In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [202]
I thanked M. de Charlus warmly and told him that I had been afraid that what Saint-Loup had said to him about my distress at the approach of night would have made me appear in his eyes even more stupid than I was.
“Not at all,” he answered in a gentler voice. “You have not, perhaps, any personal merit—I’ve no idea, so few people have! But for a time at least you have youth, and that is always an attraction. Besides, Monsieur, the greatest folly of all is to mock or to condemn in others what one does not happen to feel oneself. I love the night, and you tell me that you dread it. I love the scent of roses, and I have a friend whom it throws into a fever. Do you suppose that for that reason I consider him inferior to me? I try to understand everything and I take care to condemn nothing. In short, you must not be too sorry for yourself; I do not say that these moods of depression are not painful, I know how much one can suffer from things which others would not understand. But at least you have placed your affection wisely in your grandmother. You see a great deal of her. And besides, it is a legitimate affection, I mean one that is repaid. There are so many of which that cannot be said!”
He walked up and down the room, looking at one thing, picking up another. I had the impression that he had something to tell me, and could not find the right words to express it.
“I have another volume of Bergotte here. I will have it fetched for you,” he went on, and rang the bell. Presently a page came. “Go and find me your head waiter. He is the only person here who is capable of performing an errand intelligently,” said M. de Charlus stiffly. “Monsieur Aimé, sir?” asked the page. “I cannot tell you his name. Ah yes, I remember now, I did hear him called Aimé. Run along, I’m in a hurry.” “He won’t be a minute, sir, I saw him downstairs just now,” said the page, anxious to appear efficient. A few minutes went by. The page returned. “Sir, M. Aimé has gone to bed. But I can take a message.” “No, you must get him out of bed.” “But I can’t do that, sir; he doesn’t sleep here.” “Then you can leave us alone.”
“But, Monsieur,” I said when the page had gone, “you are too kind; one volume of Bergotte will be quite enough.”
“That is just what I was thinking, after all.” M. de Charlus continued to walk up and down the room. Several minutes passed in this way, then after a few moments’ hesitation and several false starts, he swung sharply round and, in his earlier biting tone of voice, flung at me: “Good night, Monsieur!” and left the room.
After all the lofty sentiments which I had heard him express that evening, next day, which was the day of his departure, on the beach in the morning, as I was on my way down to bathe, when M. de Charlus came across to tell me that my grandmother was waiting for me to join her as soon as I left the water, I was greatly surprised to hear him say, pinching my neck as he spoke with a familiarity and a laugh that were frankly vulgar: “But he doesn’t care a fig for his old grandmother, does he, eh? Little rascal!”
“What, Monsieur! I adore her!”
“Monsieur,” he said stepping back a pace, and with a glacial air, “you are still young; you should profit by your youth to learn two things: first, to refrain from expressing sentiments that are too natural not to be taken for granted; and secondly not to rush into speech in reply to things that are said to you before you have penetrated their meaning. If you had taken this precaution a moment ago you would have saved yourself the appearance of speaking at cross-purposes like a deaf man, thereby adding a second absurdity to that of having anchors embroidered on your bathing-dress. I have lent you a book by Bergotte which I require. See that it is brought to me within the next hour by that head waiter with the absurd and inappropriate