The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (34 page)

“Yes, I understand, you’re very busy.”

And at the end of the evening, when they were parting, he said:

“May I call on you to say goodbye?”

And she gently replied: “No, my friend, I’m somewhat busy; I think we should leave
things as they are.”

She waited for a word; he did not utter it, and she said:

“Goodbye.”

Then she waited for a letter, in vain. So she wrote him that it was preferable for
her to be frank, that she may have led him to believe she liked him, that this was
not the case, that she would rather not see him as often as she had requested with
imprudent friendliness.

He replied that he had never really believed in anything more than her friendship,
for which she was famous, and which he had never meant to abuse to the point of coming
so often and bothering her.

Then she wrote him that she loved him, that she would never love anyone but him. He
replied that she must be joking.

She stopped writing to him, but not, at first, thinking about him. Then that also
stopped. Two years later, weighed down by her widowhood, she married the Duke de Mortagne,
who was handsome and witty and who, until Madeleine’s death—for over forty years,
that is—filled her life with a glory and affection that she never failed to appreciate.

Joachim Neugroschel
works in French, German, Russian, Yiddish, and Italian. The winner of three PEN Translation
Awards and the French-American Translation Prize, he has translated over 180 books,
including works by such authors as Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, Martin Buber, Thomas
Mann, Paul Celan, Jean Arp, Herman Hesse, Leopold von Sucher-Masoch, and Albert Schweitzer.
He lives in New York.

HEMINGWAY Life Life into Art

Jeffrey Meyers

192 pp.

0-8154-1079-4

$27.95 cloth

THE GROTTO BERG

Two Novellas

Charles Neider

Introduction by Clive Sinclair

184 pp.

0-8154-1123-5

$22.95 cloth

EDGAR ALLAN POE

His Life and Legacy

Jeffrey Meyers

376 pp., 12 b/w photos

0-8154-1038-7

$18.95

SCOTT FITZGERALD

A Biography

Jeffrey Meyers

432 pp., 25 b/w photos

0-8154-1036-0

$18.95

TOLSTOY

Tales of Courage and Conflict

Edited by Charles Neider

576 pp.

0-8154-1010-7

$19.95

ESSAYS OF THE MASTERS

Edited by Charles Neider

480 pp.

0-8154-1097-2

$18.95

LIFE AS I FIND IT

A Treasury of Mark Twain Rarities

Edited by Charles Neider with a new foreword

343 pp., 1 b/w photo

0-8154-1027-1

$17.95

THE TRAVELS OF MARK TWAIN

Edited by Charles Neider

448 pp., 6 b/w line drawings

0-8154-1039-5

$19.95

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF MARK TWAIN

Edited by Charles Neider

352 pp., 1 b/w photo

0-8154-1011-5

$16.95

MARK TWAIN: PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

and Other Speeches

Edited by Charles Neider

368 pp., 1 b/w photo

0-8154-1104-9

$17.95

THE FAIRY TALE OF MY LIFE

An Autobiography

Hans Christian Andersen New introduction by Naomi Lewis

610 pp., 20 b/w illustrations

0-8154-1105-7

$22.95

GRANITE AND RAINBOW

The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf

Mitchell Leaska

536 pp., 23 b/w photos

0-8154-1047-6

$18.95

SHAKESPEARE

The Man and His Achievement

Robert Speaight

416 pp., 24 b/w illustrations

0-81 54-1063-8

$19.95

THE LANTERN-BEARERS AND OTHER ESSAYS

Robert Louis Stevenson

Edited by Jeremy Treglown

320 pp., 27 b/w maps

0-8154-1012-3

$16.95

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA

Henry Scott Stokes

318 pp., 39 b/w illustrations

0-8154-1074-3

$18.95

Available at bookstores; or call 1-800-462-6420