But we have looked too far ahead, for all this did not happen until after the Verdurins’ party which we have interrupted, and we must go back to the point at which we left off. “I should never have suspected it,” Morel groaned, in answer to Mme. Verdurin. “Naturally people do not say it to your face, that does not prevent your being the talk of the Conservatoire,” Mme. Verdurin went on wickedly, seeking to make it plain to Morel that it was not only M. de Charlus that was being criticised, but himself also. “I can well believe that you know nothing about it; all the same, people are quite outspoken. Ask Ski what they were saying the other day at Chevillard’s within a foot of us when you came into my box.
I mean to say, people point you out. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t pay the slightest attention, but what I do feel is that it makes a man supremely ridiculous and that he becomes a public laughing-stock for the rest of his life.” “I don’t know how to thank you,” said Charlie in the tone we use to a dentist who has just caused us terrible pain while we tried not to let him see it, or to a too bloodthirsty second who has forced us into a duel on account of some casual remark of which he has said: “You can’t swallow that.” “I believe that you have plenty of character, that you are a man,” replied Mme. Verdurin, “and that you will be capable of speaking out boldly, although he tells everybody that you would never dare, that he holds you fast.” Charlie, seeking a borrowed dignity in which to cloak the tatters of his own, found in his memory something that he had read or, more probably, heard quoted, and at once proclaimed: “I was not brought up to eat that sort of bread. This very evening I will break with M. de Charlus.
The Queen of Naples has gone, hasn’t she? Otherwise, before breaking with him, I should like to ask him….” “It is not necessary to break with him altogether,” said Mme. Verdurin, anxious to avoid a disruption of the little nucleus. “There is no harm in your seeing him here, among our little group, where you are appreciated, where no one speaks any evil of you. But insist upon your freedom, and do not let him drag you about among all those sheep who are friendly to your face; I wish you could have heard what they were saying behind your back. Anyhow, you need feel no regret, not only are you wiping off a stain which would have marked you for the rest of your life, from the artistic point of view, even if there had not been this scandalous presentation by Charlus, I don’t mind telling you that wasting yourself like this in this sham society will make people suppose that you aren’t serious, give you an amateur reputation, as a little drawing-room performer, which is a terrible thing at your age.
I can understand that to all those fine ladies it is highly convenient to be able to return their friends’ hospitality by making you come and play for nothing, but it is your future as an artist that would foot the bill. I don’t say that you shouldn’t go to one or two of them. You were speaking of the Queen of Naples—who has left, for she had to go on to another party—now she is a splendid woman, and I don’t mind saying that I think she has a poor opinion of Charlus and came here chiefly to please me. Yes, yes, I know she was longing to meet us, M. Verdurin and myself. That is a house in which you might play. And then I may tell you that if I take you—because the artists all know me, you understand, they have always been most obliging to me, and regard me almost as one of themselves, as their Mistress—that is a very different matter. But whatever you do, you must never go near Mme. de Duras! Don’t go and make a stupid blunder like that! I know several artists who have come here and told me all about her. They know they can trust me,” she said, in the sweet and simple tone which she knew how to adopt in an instant, imparting an appropriate air of modesty to her features, an appropriate charm to her eyes, “they come here, just like that, to tell me all their little troubles; the ones who are said to be most silent, go on chatting to me sometimes for hours on end and I can’t tell you how interesting they are. Poor Chabrier used always to say: ‘There’s nobody like Mme. Verdurin for getting them to talk.’
Very well, don’t you know, all of them, without one exception, I have seen them in tears because they had gone to play for Mme. de Duras. It is not only the way she enjoys making her servants humiliate them, they could never get an engagement anywhere else again. The agents would say: ‘Oh yes, the fellow who plays at Mme. de Duras’s.’ That settled it. There is nothing like that for ruining a man’s future. You know what society people are like, it’s not taken seriously, you may have all the talent in the world, it’s a dreadful thing to have to say, but one Mme. de Duras is enough to give you the reputation of an amateur.
And among artists, don’t you know, well I, you can ask yourself whether I know them, when I have been moving among them for forty years, launching them, taking an interest in them; very well, when they say that somebody is an amateur, that finishes it. And people were beginning to say it of you. Indeed, at times I have been obliged to take up the cudgels, to assure them that you would not play in some absurd drawing-room! Do you know what the answer was: ‘But he will be forced to go, Charlus won’t even consult him, he never asks him for his opinion.’ Somebody thought he would pay him a compliment and said: ‘We greatly admire your friend Morel.’ Can you guess what answer he made, with that insolent air which you know? ‘But what do you mean by calling him my friend, we are not of the same class, say rather that he is my creature, my protégé.’” At this moment there stirred beneath the convex brows of the musical deity the one thing that certain people cannot keep to themselves, a saying which it is not merely abject but imprudent to repeat. But the need to repeat it is stronger than honour, than prudence. It was to this need that, after a few convulsive movements of her spherical and sorrowful brows, the Mistress succumbed: “Some one actually told my husband that he had said ‘my servant,’ but for that I cannot vouch,” she added. It was a similar need that had compelled M. de Charlus, shortly after he had sworn to Morel that nobody should ever know the story of his birth, to say to Mme. Verdurin: “His father was a flunkey.” A similar need again, now that the story had been started, would make it circulate from one person to another, each of whom would confide it under the seal of a secrecy which would be promised and not kept by the hearer, as by the informant himself. These stories would end, as in the game called hunt-the-thimble, by being traced back to Mme. Verdurin, bringing down upon her the wrath of the person concerned, who would at last have learned the truth. She knew this, but could not repress the words that were burning her tongue.
Anyhow, the word ‘servant’ was bound to annoy Morel. She said ‘servant’ nevertheless, and if she added that she could not vouch for the word, this was so as at once to appear certain of the rest, thanks to this hint of uncertainty, and to shew her impartiality. This impartiality that she shewed, she herself found so touching that she began to speak affectionately to Charlie: “For, don’t you see,” she went on, “I am not blaming him, he is dragging you down into his abyss, it is true, but it is not his fault, since he wallows in it himself, since he wallows in it,” she repeated in a louder tone, having been struck by the aptness of the image which had taken shape so quickly that her attention only now overtook it and was trying to give it prominence. “No, the fault that I do find with him,” she said in a melting tone—like a woman drunken with her own success—“is a want of delicacy towards yourself. There are certain things which one does not say in public. Well, this evening, he was betting that he would make you blush with joy, by telling you (stuff and nonsense, of course, for his recommendation would be enough to prevent your getting it) that you were to have the Cross of the Legion of Honour.
Even that I could overlook, although I have never quite liked,” she went on with a delicate, dignified air, “hearing a person make a fool of his friends, but, don’t you know, there are certain little things that one does resent. Such as when he told us, with screams of laughter, that if you want the Cross it’s to please your uncle and that your
