In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [270]
I had thought, a few hours before, that Albertine would acknowledge my greeting only from a distance. We had now left one another after planning to make an excursion soon together. I vowed that when I next met Albertine I would treat her with greater boldness, and I had sketched out in advance a plan of all that I would say to her, and even (being now quite convinced that she was not strait-laced) of all the favours that I would demand of her. But the mind is subject to external influences, as plants are, and cells and chemical elements, and the medium which alters it if we immerse it therein is a change of circumstances, or new surroundings. Changed by the mere fact of her presence, when I found myself once again in Albertine’s company, I said to her quite different things from what I had planned. Then, remembering her flushed temple, I asked myself whether she might not appreciate more keenly a polite attention which she knew to be disinterested. Finally, I was embarrassed by some of her looks and her smiles. They might equally well signify a laxity of morals and the rather silly merriment of a high-spirited girl who was at heart thoroughly respectable. A single expression, of face or speech, being susceptible of sundry interpretations, I wavered like a schoolboy faced by the difficulties of a piece of Greek prose.
On this occasion we met almost immediately the tall one, Andrée, the one who had jumped over the old banker, and Albertine was obliged to introduce me. Her friend had extraordinarily bright eyes, like a glimpse, through an open door in a dark house, of a room into which the sun is shining with a greenish reflexion from the glittering sea.
A group of five men passed by whom I had come to know very well by sight during my stay at Balbec. I had often wondered who they were. “They’re nothing very wonderful,” said Albertine with a contemptuous snigger. “The little old one with dyed hair and yellow gloves—isn’t he a weird-looking specimen, quite an eyeful, what?—that’s the Balbec dentist. He’s a good sort. The fat one is the Mayor, not the tiny little fat one, you must have seen him before, he’s the dancing master, and he’s pretty awful too—he can’t stand us, because we make such a row at the Casino and smash his chairs and want to have the carpet up when we dance, which is why he never gives us prizes, though we’re the only ones who know how to dance. The dentist is a nice man—I would have said how d’ye do to him, just to make the dancing master mad, but I couldn’t because they’ve got M. de Sainte-Croix with them—he’s a county councillor, and he comes of a very good family, but he’s joined the Republicans, for money, so no decent people ever speak to him now. He knows my uncle, because they’re both in the Government, but the rest of my family always cut him. The thin one in the waterproof is the conductor of the orchestra. What, you don’t know him! Oh, he plays divinely. You haven’t been to Cavalleria Rusticana? Ah, I think it’s marvellous! He’s giving a concert this evening, but we can’t go because it’s to be in the town hall. In the Casino it wouldn’t matter, but in the town hall, where they’ve taken down the crucifix, Andrée’s mother would have a fit if we went there. You’re going to say that my aunt’s husband is in the Government. But what difference does that make? My aunt is my aunt, but that’s no reason why I should like her. The only thing she’s ever wanted to do is get rid of me. No, the person who has really been a mother to me, and all the more credit to her because she’s no relation at all, is a friend of mine whom I love just as much as if she was my mother. I’ll show you her photo.”
We were joined for a moment by the golf champion and baccarat player, Octave. I thought I had discovered a bond between us, for I learned in the course of our conversation that he was some