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By Root 1898 0

is an excellent reason for despising him. Of course there are exceptions. It may happen that two Simonnets (introduced to one another at one of those gatherings where one feels the need to talk, no matter what about, and where moreover one is instinctively well disposed towards strangers, for instance in a funeral procession on its way to the cemetery), finding that they have the same name, will seek with mutual affability though without success to discover a possible kinship. But that is only an exception. Plenty of people are disreputable, without our either knowing or caring. If, however, a similarity of names brings to our door letters addressed to them, or vice versa, we at once feel a mistrust, often justified, as to their moral worth. We are afraid of being confused with them, and forestall the mistake by a grimace of disgust when anyone refers to them in our hearing. When we read our own name, as borne by them, in the newspaper, they seem to have usurped it. The transgressions of other members of the social organism are a matter of indifference to us. We lay the burden of them the more heavily upon our namesakes. The hatred which we bear towards the other Simonnets is all the stronger in that it is not a personal feeling but has been transmitted hereditarily. After the second generation we remember only the expression of disgust with which our grandparents used to refer to the other Simonnets; we know nothing of the reason; we should not be surprised to learn that it had begun with a murder. Until, as is not uncommon, the day comes when a male Simonnet and a female Simonnet who are not in any way related are joined together in matrimony and so repair the breach.

Not only did Albertine speak to me of Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage, but spontaneously, with that impulse to confide which the juxtaposition of two human bodies creates, at the beginning at least, during a first phase before it has engendered a special duplicity and reticence in one person towards the other, she told me a story about her own family and one of Andrée’s uncles, of which, at Balbec, she had refused to say a word; but she now felt that she ought not to appear to have any secrets from me. Now, had her dearest friend said anything to her against me, she would have made a point of repeating it to me.

I insisted on her going home, and finally she did go, but she was so ashamed on my account at my discourtesy that she laughed almost as though to apologise for me, as a hostess to whose party you have gone without dressing makes the best of you but is offended nevertheless.

“What are you laughing at?” I inquired.

“I’m not laughing, I’m smiling at you,” she replied tenderly. “When am I going to see you again?” she went on, as though declining to admit that what had just happened between us, since it is generally the consummation of it, might not be at least the prelude to a great friendship, a pre-existent friendship which we owed it to ourselves to discover, to confess, and which alone could account for what we had indulged in.

“Since you give me leave, I shall send for you when I can.”

I dared not let her know that I was subordinating everything else to the chance of seeing Mme de Stermaria.

“It will have to be at short notice, unfortunately,” I went on, “I never know beforehand. Would it be possible for me to send round for you in the evenings when I’m free?”

“It will be quite possible soon, because I’m going to have an independent entrance. But just at present it’s impracticable. Anyhow I shall come round tomorrow or the next day in the afternoon. You needn’t see me if you’re busy.”

On reaching the door, surprised that I had not preceded her, she offered me her cheek, feeling that there was no need now for any coarse physical desire to prompt us to kiss one another. The brief relations in which we had just indulged being of the sort to which a profound intimacy and a heartfelt choice sometimes lead, Albertine had felt it incumbent upon her to improvise and add temporarily to the kisses which we had exchanged on my bed the sentiment