The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (20 page)

But now the sky is darkening; it is about to rain. The basins, where no azure is shining
anymore, are like blank eyes or vases full of tears. The absurd water jet, whipped
by the breeze, raises its now ludicrous hymn more and more swiftly toward the sky.
The futile sweetness of the lilacs is infinitely sad. And over there, riding hell
for leather, the immobile and furious motion of his marble feet urging on his charger
in its fixed and dizzying gallop, the oblivious horseman keeps endlessly blasting
his trumpet against the black sky.

Versailles

The exhausted autumn, no longer warmed by the meager sunshine, is losing its final
colors one by one. The extreme ardor of its foliage, blazing so intensely as to maintain
the glorious illusion of a sunset throughout the afternoons and even the mornings,
is now extinguished. Only the dahlias, the French marigolds, and the yellow, violet,
white, and pink chrysanthemums are still glowing on the somber and desolate face of
autumn. At six in the evening, when you walk across the uniformly gray and naked Tuileries
under the equally gloomy sky, where, branch for branch, the black trees sketch their
profound and delicate despair, an abruptly spotted bed
of those autumn flowers brightens richly in the dusk, inflicting a voluptuous violence
on our eyes, which are accustomed to those ashen horizons.

The morning hours are gentler. The sun still shines intermittently, and, leaving the
terrace by the edge of the water and going down the vast stone stairway before me,
I can still see my shadow descending the steps one by one. After so many others (especially
Mssrs. Maurice Barrès, Henri de Régnier, and Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac), I would
hesitate to utter your name, Versailles, your grand name, sweet and rusty, the royal
cemetery of foliage, of vast marbles and waters, a truly aristocratic and demoralizing
place, where we are not even troubled by remorse that the lives of so many workers
merely served to refine and expand not so much the joys of another age as the melancholy
of our own. After so many others I would hesitate to utter your name, and yet how
often have I drunk from the reddened cup of your pink marble basins, drunk to the
dregs, savoring the delirium, the intoxicating bittersweetness of these waning autumn
days. In the distance the earth, mixed with faded leaves and rotted leaves, always
seemed to be a tarnished yellow and violet mosaic.

Passing close to the
Hameau
and pulling up my overcoat collar against the wind, I heard the cooing of doves.
I was intoxicated everywhere by the fragrance of blessed palms as on Palm Sunday.
How could I still pick a slender nosegay of spring in these gardens ransacked by autumn?
On the water the wind crumpled the petals of a shivering rose. In this vast defoliation
of the Trianon, only the slight arch of a small white geranium bridge raised its flowers
above the icy water, their heads scarcely bowed by the wind.

Granted, ever since I inhaled the sea breeze and the salt air in the sunken roads
of Normandy, ever since I glimpsed the ocean shining through the branches of blossoming
rhododendrons, I have known about everything that the closeness of water can add to
the charms of vegetation. But what more virginal purity in this sweet, white geranium,
leaning with graceful restraint over the chilly waters among their banks of dead
leaves. Oh, silvery old age of woods still green, oh, weeping branches, ponds and
pools that a pious gesture has placed here and there, like urns offered up to the
melancholy of the trees!

Stroll

Despite the pure sky and the already hot sunshine, the wind was still as cold, the
trees were still as bare as in winter. To light a fire I had to cut down one of the
branches that I thought were dead, but the sap spurted out, soaking my arm up to the
elbow and exposing a tumultuous heart under the frozen bark of the tree. In between
the trunks the bare winter soil was covered with anemones, cowslips, and violets,
while the streams, yesterday still gloomy and empty, were now filled with a blue,
vivid, tender sky basking in the watery depths. Not the pale, weary sky of lovely
October evenings, a sky stretching out on the watery bottom, virtually dying there
of love and melancholy, but an intense and blazing sky on the tender and cheerful
azure, from which grays, blues, and pinks kept flashing by: not the shadows of pensive
clouds, but the dazzling and slippery fins of a perch, an eel, or a smelt. Drunk with
joy, they scooted between sky and grass, through their meadows and forests, which
were all brilliantly enchanted, like ours, by the resplendent genius of spring. And
the waters, gliding coolly over their heads, between their gills, and under their
bellies, hurried too, singing and gaily chasing the sunbeams.

The farmyard, where you went for eggs, was no less pleasant a sight. Like an inspired
and prolific poet, who never refuses to spread beauty to the humblest places, which
until now did not seem to share the domain of art, the sun still warmed the bountiful
energy of the dung heap, of the unevenly paved yard, and of the pear tree worn down
like an old serving maid.

Now who is that regally attired personage moving gingerly among the rustic articles
and farm implements, tiptoeing to
avoid getting soiled? It is Juno’s bird, dazzling not with lifeless gems but with
the very eyes of Argus: it is the peacock, whose fabled glory is astonishing in these
surroundings. Just as on a festive day, strutting before the clusters of gaping admirers
at the gate, several minutes before the arrival of the first few guests, the glittering
mistress of the house, in a gown with an iridescent train, an azure gorgerin already
attached to her royal throat, her aigrettes on her head, crosses the yard to issue
a final order or wait for a prince of the blood, whom she must welcome right at the
threshold.

And yet this is where the peacock spends its life, a veritable bird of paradise in
a barnyard, among the chickens and turkeys, like a captive Andromache spinning her
wool amid female slaves, but, unlike her, never abandoning the magnificence of royal
insignia and crown jewels: a radiant Apollo, whom we always recognize even when he
is guarding the herds of Admetus.

Family Listening to Music

For a truly dynamic family, in which each member thinks, loves, and acts, a garden
is a pleasant thing. On spring, summer, and autumn evenings, they all gather there
upon completing the tasks of the day; and however small the garden, however close
its hedges, the latter are not so tall as not to reveal a large stretch of sky at
which everyone gazes up in wordless reveries. The child dreams about his future plans,
about the house he will inhabit with his best friend, never to leave him, about the
secrets of earth and life. The young man dreams about the mysterious charm of the
girl he loves; the
young mother about her child’s future; in the depths of these bright hours the once
troubled wife discovers, behind her husband’s cold façade, a painful and poignant
regret that stirs her pity. The father, watching the smoke curling up from a roof,
dwells on the peaceful scenes of his past, which are transfigured by the faraway evening
light; he thinks about his coming death, about his children’s lives after his death.
And thus the soul of the united family rises religiously toward the sunset, while
the huge fir, linden, or chestnut tree envelops the family with the blessing of exquisite
fragrance or venerable shade.

But for a truly dynamic family, in which each member thinks, loves, and acts, for
a family with a soul, how much sweeter it is if, in the evening, that soul can materialize
in a voice, in the clear and inexhaustible voice of a girl or a young man who has
received the gift of music and song. A stranger, passing the gate of a garden in which
the family holds its tongue, would fear that his approach might rouse them out of
a religious dream. But if the stranger, without hearing the singing, perceived the
gathering of friends and relatives listening to it, then how much more would the family
appear to be attending an unseen mass—that is, despite the variety of postures, how
strongly the resemblance of expressions would manifest the true unity of souls, a
unity momentarily realized in their sympathy for the same ideal drama, by their communion
in one and the same dream.

At times, as the wind bends the grass and agitates the branches for a long time, a
breath bows the heads or suddenly raises them again. Then, as if an invisible messenger
were telling a thrilling tale, they all seem to be waiting anxiously, listening in
rapture or terror to the same news, which, however, elicits diverse echoes in each
person. The anguish of the music reaches its peak; its outbursts are shattered by
deep plunges and followed by more desperate outbursts.

For the old man, the lustrous infinity, the mysterious darkness of the music are the
vast spectacles of life and death; for the child, they are the urgent promises of
sea and land; for the
lover they are the mysterious infinity; they are the luminous darkness of love. The
thinker sees his mental life unroll fully; the plunges of the faltering melody are
its faltering and its plunges, and its entire heart rebounds and snaps back when the
melody regains its flight. The powerful murmuring of the harmonies stirs up the rich
and obscure depths of his memory. The man of action pants in the melee of chords,
in the gallop of vivaces; he triumphs majestically in the adagios.

Even the unfaithful wife feels that her sin is forgiven, is lost in infinity, her
sin, which also originated in the dissatisfaction of a heart that, unappeased by the
usual joys, had gone astray, but only in a quest for the mystery, and whose highest
aspirations are now gratified by this music, which is as full as the voices of bells.

The musician, who, however, claims to take only technical pleasure in music, also
experiences those meaningful emotions, which, however, are so thoroughly wrapped up
in his concept of musical beauty as to be hidden from his sight.

And I myself, finally, listening in music to the most expansive and most universal
beauty of life and death, sea and sky, I also feel what is unique and particular in
your enchantment, oh darling beloved.