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“Do you want to prevent me from taking my own hat?”

I assumed, a similar mishap having recently occurred to myself, that, someone else having taken his hat, he had seized upon one at random so as not to go home bareheaded, and that I had placed him in a difficulty by exposing his stratagem. So I did not pursue the matter. I told him that I must say a few words to Saint-Loup. “He’s talking to that idiotic Duc de Guermantes,” I added. “That’s a charming thing to say: I shall tell my brother.” “Oh! you think that would interest M. de Charlus?” (I imagined that, if he had a brother, that brother must be called Charlus too. Saint-Loup had indeed explained his family tree to me at Balbec, but I had forgotten the details.) “Who’s talking about M. de Charlus?” said the Baron in an insolent tone. “Go to Robert. I know that you took part this morning in one of those lunch-time orgies that he has with a woman who is disgracing him. You would do well to use your influence with him to make him realise the pain he is causing his poor mother and all of us by dragging our name in the dirt.”

I should have liked to reply that at this degrading luncheon the conversation had been entirely about Emerson, Ibsen and Tolstoy, and that the young woman had lectured Robert to make him drink nothing but water. In the hope of bringing some balm to Robert, whose pride I thought had been wounded, I sought to excuse his mistress. I did not know that at that moment, in spite of his anger with her, it was on himself that he was heaping reproaches. But it always happens, in quarrels between a good man and a worthless woman and when the right is all on one side, that some trifle crops up which enables the woman to appear not to have been in the wrong on one point. And since she ignores all the other points, if the man feels the need of her, if he is upset by the separation, his weakness will make him exaggeratedly scrupulous, he will remember the absurd reproaches that have been flung at him and will ask himself whether they have not some foundation in fact.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong about that necklace,” Robert said to me. “Of course, I didn’t do it with any ill intent, but I know very well that other people don’t look at things in the same way as oneself. She had a very hard time when she was young. In her eyes I’m bound to appear the rich man who thinks he can get anything he wants with his money and against whom a poor person can’t compete, whether in trying to influence Boucheron or in a lawsuit. Of course she has been horribly cruel to me, when I’ve never thought of anything but her good. But I do see clearly that she thinks I wanted to make her feel that one could keep a hold on her with money, and that’s not true. And she’s so fond of me—what must she be thinking? Poor darling, if you only knew how sweet and thoughtful she is, I simply can’t tell you what adorable things she’s often done for me. How wretched she must be feeling now! In any case, whatever happens I don’t want to let her think me a cad; I shall dash off to Boucheron’s and get the necklace. Who knows? Perhaps when she sees what I’ve done she’ll admit that she’s been partly in the wrong. You see, it’s the idea that she’s suffering at this moment that I can’t bear. What one suffers oneself one knows—it’s nothing. But to tell oneself that she’s suffering and not to be able to form any idea of what she feels—I think I should go mad, I’d rather not see her ever again than let her suffer. All I ask is that she should be happy without me if need be. You know, for me everything that concerns her is enormously important, it becomes something cosmic; I shall run to the jeweller’s and then go and ask her to forgive me. Until I get down there, what will she be thinking of me? If she could only know that I was on my way! Why don’t you come to her house on the off chance; perhaps everything will be all right. Perhaps,” he went on with a smile, as though hardly daring to believe in so idyllic a possibility, “we can