The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (189 page)

I was thinking of taking advantage of these unexpectedly ardent predispositions on M. de Charlus’s part to ask him whether he could not arrange for me to meet his sister-in-law when suddenly I felt my arm violently jerked as though by an electric shock. It was M. de Charlus who had hurriedly withdrawn his arm from mine. Although as he talked he had allowed his eyes to wander in all directions, he had only just caught sight of M. d’Argencourt emerging from a side street. On seeing us, the Belgian Minister appeared annoyed and gave me a look of distrust, almost that look intended for a creature of another race with which Mme de Guermantes had scrutinised Bloch, and tried to avoid us. But it was as though M. de Charlus was determined to show him that he was not at all anxious not to be seen by him, for he called after him to tell him something of extreme insignificance. And fearing perhaps that M. d’Argencourt had not recognised me, M. de Charlus informed him that I was a great friend of Mme de Villeparisis, of the Duchesse de Guermantes, of Robert de Saint-Loup, and that he himself, Charlus, was an old friend of my grandmother, glad to be able to show her grandson a little of the affection that he felt for her. Nevertheless I observed that M. d’Argencourt, although I had barely been introduced to him at Mme de Villeparisis’s and M. de Charlus had now spoken to him at great length about my family, was distinctly colder to me than he had been an hour ago, and thereafter, for a long time, he showed the same aloofness whenever we met. He examined me now with a curiosity in which there was no sign of friendliness, and seemed even to have to overcome an instinctive repulsion when, on leaving us, after a moment’s hesitation, he held out a hand to me which he at once withdrew.

“I’m sorry about that,” said M. de Charlus. “That fellow Argencourt, well born but ill bred, a worse than second-rate diplomat, an execrable husband and a womaniser, as double-faced as a villain in a play, is one of those men who are incapable of understanding but perfectly capable of destroying the things in life that are really great. I hope that our friendship will be one of them, if it is ever to be formed, and that you will do me the honour of keeping it—as I shall—well clear of the heels of any of those donkeys who, from idleness or clumsiness or sheer malice, trample on what seemed destined to endure. Unfortunately, that is the mould in which most society people have been cast.”

“The Duchesse de Guermantes seems to be very intelligent. We were talking this afternoon about the possibility of war. It appears that she is especially knowledgeable on that subject.”

“She is nothing of the sort,” replied M. de Charlus tartly. “Women, and most men for that matter, understand nothing about what I wished to speak to you of. My sister-in-law is an agreeable woman who imagines that we are still living in the days of Balzac’s novels, when women had an influence on politics. Association with her could at present only have a most unfortunate effect on you, as for that matter all social intercourse. That was one of the very things I was about to tell you when that fool interrupted me. The first sacrifice that you must make for me—I shall claim them from you in proportion to the gifts I bestow on you—is to give up going into society. It distressed me this afternoon to see you at that idiotic gathering. You will tell me that I was there myself, but for me it was not a social gathering, it was simply a family visit. Later on, when you are a man of established position, if it amuses you to stoop for a moment to that sort of thing, it may perhaps do no harm. And then I need not point out how invaluable I can be to you. The ‘Open Sesame’ to the Guermantes house, and any others that it is worth while throwing open the doors of to you, rests with me. I shall be the judge, and intend to remain in control of the situation. At present you are a catechumen. There was something scandalous about your presence up there. You must at all costs avoid impropriety.”

Since M. de Charlus had mentioned this visit to Mme de Villeparisis’s, I wanted to ask him his exact relationship to the Marquise, the latter’s birth, and so on, but the question took another form on my lips than I had intended, and I asked him instead what the Villeparisis family was.

“Dear me, it’s not an easy question to answer,” M. de Charlus replied in a voice that seemed to skate over the words. “It’s as if you had asked me to tell you what nothing was. My aunt, who is capable of anything, took it into her whimsical head to plunge the greatest name in France into oblivion by marrying for the second time a little M. Thirion. This Thirion thought that he could assume an extinct aristocratic name with impunity, as people do in novels. History doesn’t relate whether he was tempted by La Tour d’Auvergne, whether he hesitated between Toulouse and Montmorency. At all events he made a different choice and became Monsieur de Villeparisis. Since there have been no Villeparisis since 1702, I thought that he simply meant to indicate modestly that he was a gentleman from Villeparisis, a little place near Paris, that he had a solicitor’s practice or a barber’s shop at Villeparisis. But my aunt didn’t see things that way—as a matter of fact she’s reaching the age when she can scarcely see at all. She tried to make out that such a marquisate existed in the family; she wrote to us all and wanted to put things on a proper footing, I don’t know why. When one takes a name to which one has no right, it’s best not to make too much fuss, like our excellent friend the so-called Comtesse de M. who, against the advice of Mme Alphonse Rothschild, refused to swell the coffers of the State for a title which would not have been made more authentic thereby. The joke is that ever since then my aunt has claimed a monopoly of all the paintings connected with the real Villeparisis family, to whom the late Thirion was in no way related. My aunt’s country house has become a sort of repository for their portraits, genuine or not, under the rising flood of which several Guermantes and several Condés who are by no means small beer have had to disappear. The picture dealers manufacture new ones for her every year. And she even has in her dining-room in the country a portrait of Saint-Simon because of his niece’s first marriage to a M. de Villeparisis, as if the author of the
Memoirs
hadn’t perhaps other claims to the interest of visitors than not to have been the great-grandfather of M. Thirion.”

Mme de Villeparisis being merely Mme Thirion completed the decline and fall in my estimation of her which had begun when I had seen the mixed composition of her salon. It seemed to me to be unfair that a woman whose title and name were of quite recent origin should be able thus to delude her contemporaries and might similarly delude posterity by virtue of her friendships with royal personages. Now that she had become once again what I had supposed her to be in my childhood, a person who had nothing aristocratic about her, these distinguished kinsfolk by whom she was surrounded struck me as somehow extraneous to her. She did not cease to be charming to us all. I went occasionally to see her and she sent me little presents from time to time. But I had never any impression that she belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and if I had wanted any information about it she was one of the last people to whom I should have applied.

“At present,” M. de Charlus went on, “by going into society you will only damage your position, warp your intellect and character. Moreover, you must be particularly careful in choosing your friends. Keep mistresses if your family have no objection—that doesn’t concern me, and indeed I can only encourage it, you young rascal—a young rascal who will soon have to start shaving,” he added, touching my chin. “But your choice of men friends is more important. Eight out of ten young men are little bounders, little wretches capable of doing you an injury which you will never be able to repair. My nephew Saint-Loup, now, he might be a suitable companion for you at a pinch. As far as your future is concerned, he can be of no possible use to you, but for that I will suffice. And really, when all’s said and done, as a person to go about with, at times when you have had enough of me, he does not seem to present any serious drawback that I know of. At least he’s a man, not one of those effeminate creatures one sees so many of nowadays, who look like little rent boys and at any moment may bring their innocent victims to the gallows.” (I did not know the meaning of this slang expression, “rent boy”; anyone who had known it would have been as greatly surprised by his use of it as myself. Society people always like talking slang, and people who may be suspected of certain things like to show that they are not afraid to mention them. A proof of innocence in their eyes. But they have lost their sense of proportion, they are no longer capable of realising the point beyond which a certain pleasantry will become too technical, too flagrant, will be a proof rather of corruption than of ingenuousness.) “He’s not like the rest of them: he’s very nice, very serious.”

I could not help smiling at this epithet “serious,” to which the intonation that M. de Charlus gave it seemed to impart the sense of “virtuous,” of “steady,” as one says of a little shop-girl that she is “serious.” At that moment a cab passed, zigzagging along the street. A young cabman, who had deserted his box, was driving it from inside, where he lay sprawling on the cushions, apparently half-tipsy. M. de Charlus instantly stopped him. The driver began to parley:

“Which way are you going?”

“Yours.” (This surprised me, for M. de Charlus had already refused several cabs with similarly coloured lamps.)

“Well, I don’t want to get up on the box. D’you mind if I stay inside?”

“No, but lower the hood. Well, think over my proposal,” said M. de Charlus, preparing to leave me, “I give you a few days to consider it. Write to me. I repeat, I shall need to see you every day, and to receive from you guarantees of loyalty and discretion which, I must admit, you do seem to offer. But in the course of my life I have been so often deceived by appearances that I never wish to trust them again. Damn it, it’s the least I can expect that before giving up a treasure I should know into what hands it is going to pass. Anyway, bear in mind what I’m offering you. You are like Hercules (though, unfortunately for yourself, you do not appear to me to have quite his muscular development) at the parting of the ways. Remember that you may regret for the rest of your life not having chosen the way that leads to virtue. Hallo,” he turned to the cabman, “haven’t you put the hood down? I’ll do it myself. I think, too, I’d better drive, seeing the state you appear to be in.”

He jumped in beside the cabman, and the cab set off at a brisk trot.

As for myself, no sooner had I turned in at our gate than I came across the pendant to the conversation which I had heard that afternoon between Bloch and M. de Norpois, but in another form, brief, inverted and cruel. This was a dispute between our butler, who was a Dreyfusard, and the Guermantes’, who was an anti-Dreyfusard. The truths and counter-truths which contended on high among the intellectuals of the rival Leagues, the Patrie Française and the Droits de l’Homme, were fast spreading downwards into the subsoil of popular opinion. M. Reinach manipulated through their feelings people whom he had never seen, whereas for him the Dreyfus case simply presented itself to his reason as an irrefutable theorem which he “demonstrated” in the sequel by the most astonishing victory for rational politics (a victory against France, according to some) that the world has ever seen. In two years he replaced a Billot ministry by a Clemenceau ministry, revolutionised public opinion from top to bottom, took Picquart from his prison to install him, ungrateful, in the Ministry of War. Perhaps this rationalist crowd-manipulator was himself manipulated by his ancestry. When we find that the systems of philosophy which contain the most truths were dictated to their authors, in the last analysis, by reasons of sentiment, how are we to suppose that in a simple affair of politics like the Dreyfus case reasons of that sort may not, unbeknown to the reasoner, have ruled his reason? Bloch believed himself to have been led by a logical chain of reasoning to choose Dreyfusism, yet he knew that his nose, his skin and his hair had been imposed on him by his race. Doubtless the reason enjoys more freedom; yet it obeys certain laws which it has not prescribed for itself. The case of the Guermantes’ butler and our own was peculiar. The waves of the two currents of Dreyfusism and anti-Dreyfusism which now divided France from top to bottom were, on the whole, silent, but the occasional echoes which they emitted were sincere. When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political news, generally false but always devoutly to be wished, you could induce from the nature of his predictions where his heart lay. Thus there came into conflict on certain points, on one side a timid apostolate, on the other a righteous indignation. The two butlers whom I heard arguing as I came in furnished an exception to the rule. Ours insinuated that Dreyfus was guilty, the Guermantes’ that he was innocent. This was done not to conceal their personal convictions, but from cunning and competitive ruthlessness. Our butler, being uncertain whether the retrial would be ordered, wanted in case of failure to deprive the Duke’s butler in advance of the joy of seeing a just cause vanquished. The Duke’s butler thought that, in the event of a refusal to grant a retrial, ours would be more indignant at the detention of an innocent man on Devil’s Island. The concierge looked on. I had the impression that it was not he who was the cause of dissension in the Guermantes household.

I went upstairs, and found my grandmother not at all well. For some time past, without knowing exactly what was wrong, she had been complaining of her health. It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might perhaps succeed in making him sensible of his own personal interest if not of our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live. My grandmother’s ailments often passed unnoticed by her attention, which was always directed towards us. When they gave her too much pain, in the hope of curing them she tried in vain to understand them. If the morbid phenomena of which her body was the theatre remained obscure and beyond the reach of her mind, they were clear and intelligible to certain beings belonging to the same natural kingdom as themselves, beings to whom the human mind has learned gradually to have recourse in order to understand what its body is saying to it, as when a foreigner addresses us we try to find someone of his country who will act as interpreter. These can talk to our body, can tell us if its anger is serious or will soon be appeased. Cottard, who had been called in to examine my grandmother—and who had infuriated us by asking with a subtle smile, the moment we told him she was ill: “Ill? You’re sure it’s not what they call a diplomatic illness?”—tried to soothe his patient’s restlessness by a milk diet. But incessant bowls of milk soup gave her no relief, because my grandmother sprinkled them liberally with salt, the injurious effects of which were then unknown (Widal not yet having made his discoveries). For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a few years’ time. So that to believe in medicine would be the height of folly, if not to believe in it were not a greater folly still, for from this mass of errors a few truths have in the long run emerged. Cottard had told us to take her temperature. A thermometer was fetched. Almost throughout its entire length the tube was empty of mercury. One could scarcely make out, nestling at the bottom of its trough, the silver salamander. It seemed dead. The little glass pipe was slipped into my grandmother’s mouth. We had no need to leave it there for long; the little sorceress had not been slow in casting her horoscope. We found her motionless, perched half-way up her tower and declining to move, showing us with precision the figure that we had asked of her, a figure with which all the most careful thought that my grandmother’s mind might have devoted to herself would have been incapable of furnishing her: 101°. For the first time we felt some anxiety. We shook the thermometer well, to erase the ominous sign, as though we were able thus to reduce the patient’s fever simultaneously with the temperature indicated. Alas, it was only too clear that the little sibyl, bereft of reason though she was, had not pronounced judgment arbitrarily, for the next day, scarcely had the thermometer been inserted between my grandmother’s lips when almost at once, as though with a single bound, exulting in her certainty and in her intuition of a fact that to us was imperceptible, the little prophetess had come to a halt at the same point, in an implacable immobility, and pointed once again to that figure 101 with the tip of her gleaming wand. She said nothing else; in vain had we longed, wished, prayed, she was deaf to our entreaties; it seemed as though this were her final word, a warning and a threat.