In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [85]
“No, Monsieur, the pleasures of the mind count for very little with me; it is not them that I seek after; indeed I don’t even know that I have ever tasted them.”
“You really think not?” he replied. “Well, you know, after all, that must be what you like best—at least that’s my guess, that’s what I think.”
He did not convince me, of course, and yet I already felt happier, less constricted. After what M. de Norpois had said to me, I had regarded my moments of day-dreaming, of enthusiasm, of self-confidence as purely subjective and false. But according to Bergotte, who appeared to understand my case, it seemed that it was quite the contrary, that the symptom I ought to disregard was, in fact, my doubts, my disgust with myself. Moreover, what he had said about M. de Norpois took most of the sting out of a sentence from which I had supposed that no appeal was possible.
“Are you being properly looked after?” Bergotte asked me. “Who is treating you?” I told him that I had seen, and should probably go on seeing, Cottard. “But that’s not at all the sort of man you want!” he told me. “I know nothing about him as a doctor. But I’ve met him at Mme Swann’s. The man’s an imbecile. Even supposing that that doesn’t prevent his being a good doctor, which I hesitate to believe, it does prevent his being a good doctor for artists, for intelligent people. People like you must have suitable doctors, I would almost go so far as to say treatment and medicines specially adapted to themselves. Cottard will bore you, and that alone will prevent his treatment from having any effect. Besides, the proper course of treatment cannot possibly be the same for you as for any Tom, Dick or Harry. Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands that disease. How do you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare. So that his calculations are inaccurate in your case, the balance is upset; you see, always the little bottle-imp bobbing up again. He will find that you have a distended stomach; he has no need to examine you for it, since he has it already in his eye. You can see it there, reflected in his glasses.”
This manner of speaking tired me greatly. I said to myself with the stupidity of common sense: “There’s no more a distended stomach reflected in Professor Cottard’s glasses than there are inanities stored behind M. de Norpois’s white waistcoat.”
“I should recommend you, instead,” went on Bergotte, “to consult Dr du Boulbon, who is an extremely intelligent man.” “He’s a great admirer of your books,” I replied.
I saw that Bergotte knew this, and I concluded that kindred spirits soon come together, that one has few really “unknown friends.” What Bergotte had said to me with respect to Cottard impressed me, while running contrary to everything that I myself believed. I was in no way disturbed at finding my doctor a bore; what I expected of him was that, thanks to an art whose laws escaped me, he should pronounce on the subject of my health an infallible oracle after consultation of my entrails. And I did not at all require that, with the aid of an intelligence in which I could compete with him, he should seek to understand mine, which I pictured to myself merely as a means, of no importance in itself, of trying to attain to certain external verities. I very much doubted whether intelligent people required a different form of hygiene from imbeciles, and I was quite prepared to submit myself to the latter.
“I’ll tell you who does need a good doctor, and that’s our friend Swann,” said Bergotte. And on my asking whether he was ill, “Well, don’t you see, he’s typical of the man who has married a whore, and has to pocket a dozen insults a day from women who refuse to meet