch senior was the only one with the skill, or rather the right, to make use of the stereoscope. This he did only on rare, judiciously selected occasions, on special gala evenings when they had taken on extra menservants. These stereoscope sessions conferred upon those who attended them a sort of distinction, a feeling of being singled out and privileged, and there devolved upon the host who was responsible for them a form of prestige akin to that accorded to talent, and which could not have been greater if the images projected had been taken by M. Bloch himself, or if the instrument had been of his own invention. ‘You didn’t have an invitation to Salomon’s yesterday? one member of the family would ask another. – No, I wasn’t one of the chosen few – what was on? – Oh, a great bean-feast, with the stereoscope and everything! – Well, if it was a stereoscope occasion, then I’m sorry to have missed it. I’m told Salomon is just brilliant with it.’ ‘But, look here, M. Bloch senior said to his son, it will be better not to lay on everything for him all at once. Then he’ll still have something to look forward to.’ M. Bloch, like a good father who wishes to do right by his son, had certainly considered sending for the apparatus. However, time was ‘of the essence’, or rather so they thought; but then the dinner had to be postponed, as Saint-Loup could not get away, one of his uncles being expected in Balbec to spend forty-eight hours with Mme de Villeparisis. This uncle was very fond of physical exercise, especially in the form of long walks; and so, as he was coming on foot from the château where he was at present a guest, sleeping overnight at farmhouses along the way, the timing of his arrival at Balbec was rather uncertain. Saint-Loup, who did not wish to risk missing him, even asked me to go to Incarville where there was a telegraph office and send the dispatch which he was in the habit of cabling every day to his mistress. The expected uncle was called Palaméde, a name handed down from the princes of Sicily, his ancestors. In later life, whenever I read historical texts which contained this name, a fine medallion of the Renaissance – some said a genuine antique – a name borne by some podestà or prince of the Church, and which had always remained in the family, being handed on from descendant to descendant, from the chancellery of the Vatican right down to my friend’s uncle, I would experience the special pleasure savoured by those who, in their inability to afford a collection of medals or to constitute a private gallery of art-works, cultivate instead a passion for old names (place-names, as documentary and picturesque as an out-of-date map or isometric projection, a tradesman’s sign or a customary; and baptismal names, with their fine French final syllables, in which one still hears the ring of the long-standing mutilations which our ancestors, by speech defects, the intonation of some ethnic vulgarity or mispronunciation, inflicted on Latin and Saxon words, in a way which later elevated them into the grammarians’ noble statutes), repertoires of antique sonorities which enable them to enjoy private concerts, like those people who acquire a viola da gamba or viola d’amore so as to play ancient music on period instruments. Saint-Loup told me that, even within the most exclusive aristocratic circles, his uncle Palamède was distinguished by being even more exclusive, peculiarly difficult to get to know, disdainful, infatuated with his own nobility, and at the centre of a group which included his brother’s wife and a few other hand-picked associates, known as the circle of the Phoenixes. Even within that inner circle, he was so dreaded for his insolent words that in the past, when fashionable people seeking an introduction had on occasion approached his brother, the latter had been known to refuse out of hand. ‘No, please don’t ask me for an introduction to Palamède. Even if my wife were to try on your behalf, even if any or all of us were to try, it would be pointless. Or else there would be the danger of his being less than friendly, and I should prefer to avoid that.’ At the Jockey Club, with a few friends, the uncle had drawn up a list of two hundred members whom he would never permit to be introduced to him. In the household of the Comte de Paris, he was dubbed ‘the Prince’, in virtue of his elegance and his haughtiness.
Saint-Loup told me something of his uncle’s younger days, long past. He had shared a flat with two friends who were as handsome as he was, which was why they were known as ‘the Three Graces’; and every day he would bring women to it.
‘One day, a fellow who has nowadays become what Balzac would have called “one of the most prominent members of the Faubourg Saint-Germain”, but who in those early days went through an unfortunate period when he showed rather untoward tendencies, made an appointment with my uncle at the flat. When he got there, the chap made his intentions quite clear – but towards my uncle Palamède, not towards the women! My uncle pretended not to understand, then on some pretext or other sent for his two friends. They turned up, took the miscreant, stripped the clothes off him, beat him till the blood ran red, then kicked him out – it was ten below zero, and when he was found he was lucky to be alive. The police started an investigation, and the fellow had great difficulty in getting them to drop it. These days, my uncle would never have anything to do with such a cruel punishment – despite his unapproachability with people of his own station, you’ve no idea of the number of working-class men whom he takes a liking to, whom he takes under his wing, though he may well get no thanks for it in the end. A footman who attends him in a hotel somewhere and whom he’ll set up in Paris; a peasant lad whom he gets apprenticed to a trade, that sort of thing. It’s just this rather nice side of his nature, as opposed to his society side.’ Saint-Loup was one of those young men of fashion who live at an altitude where certain expressions can take root and grow, for instance, ‘The rather nice side of his nature’ or ‘There’s rather a nice thing about him’, rather precious blooms, which soon turn into a way of seeing things that reduces oneself to nothing, while exalting ‘the proletariat’; quite the opposite, in fact, of the plebeian’s pride in his origins. ‘It seems we have no idea of the way he used to set the trends as a young man, the standards he set for the whole of society. At all times, he only ever did what was convenient, what struck him as enjoyable, but whatever it was, it was instantly imitated by all the snobs. If he felt thirsty at the theatre, say, and sent out for a drink to be brought to him in his box, the following week all the little sitting-rooms behind the boxes were full of refreshments. Or one rather wet summer, when he’d had a touch of rheumatism, he wanted a vicuna overcoat – it’s a cloth which is soft but warm, normally used only for travelling-rugs – and the one he got still had the blue and orange stripes on it. All the best tailors were immediately inundated with orders for shaggy blue overcoats with a fringe. On another occasion, if he was spending a day or two at a château, he might turn up without his tails, because for some reason he felt like dining without any great ceremony; and so he would go in to dinner wearing his town clothes, and in country houses it became the fashion not to change for dinner. If he took to eating his cake not with a spoon, but with a fork or some other instrument of his own design specially made for him by a goldsmith, or even with his fingers, then it was soon inconceivable not to do likewise. Once when he wanted to be reminded of some of the quartets of Beethoven (despite his preposterous ideas, he’s no fool, he’s a gifted man) he just got a group of musicians to come to his house each week, and they played them for him and a few of his frien
ds.51 So the really elegant thing that year was to hold very select little gatherings, with chamber music. I’m pretty sure he’s had a fair amount of pleasure in life. A man as handsome as he was – think of the number of women he must have had! I’ve no idea who they were, as he’s a very discreet man. But I do know he was very unfaithful to my late aunt. Mind you, he was also very attentive and charming towards her, and she adored him, and after her death he was inconsolable for a long time. Even now, when he’s in Paris, he still visits the cemetery nearly every day.’
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 41