The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (14 page)

The princess’s soirée was very boring. At one point Madame de Breyves asked Geneviève:

“Who is that young man who escorted you to the buffet?”

“That’s Monsieur de Laléande, whom, incidentally, I don’t know at all. Would you like
me to introduce him to you? He asked me to, but I was evasive, because he’s very unimportant
and boring, and since he finds you very pretty, you won’t be able to get rid of him.”

“Then let’s not!” said Françoise. “Anyway, he’s a bit homely and vulgar, despite his
rather beautiful eyes.”

“You’re right,” said Geneviève. “And besides, you’ll be running into him often, so
knowing him might be awkward for you.”

Then she humorously added:

“Of course, if you want a more intimate relationship with him, you’re passing up a
wonderful opportunity.”

“Yes, a wonderful opportunity,” said Françoise, her mind already elsewhere.

“Still,” said Geneviève, no doubt filled with remorse for being such a disloyal go-between
and pointlessly depriving this young man of a pleasure, “it’s one of the last soirées
of the season, an introduction wouldn’t carry much weight, and it might be a nice
thing to do.”

“Fine then, if he comes back this way.”

He did not come back. He was across from them, at the opposite end of the drawing
room.

“We have to leave,” Geneviève soon said.

“One more minute,” said Françoise.

And as a caprice, especially out of a desire to flirt with this young man, who was
bound to find her very lovely, she gave him a lingering look, then averted her eyes,
then gazed at him again. She tried to make her eyes seem tender; she did not know
why, for no reason, for pleasure, the pleasure of charity, of a little vanity, and
also gratuity, the pleasure of carving your name into a tree trunk for a passerby
whom you will never see, the pleasure of throwing a bottle into the ocean. Time flowed
by, it was getting late; Monsieur de Laléande headed toward the door, which remained
open after he passed through, so that Madame de Breyves could spot him holding out
his ticket at the far end of the cloakroom.

“It’s time we left, you’re right,” she told Geneviève.

They rose. But as luck would have it, a friend needed to say something to Geneviève,
who therefore left Françoise alone in the cloakroom. The only other person there was
Monsieur de Laléande, who could not find his cane. Françoise, amused, gave him a final
look. He came very near her, his elbow slightly grazing hers, and, when closest to
her, with radiant eyes, and still appearing to be searching, he said:

“Come to my home, 5 Rue Royale.”

She had hardly foreseen this, and Monsieur de Laléande was now so absorbed in hunting
for his cane that afterwards Françoise never knew for certain whether it had not been
a hallucination. Above all, she was very frightened, and since Prince d’A. chanced
to come along at that moment, she called him over: she wished to make an appointment
with him for an outing tomorrow and she talked volubly. During that conversation Monsieur
de Laléande left. Geneviève reappeared an instant later, and the two women departed.
Madame de Breyves told her friend nothing; she was still shocked and flattered, yet
basically very indifferent. Two days after that, when
she happened to recall the incident, she began to doubt that Monsieur de Laléande
had really spoken those words. She tried but was unable to remember fully; she believed
she had heard them as if in a dream and she told herself that the elbow movement had
been an accidental blunder. Then she no longer thought spontaneously about Monsieur
de Laléande, and when she happened to hear his name mentioned, she swiftly imagined
his face and forgot all about the quasi-hallucination in the cloakroom.

She saw him again at the last soirée of the season (toward the end of June), but did
not dare ask to meet him; and yet, though finding him almost ugly and knowing he was
not intelligent, she would have liked to make his acquaintance. She went over to Geneviève
and said:

“Why don’t you present Monsieur de Laléande after all. I don’t like being impolite.
But don’t say I suggested it. That will keep it casual.”

“Later, if we see him. He’s not here at the moment.”

“Well, then look for him.”

“He may have left.”

“Oh no,” Françoise blurted out, “he can’t have left, it’s too early. Oh my! Already
midnight. Come on, dear Geneviève, it’s not all that difficult. The other evening
it was you who wanted it. Please, it’s important to me.”

Geneviève looked at her, a bit astonished, and went searching for Monsieur de Laléande;
he was gone.

“You see I was right,” said Geneviève, returning to Françoise.

“I’m bored out of my mind,” said Françoise. “I’ve got a headache. Please, let’s leave
immediately.”

Françoise no longer missed a single performance at the Opera; with vague hopes she
accepted all the dinners to
which she was invited. Two weeks wore by; she had not run into Monsieur de Laléande
again and at night she often awoke, trying to hit on ways of finding him. Though repeating
to herself that he was boring and not handsome, she was more preoccupied with him
than with all the wittiest and most charming men. With the season ended, there would
be no opportunity to see him again; she was determined to create an opportunity and
she cast about for a possibility.

One evening she said to Geneviève:

“Didn’t you tell me you knew a man named Laléande?”

“Jacques de Laléande? Yes and no. He was introduced to me, but he’s never left me
a card, and we’re not in any communication with each other.”

“Let me tell you, I’m a bit interested, very interested, for reasons that don’t concern
me and that I probably won’t be able to tell you for another month” (by then she and
he would have worked out a lie to avoid exposure, and the thought of sharing a secret
with him alone gave her a sweet thrill). “I’m interested in making his acquaintance
and meeting with him. Please try to find a way, since the season is over, and I won’t
be able to have him introduced to me.”

The practices of close friendship, so purifying when they are sincere, sheltered Geneviève
as well as Françoise from the stupid curiosity in which most people in high society
take shameful enjoyment. Thus, devoting herself with all her heart and without, for
even a moment, intending or desiring to question her friend, much less thinking of
doing so, Geneviève searched and was angry only because she came up with nothing.

“It’s unfortunate that Madame d’A. has left town. There’s still Monsieur de Grumello,
of course, but actually that won’t get us anywhere—what can we say to him? Wait! I’ve
got an idea! Monsieur de Laléande plays the cello quite badly, but that doesn’t matter.
Monsieur de Grumello admires him, and besides, he’s so dim-witted and he’ll be so
happy to do you a favor. The thing is, you’ve always avoided him, and you don’t like
dropping people after making use of their services, but you won’t want to be obligated
to invite him next season.”

However, Françoise, flushed with joy, exclaimed:

“Why, it’s all the same to me, I’ll invite all the adventurers in Paris if I must.
Oh! Do it quickly, my dear Geneviève—how sweet you are!”

And Geneviève wrote:

“Deliver this letter immediately to Monsieur de Grumello,” Françoise told a servant.
“Don’t wait for an answer, but make sure you hand it to him personally.”

The next day Geneviève sent Madame de Breyves Monsieur de Grumello’s reply:

Françoise, deathly white, dashed to her room to lock herself in. She barely made it.
Sobs were already shattering on her lips, tears were streaming. Fully engrossed, until
now, in picturing romantic ways of seeing him and getting to know him
and certain she would carry them out as soon as she wished, she had been living on
that yearning and that hope, without, perhaps, realizing it. But this desire had implanted
itself into her by sending out a thousand imperceptible roots, which had plunged into
all her most unconscious minutes of happiness or melancholy, filling them with a new
sap without her knowing where it came from. And now this desire had been ripped out
and tossed away as impossible. She felt lacerated, suffering horribly in her entire
self, which had been suddenly uprooted; and from the depths of her sorrow through
the abruptly exposed lies of her hope, she saw the reality of her love.

Day by day Françoise withdrew further and further from all her pleasures, and a heart
haunted by a jealous grief that never left her for a moment was the only thing she
could offer her most intense delights, the very ones she savored in her bonds with
her mother and Geneviève or in her musical hours, her hours of reading, and her outings.
Infinite was the pain caused by the impossibility of her going to Biarritz and, even
had it been possible, by her absolute determination not to let a rash step compromise
all the prestige she might have in the eyes of Monsieur de Laléande. A poor little
victim of torture without knowing why, she was frightened at the thought that this
illness could drag on for months until a remedy was found for a condition that would
not let her sleep peacefully or dream freely. She was also worried about not knowing
whether he might pass through Paris, soon perhaps, without her finding out. And emboldened
by the fear of again letting happiness slip by so closely, she sent a domestic to
question Monsieur de Laléande’s concierge. The concierge knew nothing. And realizing
that no sail of hope would henceforth emerge on the horizon of this sea of grief,
which stretched ad infinitum and beyond which there seemed to be nothing but the end
of the earth, Françoise sensed she was going to do insane
things, but she did not know what, perhaps write to him; and so she became her own
physician: to calm down a bit she took the liberty of trying to have him learn that
she had wanted to see him; she therefore wrote Monsieur de Grumello:

One hour later a servant brought her this letter:

There was nothing more to do. She did nothing more, she grew sadder and sadder, and
she felt remorse at being sad, at saddening her mother. She spent a few days in the
country, then went to Trouville. There she heard some people talking about Monsieur
de Laléande’s social ambitions, and when a prince, vying for her favor, asked her,
“What can I do to please you?”, she almost chuckled when imagining how astonished
he would be at her sincere response; and she gathered, in order to savor it, all the
intoxicating bitterness there was in the irony of that contrast between all the great
and difficult things that people had always done to please her and this so easy and
so impossible little thing that would have restored her peace of mind, her health,
her happiness, and the happiness of her loved ones.