In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV

by Marcel Proust

  I told him that I was obliged to dine at Balbec, and he seemed anxious that I should invite him to dine there also, but I had no desire to do so.

  “But if you’re in such a hurry, why have you come here?”

  “I’ve brought you a note from M. de Charlus.”

  At this name all his gaiety vanished; his face tensed.

  “What! he can’t leave me alone even here. I’m nothing but a slave. Old boy, be a sport. I’m not going to open his letter. Tell him you couldn’t find me.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to open it? I suspect it’s something serious.”

  “Not on your life. You’ve no idea what lies, what infernal tricks that old scoundrel gets up to. It’s a dodge to make me go and see him. Well, I’m not going. I want to spend the evening in peace.”

  “But isn’t there going to be a duel tomorrow?” I asked him, having assumed that he was in the know.

  “A duel?” he repeated with an air of stupefaction, “I never heard a word about it. Anyhow, I don’t give a damn—the dirty old beast can go and get himself done in if he likes. But wait a minute, this is interesting, I’d better look at his letter after all. You can tell him you left it here for me, in case I should come in.”

  While Morel was speaking, I looked with amazement at the beautiful books which M. de Charlus had given him and which littered his room. The violinist having refused to accept those labelled: “I belong to the Baron” etc., a device which he felt to be insulting to himself, as a mark of vassalage, the Baron, with the sentimental ingenuity in which his ill-starred love abounded, had substituted others, borrowed from his ancestors, but ordered from the binder according to the circumstances of a melancholy friendship. Sometimes they were terse and confident, as Spes mea or Exspectata non eludet; sometimes merely resigned, as J’attendrai. Others were gallant: Mesmes plaisir du mestre, or counselled chastity, such as that borrowed from the family of Simiane, sprinkled with azure towers and fleurs-de-lis, and given a fresh meaning: Sustentant lilia turres. Others, finally, were despairing, and made an appointment in heaven with him who had spurned the donor upon earth: Manet ultima coelo; and (finding the grapes which he had failed to reach too sour, pretending not to have sought what he had not secured) M. de Charlus said in yet another: Non mortale quod opto. But I had no time to examine them all.

  If M. de Charlus, in dashing this letter down upon paper, had seemed to be carried away by the daemon that was inspiring his flying pen, as soon as Morel had broken the seal (a leopard between two roses gules, with the motto: Atavis et armis) he began to read the letter as feverishly as M. de Charlus had written it, and over those pages covered at breakneck speed his eye ran no less swiftly than the Baron’s pen. “Good God!” he exclaimed, “this is the last straw! But where am I to find him? Heaven only knows where he is now.” I suggested that if he made haste he might still find him perhaps at a tavern where he had ordered beer as a restorative. “I don’t know whether I shall be coming back,” he said to his landlady, and added to himself, “it will depend on how things turn out.” A few minutes later we reached the café. I noticed M. de Charlus’s expression at the moment when he caught sight of me. It was as though, seeing that I had not returned unaccompanied, he could breathe again, had been restored to life. Being in a mood not to be deprived of Morel’s company that evening, he had pretended to have been informed that two officers of the regiment had spoken ill of him in connexion with the violinist and that he was going to send his seconds to call upon them. Morel had foreseen the scandal—his life in the regiment made impossible—and had come at once. In doing which he had not been altogether wrong. For to make his lie more plausible, M. de Charlus had already written to two friends (one was Cottard) asking them to be his seconds. And if the violinist had not appeared, we may be certain that, mad as he was (and in order to change his sorrow into rage), M. de Charlus would have sent them with a challenge to some officer or other with whom it would have been a relief to him to fight. In the meantime M. de Charlus, remembering that he came of a race that was of purer blood than the House of France, told himself that it was really very good of him to make such a fuss about the son of a butler whose employer he would not have condescended to know. Furthermore, if he now enjoyed almost exclusively the society of riff-raff, the latter’s profoundly ingrained habit of not replying to letters, of failing to keep appointments without warning you beforehand or apologising afterwards, caused him such agitation and distress when, as was often the case, his heart was involved, and the rest of the time such irritation, inconvenience and anger, that he would sometimes begin to miss the endless letters over the most trifling matters and the scrupulous punctuality of ambassadors and princes who, even if he was, alas, indifferent to their charms, gave him at any rate some sort of peace of mind. Accustomed to Morel’s ways, and knowing how little hold he had over him, how incapable he was of insinuating himself into a life in which vulgar friendships consecrated by habit occupied too much space and time to leave a spare hour for a forsaken, touchy, and vainly imploring nobleman, M. de Charlus was so convinced that the musician would not come, was so afraid of having lost him for ever by going too far, that he could barely repress a cry of joy when he saw him appear. But, feeling himself the victor, he was determined to dictate the terms of peace and to extract from them such advantages as he might.

  “What are you doing here?” he said to him. “And you?” he added, looking at me, “I told you, whatever you did, not to bring him back with you.”

  “He didn’t want to bring me,” said Morel, turning upon M. de Charlus, in the artlessness of his coquetry, a conventionally mournful and languorously old-fashioned gaze which he doubtless thought irresistible, and looking as though he wanted to kiss the Baron and to burst into tears. “It was I who insisted on coming in spite of him. I come, in the name of our friendship, to implore you on my bended knees not to commit this rash act.”

  M. de Charlus was wild with joy. The reaction was almost too much for his nerves; he managed, however, to control them.

  “The friendship which you somewhat inopportunely invoke,” he replied curtly, “ought, on the contrary, to make you give me your approval when I decide that I cannot allow the impertinences of a fool to pass unheeded. Besides, even if I chose to yield to the entreaties of an affection which I have known better inspired, I should no longer be in a position to do so, since my letters to my seconds have been dispatched and I have no doubt of their acceptance. You have always behaved towards me like a young idiot and, instead of priding yourself, as you had every right to do, upon the predilection which I had shown for you, instead of making known to the rabble of sergeants or servants among whom the law of military service compels you to live, what a source of incomparable pride a friendship such as mine was to you, you have sought to apologise for it, almost to make an idiotic merit of not being grateful enough. I know that in so doing,” he went on, in order not to let it appear how deeply certain scenes had humiliated him, “you are guilty merely of having let yourself be carried away by the jealousy of others. But how is it that at your age you are childish enough (and ill-bred enough) not to have seen at once that your election by myself and all the advantages that must accrue from it were bound to excite jealousies, that all your comrades, while inciting you to quarrel with me, were plotting to take your place? I did not think it advisable to warn you of the letters I have received in that connexion from all those in whom you place most trust. I scorn the overtures of those flunkeys as I scorn their ineffectual mockery. The only person for whom I care is yourself, since I am fond of you, but affection has its limits and you ought to have guessed as much.”

  Harsh as the word flunkey might sound in the ears of Morel, whose father had been one, but precisely because his father had been one, the explanation of all social misadventures by “jealousy,” an explanation simplistic and absurd but indestructible, which in a certain social class never fails to “work” as infallibly as the old tricks of the stage with a theatre audien
ce or the threat of the clerical peril in a parliamentary assembly, found credence with him almost as strongly as with Françoise or with Mme de Guermantes’s servants, for whom jealousy was the sole cause of the misfortunes that beset humanity. He had no doubt that his comrades had tried to oust him from his position and was all the more wretched at the thought of this disastrous albeit imaginary duel.

  “Oh, how dreadful,” exclaimed Charlie. “I shall never be able to hold up my head again. But oughtn’t they to see you before they go and call upon this officer?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine so. I’ve sent word to one of them that I shall be here all evening, and I shall give him his instructions.”

  “I hope that before he comes I can make you listen to reason. Allow me at least to stay with you,” Morel pleaded tenderly.

  It was all that M. de Charlus wanted. He did not however yield at once.

  “You would do wrong to apply in this case the proverbial ‘spare the rod and spoil the child,’ for you were the child in question, and I do not intend to spare the rod, even after our quarrel, for those who have basely sought to do you injury. Until now, in response to their inquisitive insinuations, when they dared to ask me how a man like myself could associate with a gigolo of your sort, sprung from the gutter, I have answered only in the words of the motto of my La Rochefoucauld cousins: ‘It is my pleasure.’ I have indeed pointed out to you more than once that this pleasure was capable of becoming my chiefest pleasure, without there resulting from your arbitrary elevation any debasement of myself.” And in an impulse of almost insane pride he exclaimed, raising his arms in the air: “Tantus ab uno splendor! To condescend is not to descend,” he added in a calmer tone, after this delirious outburst of pride and joy. “I hope at least that my two adversaries, notwithstanding their inferior rank, are of a blood that I can shed without reproach. I have made certain discreet inquiries in that direction which have reassured me. If you retained a shred of gratitude towards me, you ought on the contrary to be proud to see that for your sake I am reviving the bellicose humour of my ancestors, saying like them, in the event of a fatal outcome, now that I have learned what a little rascal you are: ‘Death to me is life.’ ”

  And M. de Charlus said this sincerely, not only because of his love for Morel, but because a pugnacious instinct which he quaintly supposed to have come down to him from his ancestors filled him with such joy at the thought of fighting that he would now have regretted having to abandon this duel which he had originally concocted with the sole object of bringing Morel to heel. He had never engaged in any affair of the sort without at once preening himself on his valour and identifying himself with the illustrious Constable de Guermantes, whereas in the case of anyone else this same action of taking the field would appear to him to be of the utmost triviality.

  “I am sure it will be a splendid sight,” he said to us in all sincerity, dwelling upon each word. “To see Sarah Bernhardt in L’Aiglon, what is that but cack? Mounet-Sully in Oedipus, cack! At the most it assumes a certain pallid transfiguration when it is performed in the Arena of Nîmes. But what is it compared to that unimaginable spectacle, the lineal descendant of the Constable engaged in battle?” And at the mere thought of it M. de Charlus, unable to contain himself for joy, began to make passes in the air reminiscent of Molière, causing us to move our glasses prudently out of the way, and to fear that, when the swords crossed, not only the combatants but the doctor and seconds would at once be wounded. “What a tempting spectacle it would be for a painter. You who know Monsieur Elstir,” he said to me, “you ought to bring him.” I replied that he was not in the neighbourhood. M. de Charlus suggested that he might be summoned by telegraph. “Oh, I’m only saying it for his sake,” he added in response to my silence. “It is always interesting for a master—and in my opinion he is one—to record such instances of ethnic reviviscence. And they occur perhaps once in a century.”

  But if M. de Charlus was enchanted at the thought of a duel which he had meant at first to be entirely fictitious, Morel was thinking with terror of the stories which, thanks to the stir that this duel would cause, might be peddled around from the regimental band all the way to the holy of holies in the Rue Bergère. Seeing in his mind’s eye the “class” fully informed, he became more and more insistent with M. de Charlus, who continued to gesticulate before the intoxicating idea of a duel. He begged the Baron to allow him not to leave him until two days later, the supposed day of the duel, so that he might keep him within sight and try to make him listen to the voice of reason. So tender a proposal overcame M. de Charlus’s final hesitations. He promised to try to find a way out, and to postpone his decision until the day. In this way, by not settling the matter at once, M. de Charlus knew that he could keep Charlie with him for at least two days, and take the opportunity of obtaining from him undertakings for the future in exchange for abandoning the duel, an exercise, he said, which in itself delighted him and which he would not forgo without regret. And in saying this he was quite sincere, for he had always enjoyed taking the field when it was a question of crossing swords or exchanging shots with an opponent.

  Cottard arrived at length, although extremely late, for, delighted to act as second but even more terrified at the prospect, he had been obliged to halt at all the cafés or farms on the way, asking the occupants to be so kind as to show him the way to “No. 100” or “a certain place.” As soon as he arrived, the Baron took him into another room, for he thought it more in keeping with the rules for Charlie and me not to be present at the interview, and he excelled in making the most ordinary room serve as a temporary throne-room or council chamber. When he was alone with Cottard he thanked him warmly, but informed him that it seemed probable that the remark which had been repeated to him had never really been made, and requested that in view of this the Doctor would be so good as to let the other second know that, barring possible complications, the incident might be regarded as closed. Now that the prospect of danger had receded, Cottard was disappointed. He was indeed tempted for a moment to give vent to anger, but he remembered that one of his masters, who had enjoyed the most successful medical career of his generation, having failed to enter the Academy at his first election by two votes only, had put a brave face on it and had gone and shaken hands with his successful rival. And so the Doctor refrained from an expression of indignation which could have made no difference, and, after murmuring, he the most timorous of men, that there were certain things which one could not overlook, added that in this case it was better so, that this solution delighted him. M. de Charlus, desirous of showing his gratitude to the Doctor, just as the Duke his brother might have straightened the collar of my father’s great-coat or rather as a duchess might put her arm round the waist of a plebeian lady, brought his chair close to the Doctor’s, notwithstanding the distaste which the latter inspired in him. And, not only without any physical pleasure, but having first to overcome a physical repulsion—as a Guermantes, not as an invert—in taking leave of the Doctor he clasped his hand and caressed it for a moment with the kindly affection of a master stroking his horse’s nose and giving it a lump of sugar. But Cottard, who had never allowed the Baron to see that he had so much as heard the vaguest rumours as to his morals, but nevertheless regarded him in his heart of hearts as belonging to the category of “abnormals” (indeed, with his habitual inaccuracy in the choice of terms, and in the most serious tone, he had said of one of M. Verdurin’s footmen: “Isn’t he the Baron’s mistress?”), persons of whom he had little personal experience, imagined that this stroking of his hand was the immediate prelude to an act of rape for the accomplishment of which, the duel being a mere pretext, he had been enticed into a trap and led by the Baron into this remote apartment where he was about to be forcibly outraged. Not daring to leave his chair, to which fear kept him glued, he rolled his eyes in terror, as though he had fallen into the hands of a savage who, for all he knew, fed upon human flesh. At length M. de Charlus, releasing his hand and anxious to be hospi
table to the end, said: “Won’t you come and have one with us, as they say—what in the old days used to be called a mazagran or a gloria, drinks that are no longer to be found except, as archaeological curiosities, in the plays of Labiche and the cafés of Doncières. A gloria would be distinctly appropriate to the place, eh? And also to the occasion, what?”

  “I am President of the Anti-Alcohol League,” replied Cottard. “Some country sawbones has only got to pass, and it will be said that I do not practise what I preach. Os homini sublime dedit coelumque tueri,” he added, not that this had any bearing on the matter, but because his stock of Latin quotations was extremely limited, albeit sufficient to astound his pupils.

  M. de Charlus shrugged his shoulders and led Cottard back to where we were, after exacting a promise of secrecy which was all the more important to him since, the motive for the abortive duel being purely imaginary, it must on no account reach the ears of the officer whom he had arbitrarily selected as his adversary. While the four of us sat drinking, Mme Cottard, who had been waiting for her husband outside, where M. de Charlus had seen her perfectly well but had made no effort to summon her, came in and greeted the Baron, who held out his hand to her as though to a housemaid, without rising from his chair, partly in the manner of a king receiving homage, partly as a snob who does not wish a distinctly inelegant woman to sit down at his table, partly as an egoist who enjoys being alone with his friends and does not wish to be bothered. So Mme Cottard remained standing while she talked to M. de Charlus and her husband. But, possibly because politeness, the knowledge of the “done” thing, is not the exclusive prerogative of the Guermantes, and may all of a sudden illuminate and guide the dimmest brains, or else because, being constantly unfaithful to his wife, Cottard felt at odd moments, by way of compensation, the need to protect her against anyone who showed disrespect to her, the Doctor suddenly frowned, a thing I had never seen him do before, and, without consulting M. de Charlus, said in a tone of authority: “Come, Léontine, don’t stand about like that, sit down.” “But are you sure I’m not disturbing you?” Mme Cottard inquired timidly of M. de Charlus, who, surprised by the Doctor’s tone, had made no observation. Whereupon, without giving him a second chance, Cottard repeated with authority: “I told you to sit down.”