In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [237]
“Marry her?” cried Morel, feeling that the Baron must be tipsy, or else giving no thought to the sort of man, more scrupulous in reality than he supposed, to whom he was speaking. “Marry her? No fear! I’d promise, but once the little operation was performed, I’d ditch her that very evening.”
M. de Charlus was in the habit, when a fiction was capable of causing him a momentary sensual pleasure, of giving it his support and then withdrawing it a few minutes later, when his pleasure was at an end. “Would you really do that?” he said to Morel with a laugh, squeezing him more tightly still.
“Wouldn’t I half!” said Morel, seeing that he was not displeasing the Baron by continuing to expound to him what was indeed one of his desires.
“It’s dangerous,” said M. de Charlus.
“I should have my kit packed and ready, and buzz off without leaving an address.”
“And what about me?” asked M. de Charlus.
“I should take you with me, of course,” Morel made haste to add, never having thought of what would become of the Baron, who was the least of his worries. “I say, there’s a kid I should love to try that game on, she’s a little seamstress who keeps a shop in M. le Duc’s house.”
“Jupien’s girl,” the Baron exclaimed as the wine-waiter entered the room. “Oh! never,” he added, whether because the presence of a third person had cooled him down, or because even in this sort of black mass in which he took pleasure in defiling the most sacred things, he could not bring himself to allow the mention of people to whom he was bound by ties of friendship. “Jupien is a good man, and the child is charming. It would be terrible to cause them distress.”
Morel felt that he had gone too far and was silent, but his eyes continued to gaze into space at the girl for whose benefit he had once begged me to address him as “cher maître” and from whom he had ordered a waistcoat. An industrious worker, the child had not taken any holiday, but I learned afterwards that while the violinist was in the neighbourhood of Balbec she never ceased to think of his handsome face, ennobled by the fact that having seen Morel in my company she had taken him for a “gentleman.”
“I never heard Chopin play,” said the Baron, “and yet I might have done so. I took lessons from Stamati, but he forbade me to go and hear the Master of the Nocturnes at my aunt Chimay’s.”
“That was damned silly of him,” exclaimed Morel.
“On the contrary,” M. de Charlus retorted warmly, in a shrill voice. “It was a proof of his intelligence. He had realised that I was a ‘natural’ and that I would succumb to Chopin’s influence. It’s of no importance, since I gave up music when I was quite young, and everything else, for that matter. Besides, one can more or less imagine him,” he added in a slow, nasal, drawling voice, “there are still people who did hear him, who can give you an idea. However, Chopin was only an excuse to come back to the mediumistic aspect which you are neglecting.”
The reader will observe that, after an interpolation of common parlance, M. de Charlus had suddenly become once more as precious and haughty in his speech as he normally was. The idea of Morel’s “ditching” without compunction a girl whom he had outraged had enabled him to enjoy an abrupt and consummate pleasure. From that moment his sensual appetites were satisfied for a time and the sadist (a true medium, he) who had for a few moments taken the place of M. de Charlus had fled, handing over to the real M. de Charlus, full of artistic refinement, sensibility and kindness. “You were playing the other day the piano transcription of the Fifteenth Quartet, which in itself is absurd because nothing could be less pianistic. It is meant for people whose ears are offended by the overtaut strings of the glorious Deaf One. Whereas it is precisely that almost sour mysticism that is divine. In any case you played it very badly and altered all the tempi.You ought to play it as