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 uncle was a footman.” “He told you that!” cried Charlie, believing, on the strength of this adroitly interpolated quotation, in the truth of everything that Mme. Verdurin had said! Mme. Verdurin was overwhelmed with the joy of an old mistress who, just as her young lover was on the point of deserting her, has succeeded in breaking off his marriage, and it is possible that she had not calculated her lie, that she was not even consciously lying. A sort of sentimental logic, something perhaps more elementary still, a sort of nervous reflex urging her, in order to brighten her life and preserve her happiness, to stir up trouble in the little clan, may have brought impulsively to her lips, without giving her time to check their veracity, these assertions diabolically effective if not rigorously exact. “If he had only repeated it to us, it wouldn’t matter,” the Mistress went on, “we know better than to listen to what he says, besides, what does a man’s origin matter, you have your own value, you are what you make yourself, but that he should use it to make Mme. de Portefin laugh” (Mme. Verdurin named this lady on purpose because she knew that Charlie admired her) “that is what vexes us: my husband said to me when he heard him: ‘I would sooner he had struck me in the face.’ For he is as fond of you as I am, don’t you know, is Gustave” (from this we learn that M. Verdurin’s name was Gustave). “He is really very sensitive.” “But I never told you I was fond of him,” muttered M. Verdurin, acting the kind-hearted curmudgeon. “It is Charlus that is fond of him.” “Oh, no! Now I realise the difference, I was betrayed by a scoundrel and you, you are good,” Charlie exclaimed in all sincerity. “No, no,” murmured Mme. Verdurin, seeking to retain her victory, for she felt that her Wednesdays were safe, but not to abuse it: “scoundrel is too strong; he does harm, a great deal of harm, unconsciously; you know that tale about the Legion of Honour was the affair of a moment.
And it would be painful to me to repeat all that he said about your family,” said Mme. Verdurin, who would have been greatly embarrassed had she been asked to do so. “Oh, even if it only took a moment, it proves that he is a traitor,” cried Morel. It was at this moment that we returned to the drawing-room. “Ah!” exclaimed M. de Charlus when he saw that Morel was in the room, advancing upon him with the alacrity of the man who has skillfully organised a whole evening’s entertainment with a view to an assignation with a woman, and in his excitement never imagines that he has with his own hands set the snare in which he will presently be caught and publicly thrashed by bravoes stationed in readiness by her husband. “Well, after all it is none too soon; are you satisfied, young glory, and presently young knight of the Legion of Honour? For very soon you will be able to sport your Cross,” M. de Charlus said to Morel with a tender and triumphant air, but by the very mention of the decoration endorsed Mme. Verdurin’s lies, which appeared to Morel to be indisputable truth. “Leave me alone, I forbid you to come near me,” Morel shouted at the Baron. “You know what I mean, all right, I’m not the first young man you’ve tried to corrupt!” My sole consolation lay in the thought that I was about to see Morel and the Verdurins pulverised by M. de Charlus. For a thousand times less an offence I had been visited with his furious rage, no one was safe from it, a king would not have intimidated him. Instead of which, an extraordinary thing happened. One saw M. de Charlus dumb, stupefied, measuring the depths of his misery without understanding its cause, finding not a word to utter, raising his eyes to stare at each of the company in turn, with a questioning, outraged, suppliant air, which seemed to be asking them not so much what had happened as what answer he ought to make.
And yet M. de Charlus possessed all the resources, not merely of eloquence but of audacity, when, seized by a rage which had long been simmering against some one, he reduced him to desperation, with the most outrageous speeches, in front of a scandalised society which had never imagined that anyone could go so far. M. de Charlus, on these occasions, burned, convulsed with a sort of epilepsy, which left everyone trembling. But in these instances he had the initiative, he launched the attack, he said whatever came into his mind (just as Bloch was able to make fun of Jews and blushed if the word Jew was uttered in his hearing). Perhaps what struck him speechless was—when he saw that M. and Mme. Verdurin turned their eyes from him and that no one was coming to his rescue—his anguish at the moment and, still more, his dread of greater anguish to come; or else that, not having lost his temper in advance, in imagination, and forged his thunderbolt, not having his rage ready as a weapon in his hand, he had been seized and dealt a mortal blow at the moment when he was
