In Search of Lost Time, Volume V

by Marcel Proust

  In calling her “the Mole” (as for that matter he said quite affectionately “the Duras”) M. de Charlus was doing the lady justice. For all these women were the actresses of society, and it is true that, even regarding her from this point of view, the Comtesse Mole did not live up to the extraordinary reputation for intelligence that she had acquired, which reminded one of those mediocre actors or novelists who at certain periods are hailed as men of genius, either because of the mediocrity of their competitors, among whom there is no supreme artist capable of showing what is meant by true talent, or because of the mediocrity of the public, which, if any extraordinary individuality existed, would be incapable of understanding it. In Mme Molé’s case it is preferable, if not entirely accurate, to settle for the former explanation. The social world being the realm of nullity, there exist between the merits of different society women only the most insignificant degrees, which can however be crazily exaggerated by the rancours or the imagination of a M. de Charlus. And certainly, if he spoke as he had just been speaking in this language which was an affected mixture of artistic and social elements, it was because his old-womanly rages and his culture as a man of society provided the genuine eloquence that he possessed with only the most trivial themes. Since the world of differentials does not exist on the surface of the earth among all the countries which our perception renders uniform, all the more reason why it should not exist in the social “world.” But does it exist anywhere? Vinteuil’s septet had seemed to tell me that it did. But where?

  Since M. de Charlus also enjoyed repeating what one person had said of another, seeking to stir up trouble, to divide and rule, he added: “You have, by not inviting her, deprived Mme Mole of the opportunity of saying: ‘I can’t think why this Mme Verdurin should have invited me. I can’t imagine who these people are, I don’t know them.’ She was already saying a year ago that you were wearying her with your advances. She’s a fool; never invite her again. After all, she’s nothing so very wonderful. She can perfectly well come to your house without making a fuss about it, seeing that I come here. In short,” he concluded, “it seems to me that you have every reason to thank me, for, as far as it went, the whole thing was perfect. The Duchesse de Guermantes didn’t come, but one never knows, perhaps it was better that she didn’t. We shan’t hold it against her, we’ll think of her all the same another time, not that one can help remembering her, her very eyes say to us ‘Forget me not!’, for they remind one of those flowers” (here I thought to myself how strong the Guermantes spirit—the decision to go to one house and not to another—must be, to have outweighed in the Duchess’s mind her fear of Palamède). “Faced with so complete a success, one is tempted like Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to see everywhere the hand of Providence. The Duchesse de Duras was enchanted. She even asked me to tell you so,” added M. de Charlus, dwelling upon the words as though Mme Verdurin must regard this as a sufficient honour. Sufficient and indeed scarcely credible, for he thought it necessary, in order to be believed, to add “Yes, indeed,” completely carried away by the madness of those whom Jupiter has decided to destroy. “She has engaged Morel to come to her house, where the same programme will be repeated, and I’m even thinking of asking her for an invitation for M. Verdurin.” This civility to the husband alone was, although no such idea even occurred to M. de Charlus, the most cruel insult to the wife, who, believing herself to possess with regard to the violinist, by virtue of a sort of ukase which prevailed in the little clan, the right to forbid him to perform elsewhere without her express authorisation, was absolutely determined to forbid his appearance at Mme de Duras’s party.

  The Baron’s volubility was in itself an irritation to Mme Verdurin, who did not like people to form separate conversational groups within the little clan. How often, even at La Raspelière, hearing M. de Charlus talking incessantly to Charlie instead of being content with taking his part in the concerted ensemble of the clan, had she not pointed to him and exclaimed: “What a windbag he is! What a windbag! He really is the most colossal windbag?”?15 But this time it was far worse. Intoxicated by the sound of his own voice, M. de Charlus failed to realise that by acknowledging Mme Verdurin’s role and confining it within narrow limits, he was unleashing that feeling of hatred which was in her only a special, social form of jealousy. Mme Verdurin was genuinely fond of her regular visitors, the faithful of the little clan, but wished them to be entirely devoted to their Mistress. Cutting her losses, like those jealous lovers who will tolerate unfaithfulness, but only under their own roof and even in front of their eyes, that is to say when it scarcely counts as unfaithfulness, she would allow the men to have mistresses or male lovers, on condition that the affair had no social consequence outside her own house, that the tie was formed and perpetuated in the shelter of her Wednesdays. In the old days, every furtive giggle that came from Odette when she was with Swann had gnawed at Mme Verdurin, and so of late had every aside exchanged by Morel and the Baron; she found one consolation alone for her vexations, which was to destroy the happiness of others. She would have been unable to endure the Baron’s for long. And here was that rash individual precipitating the catastrophe by appearing to restrict the Mistress’s position in her little clan. Already she could see Morel going into society, without her, under the Baron’s aegis. There was only one remedy, to make Morel choose between the Baron and herself, and, taking advantage of the ascendancy that she had acquired over Morel by giving him proof of her extraordinary perspicacity thanks to reports which she commissioned and lies which she herself concocted, all of which served to corroborate what he himself was inclined to believe, and what would in time be made plain to him thanks to the booby-traps which she was preparing and into which her unsuspecting victims would fall—taking advantage of this ascendancy, to make him choose herself in preference to the Baron. As for the society ladies who had been present and had not even asked to be introduced to her, as soon as she grasped their hesitations or indifference, she had said: “Ah! I see what they are, the sort of old frumps that don’t fit in with us. It’s the last time they’ll set foot in this house.” For she would have died rather than admit that anyone had been less civil to her than she had hoped.

  “Ah! my dear General,” M. de Charlus suddenly exclaimed, abandoning Mme Verdurin on catching sight of General Deltour, Secretary to the Presidency of the Republic, who might be of great value in securing Charlie his medal, and who, after asking Cottard for a piece of advice, was slipping away. “Good evening, my dear, delightful friend. Trying to get away without saying good-bye to me, eh?” said the Baron with a genial, self-satisfied smile, for he knew quite well that people were always glad to stay a little longer to talk to him. And as, in his present state of exhilaration, he would answer his own questions in a shrill tone: “Well, did you enjoy it? Wasn’t it really beautiful? The andante, what? It’s the most touching thing that was ever written. I defy anyone to listen to the end without tears in his eyes. Charming of you to have come. By the way, I had the most excellent telegram this morning from Froberville, who tells me that as far as the Chancellery of the Legion goes the difficulties have been smoothed over, as they say.” M. de Charlus’s voice continued to rise, as piercing, as different from his normal voice, as that of a barrister grandiloquently addressing the court: a phenomenon of vocal amplification through over-excitement and nervous euphoria analogous to that which, at her own dinner-parties, raised to so high a pitch the voice and gaze alike of Mme de Guermantes.

  “I intended to send you a note tomorrow by messenger to tell you of my enthusiasm, until I could find an opportunity to speak to you, but you were so popular! Froberville’s support is not to be despised, but for my own part, I have the Minister’s promise,” said the General.

  “Ah! excellent. Anyhow you’ve seen for yourself that it’s no more than what such talent deserves. Hoyos was delighted. I didn’t manage to see the Ambassadress. Was she pleased? Who would not have been, except those that have ears and hear not, which doesn’t matter so
long as they have tongues and can speak.”

  Taking advantage of the Baron’s having moved away to speak to the General, Mme Verdurin beckoned to Brichot. The latter, who did not know what she was about to say, sought to amuse her, and without suspecting the anguish that he was causing me, said to the Mistress: “The Baron is delighted that Mlle Vinteuil and her friend didn’t come. They shock him terribly. He declares that their morals are appalling. You can’t imagine how prudish and severe the Baron is on moral questions.” Contrary to Brichot’s expectation, Mme Verdurin was not amused: “He’s unspeakable,” was her answer. “Suggest to him that he should come and smoke a cigarette with you, so that my husband can get hold of his Dulcinea without his noticing and warn him of the abyss at his feet.”

  Brichot seemed to hesitate.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Mme Verdurin went on, to remove his final scruples, “that I don’t feel at all safe with a man like that in the house. I know he’s been involved in some nasty business and the police have their eye on him.” And, as she had a certain talent for improvisation when inspired by malice, Mme Verdurin did not stop at this: “Apparently he’s been in prison. Yes, yes, I’ve been told by people who knew all about it. In any case I know from a person who lives in his street that you can’t imagine the ruffians he brings to his house.” And as Brichot, who often went to the Baron’s, began to protest, Mme Verdurin, growing more and more animated, exclaimed: “But I assure you! You can take my word for it,” an expression with which she habitually sought to give weight to an assertion flung out more or less at random. “He’ll be found murdered in his bed one of these days, as those people always are. It may not quite come to that, perhaps, because he’s in the clutches of that Jupien whom he had the impudence to send to me and who’s an ex-convict—yes, really, I know it for a positive fact. He has a hold on him because of some letters which are perfectly dreadful, it seems. I got it from somebody who has seen them and who told me: ‘You’d be sick on the spot if you saw them.’ That’s how Jupien gets him to toe the line and makes him cough up all the money he wants. I’d sooner die than live in the state of terror Charlus lives in. In any case, if Morel’s family decides to bring an action against him, I’ve no desire to be dragged in as an accessory. If he goes on, it will be at his own risk, but I shall have done my duty. What is one to do? It’s no joke, I can tell you.”

  And, already agreeably excited at the thought of her husband’s impending conversation with the violinist, Mme Verdurin said to me: “Ask Brichot whether I’m not a courageous friend, and whether I’m not capable of sacrificing myself to save my comrades.” (She was alluding to the circumstances in which she had forced him in the nick of time to break first of all with his laundress and then with Mme de Cambremer, as a result of which Brichot had gone almost completely blind and, people said, had taken to morphine.)

  “An incomparable friend, farsighted and valiant,” replied the Professor with ingenuous fervour.

  “Mme Verdurin prevented me from doing something extremely foolish,” Brichot told me when she had left us. “She doesn’t hesitate to strike at the roots. She’s an interventionist, as our friend Cottard would say. I admit, however, that the thought that the poor Baron is still unconscious of the blow that is about to fall upon him distresses me deeply. He’s completely mad about that boy. If Mme Verdurin succeeds, there’s a man who is going to be very miserable. However, I’m not at all sure she won’t fail. I fear that she may only succeed in sowing discord between them, which in the end, without separating them, will only make them break with her.”

  It was often thus with Mme Verdurin and her faithful. But it was evident that the need she felt to preserve their friendship was more and more dominated by the requirement that this friendship should never be thwarted by the friendship they might feel for one another. She had no objection to homosexuality so long as it did not tamper with the orthodoxy of the little clan, but, like the Church, she preferred any sacrifice rather than a concession on orthodoxy. I was beginning to be afraid that her irritation with myself might be due to her having heard that I had prevented Albertine from going to her that day, and that she might presently set to work, if she had not already begun, upon the same task of separating her from me which her husband, in the case of Charlus, was now going to attempt with the violinist.

  “Come along, get hold of Charlus, find some excuse, there’s no time to lose,” said Mme Verdurin, “and whatever you do, don’t let him come back here until I send for you. Ah! what an evening,” she added, revealing the true cause of her rage. “Performing a masterpiece in front of those nitwits. I don’t include the Queen of Naples, she’s intelligent, she’s a nice woman” (which meant: “She was nice to me”). “But the others. Ah! it’s enough to drive you mad. After all, I’m no longer a schoolgirl. When I was young, people used to tell me that one had to put up with a bit of boredom, so I made an effort; but now, ah! no, I just can’t help it, I’m old enough to do as I please, life’s too short. Allow myself to be bored stiff, listen to idiots, smile, pretend to think them intelligent—no, I simply can’t do it. Go along, Brichot, there’s no time to lose.”

  “I’m going, Madame, I’m going,” said Brichot, as General Deltour moved away. But first of all the Professor took me aside for a moment: “Moral Duty,” he said, “is less clearly imperative than our Ethics teach us. Whatever the theosophical coffee-houses and the Kantian beer-cellars may say, we are deplorably ignorant of the nature of the Good. I myself who, without wishing to boast, have lectured to my pupils, in all innocence, on the philosophy of the aforesaid Immanuel Kant, can see no precise directive for the case of social casuistry with which I am now confronted in that Critique of Practical Reason in which the great unfrocked priest of Protestantism platonised in the Teutonic manner for a prehistorically sentimental and aulic Germany, in the obscure interests of a Pomeranian mysticism. It’s the Symposium once again, but held this time at Königsberg, in the local style, indigestible and sanitised, with sauerkraut and without gigolos. It is obvious on the one hand that I cannot refuse our excellent hostess the small service that she asks of me, in fully orthodox conformity with traditional Morality. One must avoid above all else—for there are few things that engender more inanities than that one—letting oneself be duped by words. But after all, one cannot but admit that if mothers were entitled to vote, the Baron would run the risk of being lamentably blackballed for the Chair of Virtue. It is unfortunately with the temperament of a rake that he pursues the vocation of a pedagogue. Mind you, I don’t wish to speak ill of the Baron. He can be as amusing as a superior clown, whereas with the average colleague of mine, Academician though he be, I am bored, as Xenophon would say, at a hundred drachmas to the hour. Moreover this gentle man, who can carve a joint like nobody else, combines with a genius for anathema a wealth of kindness. But I fear that he is expending upon Morel rather more than a wholesome morality would enjoin, and without knowing to what extent the young penitent shows himself docile or recalcitrant to the special exercises which his catechist imposes upon him by way of mortification, one does not need to be a mastermind to be aware that we should be erring, as they say, on the side of mansuetude with regard to this Rosicrucian who seems to have come down to us from Petronius by way of Saint-Simon, if we granted him with our eyes shut, duly signed and sealed, a licence to satanise. And yet, in keeping this man occupied while Mme Verdurin, for the sinner’s good and indeed justly tempted by such a cure of souls, proceeds—by speaking unequivocally to the young harum-scarum—to remove from him all that he loves, to deal him perhaps a fatal blow, it seems to me that I am leading him into what might be termed an ambush, and I recoil from it as though from an act of treachery.”

  This said, he did not hesitate to commit it, but, taking me by the arm, approached M. de Charlus: “Shall we go and smoke a cigarette, Baron. This young man hasn’t yet seen all the marvels of the house.” I made the excuse that I was obliged to go home. “Wait just another minute,” said Bricho
t. “You know you’re supposed to be giving me a lift, and I haven’t forgotten your promise.” “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to get them to show you the silver plate? Nothing could be simpler,” said M. de Charlus. “You promised me, remember, not a word about Morel’s decoration. I mean to give him a surprise by announcing it presently when people have begun to leave, although he says that it is of no importance to an artist, but that his uncle would like him to have it” (I blushed, for the Verdurins knew through my grandfather who Morel’s uncle was). “Then you wouldn’t like me to get them to bring out the best pieces?” said M. de Charlus. “But you know them already, you’ve seen them a dozen times at La Raspelière.”

  I did not venture to tell him that what might have interested me was not the mediocre glitter of even the most opulent bourgeois silver, but some specimen, were it only reproduced in a fine engraving, of Mme du Barry’s. I was far too preoccupied and—even without this revelation as to Mlle Vinteuil’s expected presence—always, in society, far too distracted and agitated to fasten my attention on objects, however beautiful. It could have been arrested only by the appeal of some reality that addressed itself to my imagination, as might have done, this evening, a picture of that Venice of which I had thought so much during the afternoon, or some general element, common to several aspects and truer than they, which, of its own accord, never failed to awake in me an inner spirit, habitually dormant, the ascent of which to the surface of my consciousness filled me with joy. Now, as I emerged from the room known as the concert-room and crossed the other drawing-rooms with Brichot and M. de Charlus, on discovering, transposed among others, certain pieces of furniture which I had seen at La Raspelière and to which I had paid no attention, I perceived, between the arrangement of the town house and that of the country house, a certain family resemblance, a permanent identity, and I understood what Brichot meant when he said to me with a smile: “There, look at this room, it may perhaps give you an idea of what things were like in the Rue Montalivet, twenty-five years ago, grande mortalis aevi spatium.” From his smile, a tribute to the defunct salon which he saw with his mind’s eye, I understood that what Brichot, perhaps without realising it, preferred in the old drawing-room, more than the large windows, more than the gay youth of his hosts and their faithful, was that unreal aspect (which I myself could discern from certain similarities between La Raspelière and the Quai Conti) of which, in a drawing-room as in everything else, the actual, external aspect, verifiable by everyone, is but the prolongation, the aspect which has detached itself from the outer world to take refuge in our soul, to which it gives as it were a surplus-value, in which it is absorbed into its habitual substance, transforming itself—houses that have been pulled down, people long dead, bowls of fruit at suppers which we recall—into that translucent alabaster of our memories of which we are incapable of conveying the colour which we alone can see, so that we can truthfully say to other people, when speaking of these things of the past, that they can have no conception of them, that they are unlike anything they have seen, and that we ourselves cannot inwardly contemplate without a certain emotion, reflecting that it is on the existence of our thoughts that their survival for a little longer depends, the gleam of lamps that have been extinguished and the fragrance of arbours that will never bloom again. And doubtless for this reason, the drawing-room in the Rue Montalivet diminished, for Brichot, the Verdurins’ present home. But on the other hand it added to this home, in the Professor’s eyes, a beauty which it could not have in those of a newcomer. Those pieces of the original furniture that had been transplanted here, and sometimes arranged in the same groups, and which I myself remembered from La Raspelière, introduced into the new drawing-room fragments of the old which recalled it at moments to the point of hallucination and then seemed themselves scarcely real from having evoked in the midst of the surrounding reality fragments of a vanished world which one seemed to see elsewhere. A sofa that had risen up from dreamland between a pair of new and thoroughly substantial armchairs, little chairs upholstered in pink silk, the brocaded covering of a card-table raised to the dignity of a person since, like a person, it had a past, a memory, retaining in the chill and gloom of the Quai Conti the tan of its sun-warming through the windows of the Rue Montalivet (where it could tell the time of day as accurately as Mme Verdurin herself) and through the glass doors at La Raspelière, where they had taken it and where it used to gaze out all day long over the flower-beds of the garden at the valley below, until it was time for Cottard and the violinist to sit down to their game; a bouquet of violets and pansies in pastel, the gift of a painter friend, now dead, the sole surviving fragment of a life that had vanished without leaving any trace, epitomising a great talent and a long friendship, recalling his gentle, searching eyes, his shapely, plump and melancholy hand as he painted it; the attractively disordered clutter of the presents from the faithful which had followed the lady of the house from place to place and had come in time to assume the fixity of a trait of character, of a line of destiny; the profusion of cut flowers, of chocolate-boxes, which here as in the country systematised their efflorescence in accordance with an identical mode of blossoming; the curious interpolation of those singular and superfluous objects which still appear to have just been taken from the box in which they were offered and remain for ever what they were at first, New Year presents; all those things, in short, which one could not have isolated from the rest but which for Brichot, an old habitué of Verdurin festivities, had that patina, that velvety bloom of things to which, giving them a sort of depth, a spiritual Doppelgänger has come to be attached—all this sent echoing round him so many scattered chords, as it were, awakening in his heart cherished resemblances, confused reminiscences which, here in this actual drawing-room that was speckled with them, cut out, defined, delimited—as on a fine day a shaft of sunlight cuts a section in the atmosphere—the furniture and carpets, pursued, from a cushion to a flower-stand, from a footstool to a lingering scent, from a lighting arrangement to a colour scheme, sculpted, evoked, spiritualised, called to life, a form which was as it were the idealisation, immanent in each of their successive homes, of the Verdurin drawing-room.