In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (53 page)

Since he refused to give any explanation, I tried to provide one for
myself, but succeeded only in hesitating between several, none of
which could be the right one. Perhaps he did not remember, or perhaps
it was I who had failed to understand what he had said to me that
morning…. More probably, in his pride, he did not wish to appear to
have sought to attract people whom he despised, and preferred to cast
upon them the responsibility for their intrusion. But then, if he
despised us, why had he been so anxious that we should come, or rather
that my grandmother should come, for of the two of us it was to her
alone that he spoke that evening, and never once to me. Talking with
the utmost animation to her, as also to Mme. de Villeparisis, hiding,
so to speak, behind them, as though he were seated at the back of a
theatre–box, he contented himself, turning from them every now and
then the exploring gaze of his penetrating eyes, with fastening it on
my face, with the same gravity, the same air of preoccupation as if my
face had been a manuscript difficult to decipher.

No doubt, if he had not had those eyes, the face of M. de Charlus
would have been similar to the faces of many good–looking men. And
when Saint–Loup, speaking to me of various other Guermantes, on a
later occasion, said: "Gad, they've not got that thoroughbred air, of
being gentlemen to their finger–tips, that uncle Palamède has!"
confirming my suspicion that a thoroughbred air and aristocratic
distinction were not anything mysterious and new but consisted in
elements which I had recognised without difficulty and without
receiving any particular impression from them, I was to feel that
another of my illusions had been shattered. But that face, to which a
faint layer of powder gave almost the appearance of a face on the
stage, in vain might M. de Charlus hermetically seal its expression;
his eyes were like two crevices, two loopholes which alone he had
failed to stop, and through which, according to where one stood or sat
in relation to him, one felt suddenly flash across one the glow of
some internal engine which seemed to offer no reassurance even to him
who without being altogether master of it must carry it inside him, at
an unstable equilibrium and always on the point of explosion; and the
circumspect and unceasingly restless expression of those eyes, with
all the signs of exhaustion which, extending from them to a pair of
dark rings quite low down upon his cheeks, were stamped on his face,
however carefully he might compose and regulate it, made one think of
some
incognito
, some disguise assumed by a powerful man in danger,
or merely by a dangerous—but tragic—person. I should have liked to
divine what was this secret which other men did not carry in their
breasts and which had already made M. de Charlus's gaze so enigmatic
to me when I had seen him that morning outside the Casino. But with
what I now knew of his family I could no longer believe that they were
the eyes of a thief, nor, after what I had heard of his conversation,
could I say that they were those of a madman. If he was cold with me,
while making himself agreeable to my grandmother, that arose perhaps
not from a personal antipathy for, generally speaking, just as he was
kindly disposed towards women, of whose faults he used to speak
without, as a rule, any narrowing of the broadest tolerance, so he
shewed with regard to men, and especially young men, a hatred so
violent as to suggest that of certain extreme misogynists for women.
Two or three 'carpet–knights,' relatives or intimate friends of
Saint–Loup who happened to mention their names, M. de Charlus, with an
almost ferocious expression, in sharp contrast to his usual coldness,
called: "Little cads!" I gathered that the particular fault which he
found in the young men of the period was their extreme effeminacy.
"They're absolute women," he said with scorn. But what life would not
have appeared effeminate beside that which he expected a man to lead,
and never found energetic or virile enough? (He himself, when he
walked across country, after long hours on the road would plunge his
heated body into frozen streams.) He would not even allow a man to
wear a single ring. But this profession of virility did not prevent
his having also the most delicate sensibilities. When Mme. de
Villeparisis asked him to describe to my grandmother some country
house in which Mme. de Sévigné had stayed, adding that she could not
help feeling that there was something rather 'literary' about that
lady's distress at being parted from "that tiresome Mme. de Grignan":

"On the contrary," he retorted, "I can think of nothing more true.
Besides, it was a time in which feelings of that sort were thoroughly
understood. The inhabitant of Lafontaine's Monomotapa, running to see
his friend who had appeared to him in a dream, and had looked sad, the
pigeon finding that the greatest of evils is the absence of the other
pigeon, seem to you perhaps, my dear aunt, as exaggerated as Mme. de
Sévigné's impatience for the moment when she will be alone with her
daughter. It is so fine what she says when she leaves her: 'This
parting gives a pain to my soul which I feel like an ache in my body.
In absence one is liberal with the hours. One anticipates a time for
which one is longing.'" My grandmother was in ecstasies at hearing the
Letters thus spoken of, exactly as she would have spoken of them
herself. She was astonished that a man could understand them so
thoroughly. She found in M. de Charlus a delicacy, a sensibility that
were quite feminine. We said to each other afterwards, when we were by
ourselves and began to discuss him together, that he must have come
under the strong influence of a woman, his mother, or in later life
his daughter if he had any children. "A mistress, perhaps," I thought
to myself, remembering the influence that Saint–Loup's seemed to have
had over him, which enabled me to realise the point to which men can
be refined by the women with whom they live.

"Once she was with her daughter, she had probably nothing to say to
her," put in Mme. de Villeparisis.

"Most certainly she had: if it was only what she calls 'things so
slight that nobody else would notice them but you and me.' And anyhow
she was with her. And Labruyère tells us that that is everything. 'To
be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them,
it is all the same.' He is right; that is the only form of
happiness," added M. de Charlus in a mournful voice, "and that
happiness—alas, life is so ill arranged that one very rarely tastes
it; Mme. de Sévigné was after all less to be pitied than most of us.
She spent a great part of her life with the person whom she loved."

"You forget that it was not 'love' in her case; the person was her
daughter."

"But what matters in life is not whom or what one loves," he went on,
in a judicial, peremptory, almost a cutting tone; "it is the fact of
loving. What Mme. de Sévigné felt for her daughter has a far better
claim to rank with the passion that Racine described in
Andromaque
or
Phèdre
than the commonplace relations young Sévigné had with his
mistresses. It's the same with a mystic's love for his God. The hard
and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from our
complete ignorance of life."

"You think all that of
Andromaque
and
Phèdre
, do you?" Saint–Loup
asked his uncle in a faintly contemptuous tone. "There is more truth
in a single tragedy of Racine than in all the dramatic works of
Monsieur Victor Hugo," replied M. de Charlus. "People really are
overwhelming," Saint–Loup murmured in my ear. "Preferring Racine to
Victor, you may say what you like, it's epoch–making!" He was
genuinely distressed by his uncle's words, but the satisfaction of
saying "you may say what you like" and, better still, "epoch–making"
consoled him.

In these reflexions upon the sadness of having to live apart from the
person whom one loves (which were to lead my grandmother to say to me
that Mme. de Villeparisis's nephew understood certain things quite as
well as his aunt, but in a different way, and moreover had something
about him that set him far above the average club man) M. de Charlus
not only allowed a refinement of feeling to appear such as men rarely
shew; his voice itself, like certain contralto voices which have not
been properly trained to the right pitch, so that when they sing it
sounds like a duet between a young man and a woman, singing
alternately, mounted, when he expressed these delicate sentiments, to
its higher notes, took on an unexpected sweetness and seemed to be
embodying choirs of betrothed maidens, of sisters, who poured out the
treasures of their love. But the bevy of young girls, whom M. de
Charlus in his horror of every kind of effeminacy would have been so
distressed to learn that he gave the impression of sheltering thus
within his voice, did not confine themselves to the interpretation,
the modulation of scraps of sentiment. Often while M. de Charlus was
talking one could hear their laughter, shrill, fresh laughter of
school–girls or coquettes quizzing their partners with all the
archness of clever tongues and pretty wits.

He told us how a house that had belonged to his family, in which Marie
Antoinette had slept, with a park laid out by Le Nôtre, was now in the
hands of the Israels, the wealthy financiers, who had bought it.
"Israel—at least that is the name these people go by, which seems
to me a generic, a racial term rather than a proper name. One cannot
tell; possibly people of that sort do not have names, and are
designated only by the collective title of the tribe to which they
belong. It is of no importance! But fancy, after being a home of the
Guermantes, to belong to Israels!!!" His voice rose. "It reminds me of
a room in the Château of Blois where the caretaker who was shewing me
over said: 'This is where Mary Stuart used to say her prayers; I use
it to keep my brooms in.' Naturally I wish to know nothing more of
this house that has let itself be dishonoured, any more than of my
cousin Clara de Chimay after she left her husband. But I keep a
photograph of the house, when it was still unspoiled, just as I keep
one of the Princess before her large eyes had learned to gaze on
anyone but my cousin. A photograph acquires something of the dignity
which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of
reality and shews us things that no longer exist. I could give you a
copy, since you are interested in that style of architecture," he said
to my grandmother. At that moment, noticing that the embroidered
handkerchief which he had in his pocket was shewing some coloured
threads, he thrust it sharply down out of sight with the scandalised
air of a prudish but far from innocent lady concealing attractions
which, by an excess of scrupulosity, she regards as indecent. "Would
you believe," he went on, "that the first thing the creatures did was
to destroy Le Nôtre's park, which is as bad as slashing a picture by
Poussin? For that alone, these Israels ought to be in prison. It is
true," he added with a smile, after a moment's silence, "that there
are probably plenty of other reasons why they should be there! In any
case, you can imagine the effect, with that architecture behind it, of
an English garden."

"But the house is in the same style as the Petit Trianon," said Mme.
de Villeparisis, "and Marie–Antoinette had an English garden laid out
there."

"Which, all the same, ruins Gabriel's front," replied M. de Charlus.
"Obviously, it would be an act of vandalism now to destroy the Hameau.
But whatever may be the spirit of the age, I doubt, all the same,
whether, in that respect, a whim of Mme. Israel has the same
importance as the memory of the Queen."

Meanwhile my grandmother had been making signs to me to go up to
bed, in spite of the urgent appeals of Saint–Loup who, to my utter
confusion, had alluded in front of M. de Charlus to the depression
that used often to come upon me at night before I went to sleep, which
his uncle must regard as betokening a sad want of virility. I lingered
a few moments still, then went upstairs, and was greatly surprised
when, a little later, having heard a knock at my bedroom door and
asked who was there, I heard the voice of M. de Charlus saying dryly:

"It is Charlus. May I come in, sir? Sir," he began again in the same
tone as soon as he had shut the door, "my nephew was saying just now
that you were apt to be worried at night before going to sleep, and
also that you were an admirer of Bergotte's books. As I had one here
in my luggage which you probably do not know, I have brought it to
help you to while away these moments in which you are not
comfortable."

I thanked M. de Charlus with some warmth and told him that, on the
contrary, I had been afraid that what Saint–Loup had said to him about
my discomfort when night came would have made me appear in his eyes
more stupid even than I was.

"No; why?" he answered, in a gentler voice. "You have not, perhaps,
any personal merit; so few of us have! But for a time at least you
have youth, and that is always a charm. Besides, sir, the greatest
folly of all is to laugh at or to condemn in others what one does not
happen oneself to feel. I love the night, and you tell me that you are
afraid of it. I love the scent of roses, and I have a friend whom it
throws into a fever. Do you suppose that I think, for that reason,
that he is inferior to me? I try to understand everything and I take
care to condemn nothing. After all, you must not be too sorry for
yourself; I do not say that these moods of depression are not painful,
I know that one can be made to suffer by things which the world would
not understand. But at least you have placed your affection wisely, in
your grandmother. You see a great deal of her. And besides, that is a
legitimate affection, I mean one that is repaid. There are so many of
which one cannot say that."