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By Root 1439 0

Morel, Morel “walking” or “called up” in this room (in which the walls and couches everywhere repeated the emblems of sorcery), that was visible a few feet away from him, in profile. Morel had, as happens to the dead, lost all his colour; among these women, with whom one might have expected him to be making merry, he remained livid, fixed in an artificial immobility; to drink the glass of champagne that stood before him, his listless arm tried in vain to reach out, and dropped back again. One had the impression of that ambiguous state implied by a religion which speaks of immortality but means thereby something that does not exclude extinction. The women were plying him with questions: “You see,” Mlle Noémie whispered to the Baron, “they’re talking to him about his army life. It’s amusing, isn’t it?”—here she laughed—“You’re glad you came? He’s calm, isn’t he,” she added, as though she were speaking of a dying man. The women’s questions came thick and fast, but Morel, inanimate, had not the strength to answer them. Even the miracle of a whispered word did not occur. M. de Charlus hesitated for barely a moment before he grasped what had really happened, namely that—whether from clumsiness on Jupien’s part when he had called to make the arrangements, or from the expansive power of secrets once confided which ensures that they are never kept, or from the natural indiscretion of these women, or from their fear of the police—Morel had been told that two gentlemen had paid a large sum to be allowed to spy on him, unseen hands had spirited away the Prince de Guermantes, metamorphosed into three women, and the unhappy Morel had been placed, trembling, paralysed with fear, in such a position that if M. de Charlus could scarcely see him, he, terrified, speechless, not daring to lift his glass for fear of letting it fall, had a perfect view of the Baron.

The story, as it happened, ended no more happily for the Prince de Guermantes. When he had been sent away so that M. de Charlus should not see him, furious at his disappointment without suspecting who was responsible for it, he had implored Morel, still without letting him know who he was, to meet him the following night in the tiny villa which he had taken and which, despite the shortness of his projected stay in it, he had, obeying the same quirkish habit which we have already observed in Mme de Villeparisis, decorated with a number of family keepsakes so that he might feel more at home. And so, next day, Morel, constantly looking over his shoulder for fear of being followed and spied upon by M. de Charlus, had finally entered the villa, having failed to observe any suspicious passer-by. He was shown into the sitting-room by a valet, who told him that he would inform “Monsieur” (his master had warned him not to utter the word “Prince” for fear of arousing suspicions). But when Morel found himself alone, and went to the mirror to see that his forelock was not disarranged, he felt as though he was the victim of a hallucination. The photographs on the mantelpiece (which the violinist recognised, for he had seen them in M. de Charlus’s room) of the Princesse de Guermantes, the Duchesse de Luxembourg and Mme de Villeparisis, left him at first petrified with fright. At the same moment he caught sight of the photograph of M. de Charlus, which was placed a little behind the rest. The Baron seemed to be transfixing him with a strange, unblinking stare. Mad with terror, Morel, recovering from his preliminary stupor and no longer doubting that this was a trap into which M. de Charlus had led him in order to put his fidelity to the test, leapt down the steps of the villa four at a time and set off along the road as fast as his legs would carry him, and when the Prince (thinking he had put a casual acquaintance through the required period of waiting, not without wondering whether the whole thing was entirely prudent and whether the individual in question might not be dangerous) came into the sitting-room, he found nobody there. In vain did he and his valet, fearful of burglary, and armed with