Go, my boy, it is for his good, you may be the means of averting a great tragedy. While you are away, I am going to write to my seconds. I have prevented you from spending the afternoon with your cousin. I hope that she will bear me no ill will for that, indeed I am sure of it. For hers is a noble soul, and I know that she is one of the people who are strong enough not to resist the greatness of circumstances. You must thank her on my behalf. I am personally indebted to her, and I am glad that it should be so.” I was extremely sorry for M. de Charlus; it seemed to me that Charlie might have prevented this duel, of which he was perhaps the cause, and I was revolted, if that were the case, that he should have gone off with such indifference, instead of staying to help his protector.
My indignation was increased when, on reaching the house in which Morel lodged, I recognised the voice of the violinist, who, feeling the need of an outlet for his happiness, was singing boisterously: “Some Sunday morning, when the wedding-bells rrring!” If poor M. de Charlus had heard him, he who wished me to believe, and doubtless believed himself, that Morel’s heart at that moment was full! Charlie began to dance with joy when he caught sight of me. “Hallo, old boy I (excuse me, addressing you like that; in this damned military life, one picks up bad habits) what luck, seeing you. I have nothing to do all evening. Do let’s go somewhere together. We can stay here if you like, or take a boat if you prefer that, or we can have some music, it’s all the same to me.” I told him that I was obliged to dine at Balbec, he seemed anxious that I should invite him to dine there also, but I refrained from doing so.
“But if you’re in such a hurry, why have you come here?” “I have brought you a note from M. de Charlus.” At that moment all his gaiety vanished; his face contracted. “What! He can’t leave me alone even here. So I’m a slave, am I? Old boy, be a sport. I’m not going to open his letter. You can tell him that you couldn’t find me.” “Wouldn’t it be better to open it, I fancy it contains something serious.” “No, certainly not, you don’t know all the lies, the infernal tricks that old scoundrel’s up to. It’s a dodge to make me go and see him. Very well! I’m not going, I want to have an evening in peace.” “But isn’t there going to be a duel to-morrow?” I asked Morel, whom I supposed to be equally well informed. “A duel?” he repeated with an air of stupefaction. “I never heard a word about it.
After all, it doesn’t matter a damn to me, the dirty old beast can go and get plugged in the guts if he likes. But wait a minute, this is interesting, I’m going to look at his letter after all. You can tell him that you left it here for me, in case I should come in.” While Morel was speaking to me, I was looking with amazement at the beautiful books which M. de Charlus had given him, and which littered his room. The violinist having refused to accept those labelled: “I belong to the Baron” etc., a device which he felt to be insulting to himself, as a mark of vassalage, the Baron, with the sentimental ingenuity in which his ill-starred love abounded, had substituted others, originated by his ancestors, but ordered from the binder according to the circumstances of a melancholy friendship. Sometimes they were terse and confident, as Spes mea or Expectata non eludet.
Sometimes merely resigned, as J’attendrai. Others were gallant: Mesmes plaisir du mestre, or counselled chastity, such as that borrowed from the family of Simiane, sprinkled with azure towers and lilies, and given a fresh meaning: Sus-tendant lilia turres. Others, finally, were despairing, and appointed a meeting in heaven with him who had spurned the donor upon earth: Manet ultima caelo, and (finding the grapes which he had failed to reach too sour, pretending not to have sought what he had not secured) M. de Charlus said in one: Non mortale quod opto. But I had not time to examine them all.
If M. de Charlus, in dashing this letter down upon paper had seemed to be carried away by the demon that was inspiring his flying pen, as soon as Morel had broken the seal (a leopard between two roses gules, with the motto: atavis et armis) he began to read the letter as feverishly as M. de Charlus had written it, and over those pages covered at breakneck speed his eye ran no less rapidly than the Baron’s pen. “Good God!” he exclaimed, “this is the last straw! But where am I to find him? Heaven only knows where he is now.” I suggested that if he made haste he might still find him perhaps at a tavern where he had ordered beer as a restorative. “I don’t know whether I shall be coming back,” he said to his landlady, and added in petto, “it will depend on how the cat jumps.” A few minutes later we reached the café.
I remarked M. de Charlus’s expression at the moment when he caught sight of me. When he saw that I did not return unaccompanied, I could feel that his breath, his life were restored to him. Feeling that he could not get on that evening without Morel, he had pretended that somebody had told him that two officers of the regiment had spoken evil of him in connexion with the violinist and that he was going to send his seconds to call upon them. Morel had foreseen the scandal, his life in the regiment made impossible, and had hastened to the spot.
In doing which he had not been altogether wrong. For to make his falsehood more plausible, M. de Charlus had already written to two of his friends (one was Cottard) asking them to be his seconds. And, if the violinist had not appeared, we may be certain that, in the frantic state in which M. de Charlus then was (and to change his sorrow into rage), he would have sent them with a challenge to some officer or other with whom it would have been a relief to him to fight. During the interval, M. de Charlus, remembering that he came of a race that was of purer blood than the House of France, told himself that it was really very good of him to take so much trouble over the son of a butler whose employer he would not have condescended to know.
On the other hand, if his only amusement, almost, was now in the society of disreputable persons, the profoundly ingrained habit which such persons have of not replying to a letter, of failing to keep an appointment without warning you beforehand, without apologising afterwards, aroused in him, since, often enough, his heart was involved, such a wealth of emotion and the rest of the time caused him such irritation, inconvenience and anger, that he would sometimes begin to regret the endless letters over nothing at all, the scrupulous exactitude of Ambassadors and Princes, who, even if, unfortunately, their personal charms left him cold, gave him at any rate some sort of peace of mind.
Accustomed to Morel’s ways, and knowing how little hold he had over him, how incapable he was of insinuating himself into a life in which friendships that were vulgar but consecrated by force of habit occupied too much space and time to leave a stray hour for the great nobleman, evicted, proud, and vainly imploring, M. de Charlus was so convinced that the musician was not coming, was so afraid of losing him for ever if he went too far, that he could barely repress a cry of joy when he saw him appear.
But feeling himself the victor, he felt himself bound to dictate the terms of peace and to extract from them such advantages as he might. “What are you doing here?” he said to him. “And you?” he went on, gazing at myself, “I told you, whatever you did, not to bring him back with you.” “He didn’t want to bring me,” said Morel, turning upon M. de Charlus, in the artlessness of his coquetry, a glance conventionally mournful and languorously old-fashioned, with an air, which he doubtless thought to be irresistible, of wanting to kiss the Baron and to burst into tears. “It was I who insisted on coming in spite of him.
I come, in the name of our friendship, to implore you on my bended knees not to commit this rash act.” M. de Charlus was wild with joy. The reaction was almost too much for his nerves; he managed, however, to control them. “The friendship to which you appeal at a somewhat inopportune moment,” he replied in a dry tone, “ought, on the
