In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [287]
“But we mustn’t sit here scribbling nonsense,” she cried, turning with an impulsive and serious air to André and Rosemonde, “I ought to show you the letter I got from Gisèle this morning. What an idiot I am; I’ve had it in my pocket all this time—and to think how useful it can be to us!”
Gisèle had been moved to copy out for her friend, so that it might be passed on to the others, the essay which she had written in her examination. Albertine’s fears as to the difficulty of the subjects set had been more than justified by the two from which Gisèle had had to choose. The first was: “Sophocles, from the Shades, writes to Racine to console him for the failure of Athalie”; the other: “Suppose that, after the first performance of Esther, Mme de Sévigné is writing to Mme de La Fayette to tell her how much she regretted her absence.” Now Gisèle, in an excess of zeal which must have touched the examiners’ hearts, had chosen the first and more difficult of these two subjects, and had handled it with such remarkable skill that she had been given fourteen marks and had been congratulated by the board. She would have received a “distinction” if she had not “dried up” in the Spanish paper. The essay of which Gisèle had sent a copy to Albertine was immediately read aloud to us by the latter, who, having presently to take the same examination, was anxious to have Andrée’s opinion, since she was by far the cleverest of them all and might be able to give her some good tips.
“She did have a bit of luck,” Albertine observed. “It’s the very subject her French mistress made her swot up while she was here.”
The letter from Sophocles to Racine, as drafted by Gisèle, ran as follows:
“My dear friend, you must pardon me the liberty of addressing you when I have not the honour of your personal acquaintance, but your latest tragedy, Athalie, shows, does it not, that you have made a thorough study of my own modest works. You have not only put poetry in the mouths of the protagonists, or principal persons of the drama, but you have written other, and, let me tell you without flattery, charming verses for the chorus, a feature which did not work too badly, from what one hears, in Greek tragedy, but is a veritable novelty in France. In addition, your talent, so fluent, so dainty, so seductive, so fine, so delicate, has here acquired an energy on which I congratulate you. Athalie, Joad—these are figures which your rival Corneille could have wrought no better. The characters are virile, the plot simple and strong. You have given us a tragedy in which love is not the keynote, and on this I must offer you my sincerest compliments. The most familiar precepts are not always the truest. I will give you an example:
This passion treat, which makes the poet’s art
Fly, as on wings, straight to the listener’s heart.
You have shown us that the religious sentiment in which your chorus is steeped is no less capable of moving us. The general public may have been baffled, but true connoisseurs must give you your due. I have felt myself impelled to offer you all my congratulations, to which I would add, my dear brother poet, the expression of my very highest esteem.”
Albertine’s eyes never ceased to sparkle while she was reading this to us. “Really, you’d think she must have cribbed it somewhere!” she exclaimed when she reached the end. “I’d never have believed Gisèle could cook up an essay like that! And the poetry she brings in! Where on earth can she have pinched that from?”
Albertine’s admiration, with a change, it is true, of object, but with no loss—an increase, rather—of intensity, combined with the closest attention to what was being said, continued to make her eyes “start from her head” all the time that Andrée (consulted as being the biggest and cleverest)