The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (432 page)

At moments, seeing suspicious-looking individuals drawn out of the shadows by the passage of M. de Charlus conglomerate at a little distance from him, I wondered whether it would be more agreeable to him if I left him alone or remained with him. In the same way, if you meet an old man who is subject to frequent epileptic fits and see from the incoherence of his gait that an attack is probably imminent, you may ask yourself whether your company is more desired by him as a support or dreaded as that of a witness from whom he would prefer to conceal the attack and whose mere presence may perhaps suffice to bring it on, whereas absolute calm might succeed in averting it. But in the case of the sick man the possibility of the event upon which you are uncertain whether or no you ought to turn your back is revealed by his walking in circles as if he were drunk; while in that of M. de Charlus the divagations—sign of a possible incident as to which I did not know whether he desired or feared that my presence should prevent its occurrence—were transferred, as in an ingenious stage production, from the Baron himself, who was walking straight ahead, to a whole circle of supernumerary actors. All the same, it is my belief that he
preferred to avoid the encounter, for he dragged me down a side-street, darker than the boulevard but into which nevertheless the latter was incessantly discharging—or else like a tributary stream they were flowing towards it—soldiers of every arm and of every nation, a rising youthful tide, compensatory and consoling for M. de Charlus, the reverse of that ebb-tide of all men towards the frontier which in the first days of mobilisation had made a vacuum in the capital. At every moment M. de Charlus expressed his admiration for the brilliant uniforms which passed before us, which made of Paris a town as cosmopolitan as a port, as unreal as a stage setting designed by a painter who has simply put up a few scraps of architecture as an excuse for assembling the most variegated and glittering costumes.

Literally he did not know which way to turn his head; often he raised it, regretting that he did not have a pair of field-glasses (which would in fact have been of very little use to him), since because of the Zeppelin raid of two days earlier, which had caused the authorities to redouble their precautions, there were soldiers in greater numbers than usual even in the sky. The aeroplanes which a few hours earlier I had seen, like insects, as brown dots upon the surface of the blue evening, now passed like blazing fire-ships through the darkness of the night, which was made darker still by the partial extinction of the street lamps. And perhaps the greatest impression of beauty that these human shooting stars made us feel came simply from their forcing us to look at the sky, towards which normally we so seldom raise our eyes. In this Paris, whose beauty in 1914 I had seen awaiting almost defenceless the threat of the approaching enemy, there was certainly, as
there had been then, the ancient unalterable splendour of a moon cruelly and mysteriously serene, which poured down its useless beauty upon the still untouched buildings of the capital; but as in 1914, and more now than in 1914, there was also something else, there were lights from a different source, intermittent beams which, whether they came from the aeroplanes or from the searchlights of the Eiffel Tower, one knew to be directed by an intelligent will, by a friendly vigilance which gave one the same kind of emotion, inspired the same sort of gratitude and calm that I had felt in Saint-Loup’s room at Doncières, in the cell of that military cloister where so many fervent and disciplined hearts were exercising themselves in readiness for the day when, without hesitation, in the midst of their youth, they would consummate their sacrifice.

After the raid of two days earlier, when it had been more full of movement than the earth, the sky had become calm again as the sea becomes calm after a storm. But like the sea after a storm, it had not yet recovered absolute tranquillity. Aeroplanes were still mounting like rockets to the level of the stars, and searchlights, as they quartered the sky, swept slowly across it what looked like a pale dust of stars, of errant milky ways. Meanwhile the aeroplanes took their places among the constellations and seeing these “new stars” one might well have supposed oneself to be in another hemisphere.

M. de Charlus spoke to me of his admiration for these airmen of ours, and went on, since he was no more capable of checking the flow of his pro-German feelings than of his other inclinations, even though at the same time he denied both the one and the other tendency: “I must add of course that I have just as much admiration
for the Germans who go up in the Gothas. And when it comes to the Zeppelins, think of the courage that is needed! They are heroes, there is no other word for it. What difference can it make that they are attacking civilians, if guns are firing at them? Are you afraid of the Gothas and the bombardment?” I admitted that I was not, but perhaps I was wrong. No doubt, my idleness having given me the habit, when it was a question of my work, of putting it off from one day to another, I imagined that death too might be postponed in the same fashion. How should one be afraid of a bombardment when one is convinced that one will not be hit today? Anyhow, formed in isolation, the idea of bombs being dropped, the idea of the possibility of death, had added nothing tragic to the image which I had in my mind of the German flying machines, until from one of them, storm-tossed and partly hidden from my sight by the thick billowing mists of an agitated sky, from an aeroplane which, though I knew it to be murderous, I imagined only as stellar and celestial, I had one evening seen the gesture of a bomb dropped upon us. For the novel reality of a danger is perceived only through the medium of that new thing, not assimilable to anything that we already know, to which we give the name “an impression” and which is often, as in the present case, epitomised in a line, a line which defines an intention and possesses the latent potentiality of the action which has given it its particular form, like the invisible line described by this falling bomb or those other lines which I had seen at the same time from the Pont de la Concorde, on all sides of the threatening, hunted aeroplane, as though they had been reflexions in the clouds of the fountains of the Champs-Elysées and the Place de la
Concorde and the Tuileries: the beams of the searchlights travelling through the sky like luminous jets of water, which also were lines full of intention, full of the provident and protective intentions of men of power and wisdom to whom, as on that night in the barracks at Doncières, I felt grateful for condescending to employ their strength, with this so beautiful precision, in watching over our safety.

The night was as beautiful as in 1914, and the threat to Paris was as great. The moonlight was like a soft and steady magnesium flare, by the light of which some camera might, for the last time, have been recording nocturnal images of those lovely groups of buildings like the Place Vendôme and the Place de la Concorde, to which my fear of the shells that were perhaps about to destroy them imparted by contrast, as they stood in their still intact beauty, a sort of plenitude, as if they were bending forward and freely offering their defenceless architecture to the blows that might fall. “You are not afraid?” M. de Charlus repeated. “The people of Paris don’t realise the situation. I am told that Mme Verdurin gives parties every day. I know it only from hearsay, personally I know absolutely nothing about them, I have completely broken off relations,” he added, lowering not only his eyes as if a telegraph boy had passed, but also his head and his shoulders and raising his arm with the gesture that signifies, if not “I wash my hands of them” at any rate “I can tell you nothing about them” (not that I had asked him anything). “I know that Morel still goes there a lot,” he went on (it was the first time that he had mentioned him again). “It is rumoured that he much regrets the past and would like to make it up with me,” he continued, exhibiting at one
and the same time the credulity of a man of the Faubourg who says: “People say that there are more talks than ever going on between France and Germany, and even that negotiations have been started,” and that of the lover whom the most cruel rebuffs are unable to convince. “In any case, if he wants it, he only has to say so. I am older than he, it is not for me to take the first step.” And certainly there was no need to say this, so evident was it. But it was not even sincere, and this made one very embarrassed for M. de Charlus, for one felt that, by saying that it was not for him to take the first step, he was in fact making one and was waiting for me to offer to undertake a reconciliation.

Naturally I was familiar with the credulity, naïve or feigned, of people who love someone, or simply are not invited to someone’s house, and attribute to that someone a desire of which, in fact, in spite of wearisome solicitations, he has given no hint. But from the sudden tremor of the voice with which M. de Charlus pronounced these words, from the anxious look which flickered in the depths of his eyes, I got the impression that there was something more here than an ordinary attempt at bluff. I was not mistaken, and I will relate straight away the two facts which proved subsequently that I was right. (I take a leap of many years for the second of these incidents, which was posterior to the death of M. de Charlus, who was not to die until a much later period and whom we shall have occasion to see again a number of times, greatly changed from what we have known him to be, particularly the last time of all, when he had come to forget Morel completely.) The first of these incidents took place only two or three years after the evening on which I walked
down the boulevards with M. de Charlus. About two years after this evening, I met Morel. I thought immediately of M. de Charlus, of the pleasure it would give him to see the violinist again, and I urged Morel to go and see him, even if it were only once. “He has been good to you,” I said, “he is an old man now, he may die, you should settle old scores and obliterate all trace of your quarrel.” Morel appeared to be entirely of my opinion as to the desirability of making peace, but he none the less refused categorically to visit M. de Charlus even once. “You are wrong,” I said. “Is it from obstinacy, from indolence, from spite, from misplaced vanity, from concern for your virtue (you may be sure that it will not be attacked), from coquettishness?” At this point the violinist, twisting his features as he forced himself to make an admission which no doubt was extremely painful, replied with a shudder: “No, it is from none of all those things. As for virtue, I don’t give a damn for it. Spite? On the contrary, I am beginning to pity him. It is not from coquettishness, which could serve no purpose. It is not from having too much to do, for there are whole days when I stay at home and twiddle my thumbs. No, it is not for any of these reasons. It is—but never say this to anybody, I am mad to tell you—it is, it is … from fear!” He began to tremble in every limb. I confessed that I did not understand him. “No, don’t ask me, don’t let’s talk about it, you do not know him as I do, I may say that you do not know him at all.” “But what harm can he do you? In any case, he won’t want to harm you if you put an end to the bitterness that exists between you. And then, you know that at heart he is very kind.” “Good heavens, yes! I know he is kind. And wonderfully considerate, and honest. But let
me alone, don’t let’s talk about it, I beseech you—it’s a shameful admission, but I am afraid!”

The second incident dates from after the death of M. de Charlus. I was brought one or two things which he had left me as mementoes, and also a letter enclosed in three envelopes, which he had written at least ten years before his death. He had been seriously ill at the time and had put all his affairs in order, but then had recovered, only to fall later into the condition in which we shall see him on the day of an afternoon party given by the Princesse de Guermantes—and the letter, put aside in a strong-box with the objects which he was bequeathing to a few friends, had remained there for seven years, seven years during which he had completely forgotten Morel. It was written in a firm and delicate hand-writing and was couched in the following terms:

“My dear friend, the ways of Providence are inscrutable. Sometimes a fault in a very ordinary man is made to serve its purposes by helping one of the just not to slip from his lofty eminence. You know Morel, you know the humbleness of his origin and the height (my own level, no less) to which I wished to raise him. You are aware that he preferred to return not to the dust and ashes from which every man—for man surely is the true phoenix—may be born again, but to the slime in which the viper crawls. He fell, and in so doing he saved me from falling from where I belong. You know that my arms contain the device of Our Lord himself:
Inculcabis super leonem et aspidem
, with the crest of a man having beneath the soles of his feet, as heraldic supporters, a lion and a serpent. Well, if I have succeeded as I have in crushing the lion proper that I am, it is thanks to the serpent and his prudence, which just now I was thoughtless enough to call a fault, for the profound wisdom of the Gospel makes a virtue of it, a virtue at least for other people. Our serpent, of the once harmonious and well-modulated
hisses, was, when he had a charmer—a charmer charmed, moreover—not merely musical and reptilian, he had, to the point of cowardice, that virtue, prudence, which I now hold to be divine. This divine prudence it was that made him resist the appeals to come back and see me which I conveyed to him, and I shall have no peace in this world or hope of forgiveness in the next if I do not confess the truth to you. He was, in resisting my appeals, the instrument of divine wisdom, for I was resolved, had he come, that he should not leave my house alive. One of us two had to disappear. I had decided to kill him. God counselled him prudence to preserve me from crime. I do not doubt that the intercession of the Archangel Michael, my patron saint, played a great part in this and I beseech him to pardon me for having so neglected him over many years and for having so ill responded to the innumerable favours which he has conferred upon me, especially in my struggle against evil. I owe it to this Servant of God—I say the words in the plenitude of my faith and my understanding—that the heavenly Father inspired Morel not to come. And so it is I who am now about to die.