The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (29 page)

Then he remembered how deeply he had feared not loving her forever, how deeply he
had engraved her in his memory so that nothing would efface her, engraved her cheeks,
always offered to his lips, engraved her forehead, her little hands, her solemn eyes,
her adored features. And abruptly, seeing them aroused from their sweet tranquillity
by desire for someone else, he wanted to stop thinking about her, only to see her
all the more obstinately, see her offered cheeks, her forehead, her little hands (oh,
those little hands, those too!), her solemn eyes, her detested features.

From that day forward, though initially terrified of taking such a course, he never
left her side; he kept watch on her life, accompanying her on her visits, following
her on her shopping expeditions, waiting for an hour at every shop door. Had he figured
that this would thus actually prevent her from cheating on him, he would probably
have given up for fear of incurring her
hatred. But she let him continue because she enjoyed having him with her all the time,
enjoyed it so much that her joy gradually took hold of him, slowly imbuing him with
a confidence, a certainty that no material proof would have given him, like those
hallucinating people whom one can sometimes manage to cure by having them touch the
armchair, the living person who occupies the place where they think they see a phantom,
and thus driving away the phantom from the real world by means of reality itself,
which has no room for the phantom.

Thus, trailing Françoise and mentally filling all her days with concrete occupations,
Honoré strove to suppress those gaps and shadows in which the evil spirits of jealousy
and suspicion lay in ambush, pouncing on him every evening. He began to sleep again;
his sufferings grew rarer, briefer, and if he then sent for her, a few moments of
her presence calmed him for the entire night.

The salon of Madame Seaune, née Princess de Galaise-Orlandes, whom we spoke about
in the first part of this story under her Christian name, Françoise, remains one of
the most sought-after salons in Paris. In a society in which the title of duchess
would make her interchangeable with so many others, her nonaristocratic family name
stands out like a beauty mark on a face; and in exchange for the title she lost when
marrying Monsieur Seaune, she acquired the prestige of having voluntarily renounced
the kind of glory that, for a noble imagination, exalts white peacocks, black swans,
white violets, and captive queens.

Madame Seaune has entertained considerably this season and last, but her salon was
closed during the three preceding years—the ones, that is, following the death of
Honoré de Tenvres.

Honoré’s friends, delighted to see him gradually regaining his healthy appearance
and his earlier cheerfulness, now kept finding him with Madame Seaune at all hours
of the day, and so they attributed his revival to this affair, which they thought
had started just recently.

It was a scant two months since Honoré’s complete recovery that he suffered the accident
on the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, where both his legs were broken by a runaway horse.

The accident took place on the first Tuesday in May; peritonitis declared itself the
following Sunday. Honoré received the sacraments on Monday and was carried off at
six o’clock that evening. However, from Tuesday, the day of the accident, to Monday
evening, he alone believed he was doomed.

On that Tuesday, toward six
P.M
., after the first dressing of the injuries, he had asked his servants to leave him
alone, but to bring up the calling cards of people inquiring about his health.

That very morning, at most eight hours earlier, he had been walking down the Avenue
du Bois-de-Boulogne. He had, breath by breath, been inhaling and exhaling the air,
a blend of breeze and sunshine; women were admiring his swiftly moving beauty, and
in the depths of their eyes he had recognized a profound joy—for an instant he was
lost sight of in the sheer turning of his capricious merriment, then effortlessly
caught up with and quite rapidly outstripped among the steaming, galloping horses,
then he savored the coolness of his hungry mouth, which was moistened by the sweet
air; and the joy he recognized was the same profound joy that embellished life that
morning, the life of the sun, of the shade, of the sky, of the stones, of the east
wind, and of the trees, trees as majestic as men standing and as relaxed as women
sleeping in their sparkling immobility.

At a certain point he had checked his watch, had doubled back, and then . . . then
it had happened. Within an instant, the
horse, which Honoré had not seen, had broken both his legs. In no way did that instant
appear to have been inevitable. At that same instant he might have been slightly further
off, or slightly nearer, or the horse might have deviated, or, had it rained, he would
have gone home earlier, or, had he not checked his watch, he would not have doubled
back and he would have continued walking to the cascade. Yet that thing, which might
so easily not have been, so easily that for a moment he could pretend it was only
a dream—that thing was real, that thing was now part of his life, and not all his
willpower could alter anything. He had two broken legs and a battered abdomen. Oh,
in itself the accident was not so extraordinary; he recalled that less than a week
ago, during a dinner given by Dr. S., they had talked about C., who had been injured
in the same manner by a runaway horse. The doctor, when asked about C.’s condition,
had said: “He’s in a bad way.” Honoré had pressed him, had questioned him about the
injuries, and the doctor had replied with a self-important, pedantic, and melancholy
air: “But it’s not just his injuries; it’s everything together; his sons are causing
him problems; his circumstances are not what they used to be; the newspaper attacks
have struck him to the quick. I wish I were wrong, but he’s in a rotten state.” Since
the doctor, having said that, felt that he himself, on the contrary, was in an excellent
state, healthier, more intelligent, and more esteemed than ever; since Honoré knew
that Françoise loved him more and more, that the world accepted their relationship
and esteemed their happiness no less than Françoise’s greatness of character; and
since, finally, Dr. S.’s wife, deeply agitated by her visions of C.’s wretched end
and abandonment, cited reasons of hygiene for prohibiting herself and her children
from thinking about sad events or attending funerals—given all these things, each
diner repeated one final time: “That poor C., he’s in a bad state,” downed a final
flute of Champagne, and the pleasure of drinking it made them feel that their own
“state” was excellent.

But this was not the same thing at all. Honoré, now feeling overwhelmed by the thought
of his misfortune, as he had often been by the thought of other people’s misfortunes,
could
no longer regain a foothold in himself. He felt the solid ground of good health caving
in beneath him, the ground on which our loftiest resolutions flourish and our most
gracious delights, just as oak trees and violets are rooted in the black, moist earth;
and he kept stumbling about within himself. In discussing C. at that dinner, which
Honoré again recalled, the doctor had said: “When I ran into C. even before the accident
and after the newspaper attacks, his face was sallow, his eyes were hollow, and he
looked awful!” And the doctor had passed his hand, famous for its skill and beauty,
across his full, rosy face, along his fine, well-groomed beard, and each diner had
pleasurably imagined his own healthy look the way a landlord stops to gaze contentedly
at his young, peaceable, and wealthy tenant. Now, peering at his reflection in the
mirror, Honoré was terrified by his own “sallow face,” his “awful look.” And instantly,
he was horrified at the thought that the doctor would say the same thing about him
as he had said about C., with the same indifference. Even people who would approach
him full of pity would also rather quickly turn away from him as from a dangerous
object; they would finally obey their protests of their good health, of their desire
to be happy and to live. Then his mind turned back to Françoise, and, his shoulders
sagging, his head bowing in spite of himself, as if God’s commandment had been raised
against him there, Honoré realized with an infinite and submissive sadness that he
must give her up. With a sick man’s resignation he experienced the humility of his
body, which, in its childlike feebleness, was bent by this tremendous grief, and he
pitied himself when, as so often at the start of his life, he had tenderly seen himself
as an infant, and now he felt like crying.

He heard a knocking at the door. The concierge was bringing the cards that Honoré
had asked for. Honoré knew very well that people would inquire about his condition,
for he was fully aware that his accident was serious; nevertheless, he had not expected
so many cards, and he was terrified to see that there were so many callers who barely
knew him and who would have put themselves out only for his wedding or for
his funeral. It was an overflowing mountain of cards, and the concierge carried it
gingerly to keep it from tumbling off the large tray. But suddenly, when all those
cards were within reach, the mountain looked very small, indeed ridiculously small,
far smaller than the chair or the fireplace. And he was even more terrified that it
was so small, and he felt so alone that, in order to take his mind off his loneliness,
he began feverishly reading the names; one card, two cards, three cards—ah! He jumped
and looked again: “Count François de Gouvres.” Now Honoré would certainly have expected
Monsieur de Gouvres to inquire about his condition, but he had not thought about the
count for a long time, and all at once he recalled de Buivres’s words: “
There was someone there tonight who had quite a fling with her
—
It was François de Gouvres. He says she’s quite hot-blooded! But it seems her body
isn’t all that great, and he didn’t want to continue
”; and feeling all the old suffering which in an instant resurfaced from the depths
of his consciousness, he said to himself: “Now I’ll be delighted if I’m doomed. Not
die, remain fettered here, and spend years envisioning her with someone else whenever
she’s not near me, part of each day and all night long! And now there would be nothing
unhealthy about envisioning her like that—it’s certain. How could she still love me?
An amputee!” All at once he stopped. “And if I die, what happens after me?”

She was thirty; he leaped in one swoop over the more or less long period in which
she would remember him, stay faithful to him. But a moment would come. . . . “He said,
‘She’s quite hot-blooded
. . . .’ I want to live, I want to live and I want to walk, I want to follow her everywhere,
I want to be handsome, I want her to love me!”

At that moment he was frightened by the whistling in his respiration, he had a pain
in his side, his chest felt as if it had shifted to his back, he no longer breathed
freely, he tried to catch his breath but could not. At each second he felt himself
breathing and not breathing enough. The doctor came. Honoré had only had a light attack
of nervous asthma. When the doctor left, Honoré felt sadder; he would have preferred
a graver
illness in order to evoke pity. For he keenly sensed that, if it was not grave, something
else
was
grave and that he was perishing. Now he recalled all the physical sufferings of his
life, he was in grief; never had the people who loved him the most ever pitied him
under the pretext that he was nervous. During the dreadful months after his walk home
with de Buivres, months of dressing at seven o’clock after walking all night, Honoré’s
brother, who stayed awake for at most fifteen minutes after any too copious dinner,
said to him:

“You listen to yourself too much, there are nights when I can’t sleep either. And
besides, a person thinks he doesn’t sleep, but he always sleeps a little.”

It was true that he listened to himself too much; in the background of his life he
kept listening to death, which had never completely left him and which, without totally
destroying his life, undermined it now here, now there. His asthma grew worse; he
could not catch his breath; his entire chest made a painful effort to breathe. And
he felt the veil that hides life from us (the death within us) being lifted, and he
perceived how terrifying it is to breathe, to live.

Now he was transported to the moment when she would be consoled, and then, who would
it be? And his jealousy was driven insane by the uncertainty of the event and its
inevitability. He could have prevented it if alive; he could not live, and so? She
would say that she would join a convent; then, when he was dead, she would change
her mind. No! He preferred not to be deceived twice, preferred to know.—Who?—de Gouvres,
de Alériouvre, de Buivres, de Breyves? He saw them all and, gritting his teeth, he
felt the furious revolt that must be twisting his features at that moment. He calmed
himself down. No, it will not be that, not a playboy. It has to be a man who truly
loves her. Why don’t I want it to be a playboy? I’m crazy to ask myself that, it’s
so obvious. Because I love her for herself, because I want her to be happy.—No, it’s
not that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to arouse her senses, to give her more pleasure
than I’ve given her, to give her any pleasure at all. I do want someone to give her
happiness, I
want someone to give her love, but I don’t want anyone to give her pleasure. I’m jealous
of the other man’s pleasure, of her pleasure. I won’t be jealous of their love. She
has to marry, has to make a good choice. . . . But it’ll be sad all the same.