In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [257]
freedom of grown-up conversation. And I was quite resigned to not having her by my side, on condition however that she remained in the same coach. For though I no longer felt any jealousy and scarcely any love for her, and never thought about what she might be doing on the days when I did not see her, on the other hand, when I was there, a mere partition which might at a pinch be concealing a betrayal was intolerable to me, and if she withdrew with the ladies to the next compartment, a moment later, unable to remain in my seat any longer, at the risk of offending whoever might be talking, Brichot, Cottard or Charlus, to whom I could not explain the reason for my flight, I would get up, leave them without ceremony, and, to make certain that nothing abnormal was happening, go next door. And until we came to Doncières M. de Charlus without any fear of shocking his audience, would speak sometimes in the plainest terms of practices which, he declared, for his own part he did not consider either good or bad. He did this from cunning, to show his broad-mindedness, convinced as he was that his own morals aroused no suspicion in the minds of the faithful. He was well aware that there did exist in the world several persons who were, to use an expression which became habitual with him later on, “in the know” about himself. But he imagined that these persons were not more than three or four, and that none of them was at that moment on the Normandy coast. This illusion may appear surprising in so shrewd and so suspicious a man. Even in the case of those whom he believed to be more or less informed, he deluded himself that it was in the vaguest way, and hoped, by telling them this or that fact about someone, to clear the person in question from all suspicion on the part of a listener who out of politeness pretended to accept his statements. Even in my case, while he was aware of what I knew or guessed about him, he imagined that my conviction, which he believed to be of far longer standing than it actually was, was quite general, and that it was sufficient for him to deny this or that detail to be believed, whereas on the contrary, if a knowledge of the whole always precedes a knowledge of the details, it makes investigation of the latter infinitely easier and, having destroyed his cloak of invisibility, no longer allows the dissembler to hide whatever he chooses. Certainly when M. de Charlus, invited to a dinner-party by one of the faithful or a friend of one of the faithful, adopted the most devious means to introduce Morel’s name among ten others which he mentioned, he never imagined that for the reasons, always different, which he gave for the pleasure or convenience he would find that evening in being invited with him, his hosts, while appearing to believe him implicitly, would substitute a single and invariable reason, of which he supposed them to be ignorant, namely that he was in love with him. Similarly, Mme Verdurin, seeming always entirely to acknowledge the motives, half-artistic, half-humanitarian, which M. de Charlus gave her for the interest that he took in Morel, never ceased to thank the Baron warmly for his touching kindness, as she called it, towards the violinist. Yet how astonished M. de Charlus would have been if, one day when Morel and he were delayed and had not come by the train, he had heard the Mistress say: “We’re all here now except the young ladies”! The Baron would have been all the more amazed in that, scarcely stirring from La Raspelière, he played the part there of a family chaplain, a stage priest, and would sometimes (when Morel had 48 hours’ leave) sleep there for two nights in succession. Mme Verdurin would then give them adjoining rooms, and, to put them at their ease, would say: “If you want to have a little music, don’t worry about us. The walls are as thick as a fortress, you have nobody else on your floor, and my husband sleeps like a log.” On such days M. de Charlus would relieve the Princess of the duty of going to meet newcomers at the station, apologising for Mme Verdurin’s absence on the