The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (9 page)

“Ercole,” Adelgise exclaims, “you don’t think I can listen to that story? Ah, I’m
quite sure you’d behave differently with the courtesan Heldémone. You respect me:
you don’t love me.”

“Ercole,” Heldémone exclaims, “you don’t have the decency to conceal that story from
me? You be the judge: would you act this way with Duchess Adelgise? You don’t respect
me: therefore you cannot love me.”

The Fickle Man

Fabrizio, who wants to, who believes he will, love Béatrice forever, remembers that
he wanted the same thing, believed the same thing when he loved Hippolyta, Barbara,
and Clélie for six months. So, reviewing Béatrice’s actual qualities, he tries to
find a reason to believe that after the waning of his passion he will keep visiting
her; for he finds the thought of someday living without her incompatible with a sentiment
that contains the illusion of its own eternalness. Besides, as a prudent egoist, he
would not care to commit himself fully—with his thoughts, his actions, his intentions
of the moment
and all his future plans—to the companion of only some of his hours. Béatrice has
a sharp mind and a good judgment: “Once I stop loving her, what pleasure I’ll feel
chatting with her about others, about herself, about my vanished love for her . . .”
(which will thereby be revived but converted, he hopes, into a more lasting friendship).

But, with his passion for Béatrice gone, he lets two years pass without visiting her,
without wanting to see her, without suffering from not wanting to see her. One day,
when forced to visit her, he sits there fuming and stays for only ten minutes. For
he dreams night and day about Giulia, who is unusually mindless but whose fair hair
smells as good as a fine herb and whose eyes are as innocent as two flowers.

Life is strangely easy and pleasant with certain people of great natural distinction,
people who are witty, loving, but who are capable of all vices although they do not
indulge in any vice publicly, so no one can state that they have any vice at all.
There is something supple and secretive about them. Then too, their perversity adds
a piquant touch to their most innocent actions such as strolling in gardens at night.

Lost Waxes

I first saw you a little while ago, Cydalise, and right off I admired your blond hair,
like a small gold helmet on your pure and melancholy childlike head. A slightly pale
red velvet gown softened your unusual head even further, and the lowered eyelids appeared
to seal its mystery forever. But then you raised your eyes; they halted on me, Cydalise,
and they
seemed imbued with the fresh purity of morning, of water running on the first lovely
days in spring. Those eyes were like eyes that have never looked at the things that
all human eyes are accustomed to reflecting—yours were virginal eyes without earthly
experience.

But upon my closer scrutiny, you expressed, above all, an air of loving and suffering,
like a person whose wishes were already denied by the fairies before his birth. Even
fabrics assumed a sorrowful grace on you, casting a gloom especially on your arms,
which were discouraged just enough to remain simple and charming. Then I pictured
you as a princess coming from very far away, down through the centuries, bored forever
here and with a resigned languor: a princess wearing garments of a rare and ancient
harmony, the contemplation of which would have quickly turned into a sweet and intoxicating
habit for the eyes. I would have wanted you to tell me your dreams, your cares. I
would have wanted to see you hold some goblet or rather one of those ewers with such
proud and joyless forms, ewers that, empty in our museums today, raise their drained
cups with a useless grace; and yet once, like you, they constituted the fresh sensual
pleasures of Venetian banquets, whose final violets and final roses seem to be still
floating in the limpid current of the foamy and cloudy glass.

“How can you prefer Hippolyta to the five others I’ve just named: why, they’re the
most undeniably beautiful women in Verona. First of all, her nose is too long and
too aquiline.”

You can add that her complexion is too fine, that her upper lip is too narrow, and
that, by pulling her mouth up too high when she laughs, it creates a very acute angle.
Yet I am infinitely affected by her laughter, and the purest profiles leave me cold
next to the line of her nose, which you feel is too aquiline, but which I find so
exciting and so reminiscent of a bird. Her head, long as it is from her brow to her
blond nape, is also slightly birdlike, as are, even more so, her gentle, piercing
eyes.

At the theater she often rests her elbows on the railing of her box: her hand, in
a white glove, shoots straight up to her chin, which leans on her finger joints. Her
perfect body makes her customary white gauzes swell like folded wings. She reminds
you of a bird dreaming on a slender and elegant leg. It is also delightful to see
her feathery fan throbbing next to her and beating its white wing. Her sons and her
nephews all have, like her, aquiline noses, narrow lips, piercing eyes, and overly
fine complexions, and I have never managed to meet them without being distressed when
recognizing her breed, which probably descends from a goddess and a bird. Through
the metamorphosis that now fetters some winged desire to this female shape, I can
discern the small royal head of the peacock without the froth or the ocean-blue, ocean-green
wave of the peacock’s mythological plumage glittering behind the head. She is the
epitome of fable blended with the thrill of beauty.

Snobs

A woman does not mask her love of balls, horse races, even gambling. She states it
or simply admits it or boasts about it. But never try to make her say that she loves
high society: she would vehemently deny it and blow up properly. It is the only weakness
that she carefully conceals, no doubt because it is the only weakness that humbles
her vanity. She is willing to depend on playing-cards but not on dukes. She does not
feel inferior to anyone simply because she commits a folly; her snobbery, quite the
opposite, implies that there are people to whom she is inferior or could become inferior
by letting herself relax. Thus we can find a woman who proclaims the utter foolishness
of high society yet devotes her mind to it, her finesse, her intelligence, whereas
she could instead have written a lovely tale or ingeniously varied her lover’s pains
and pleasures.

Clever women are so afraid they will be accused of loving high society that they never
mention it by name; when pressed during a conversation, they shift into some paraphrase
to avoid uttering the name of this compromising lover. They pounce, if need be, on
“Elegance,” a name that diverts suspicion and seems at least to pinpoint art rather
than vanity as the basis for arranging their lives. Only women who are not yet part
of high society or have lost their social standing refer to it by name with the ardor
of unsatisfied or abandoned mistresses. Thus, certain young women who are just beginning
to ascend and certain old women who are now sliding back enjoy talking about the social
standing that others have or, even better, do not have. In fact, while those women
derive more pleasure from talking about the standing that others do not have, their
talking about the standing that others do have nourishes them more effectively, providing
their famished imaginations with more substantial fare. I have known people to thrill,
more with delight than envy, at the very thought of a duchess’s family connections.
In the provinces, it seems, there are female shopkeepers whose brains, like narrow
cages, confine desires for social standing that are as ferocious as savage beasts.
The mailman brings them
Le Gaulois
. The society page is devoured in the twinkling of an eye. The fidgety provincial
women are sated. And for an hour their eyes glow with peace of mind, their pupils
dilating with enjoyment and admiration.

If you were not part of high society and were told that Élianthe, young, beautiful,
rich, loved as she is by friends and suitors, had suddenly broken with them all and
was endlessly courting old, ugly, stupid men whom she barely knew, begging for their
favors and patiently swallowing their snubs, toiling like a slave to please them,
losing her mind over them, regaining it over them, becoming their friend through her
attentiveness, their support in case they are poor, their mistress in case they are
sensual—if you were told all that, you would wonder: Just what crime has
Élianthe committed, and who are those formidable magistrates whose indulgence she
must buy at any price, to whom she sacrifices her friendships, her loves, her freedom
of thought, the dignity of her life, her fortune, her time, her most private female
aversions? Yet Élianthe has committed no crime. The judges whom she obstinately tries
to corrupt barely give her a second thought, and they would let her pure and cheerful
life keep flowing tranquilly. But a terrible curse lies upon her: she is a snob.

Your soul is certainly, as Tolstoy says, a dark forest. But its trees are of a particular
species; they are family trees. People call you vain? But the universe is not empty
for you; it is filled with coats of arms. It is quite a dazzling and symbolic conception
of the world. Yet do you not also have your chimeras in the shape and color of the
ones we see painted on blazons? Are you not educated?
Le Tout-Paris
, the
Almanach de Gotha, La Société et le High-Life
have taught you the
Bouillet
. In reading the chronicles of the battles won by ancestors, you have found the names
of the descendants whom you invite to dinner, and this mnemonic technique has taught
you the entire history of France. This lends a certain grandeur to your ambitious
dream, to which you have sacrificed your freedom, your hours of pleasure or reflection,
your duties, your friendships, and even love. For the faces of your new friends are
linked in your imagination to a long series of ancestral portraits. The family trees
that you cultivate so meticulously, whose fruit you pick so joyously every year, are
deeply rooted in the most ancient French soil. Your dream interlocks the present and
the past. The soul of the crusades enlivens some trivial contemporary figures for
you, and if you read your guest book so fervently, does not each name allow you to
feel an ancient and splendid France awakening, quavering, and almost singing, like
a corpse arisen from a slab decorated with armorial bearings?