In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [110]
Notwithstanding the change in Morel’s point of view with regard to the consequences of his behaviour, although that behaviour would have seemed to him abominable two months earlier when he was passionately in love with Jupien’s niece, whereas during the last fortnight he had never ceased to assure himself that the same behaviour was natural and praiseworthy, it could not fail to intensify the state of nervous tension in which, finally, he had served notice of the rupture that afternoon. And he was quite prepared to vent his rage, if not (except in a momentary outburst) upon the girl, for whom he still felt that lingering fear which is the last trace of love, at any rate upon the Baron. He took care, however, not to say anything to him before dinner, for, valuing his own professional virtuosity above everything, whenever he had any difficult music to play (as this evening at the Verdurins’) he avoided (as far as possible, and the scene that afternoon was already more than ample) anything that might make his movements at all jerky. Similarly, a surgeon who is an enthusiastic motorist does not drive when he has an operation to perform. This explained to me why, as he was speaking to me, he kept bending his fingers gently one after another to see whether they had regained their suppleness. A slight frown seemed to indicate that there was still a trace of nervous stiffness. But in order not to aggravate it, he relaxed his features, as we try to prevent ourselves from getting agitated about not being able to sleep or to persuade a woman to give herself, for fear lest our phobia itself may retard the moment of sleep or of pleasure. And so, anxious to regain his serenity in order to be able to concentrate, as usual, on what he was going to play at the Verdurins’, and anxious, so long as I was watching him, to let me see how unhappy he was, he decided that the simplest course was to entreat me to leave him immediately. The entreaty was superfluous, for it was a relief to me to get away from him. I had trembled lest, as we were due at the same house within a few minutes of one another, he might ask me to take him with me, my memory of the scene that afternoon being too vivid not to give me a certain distaste for the idea of having Morel by my side during the drive. It is quite possible that the love, and afterwards the indifference or hatred, felt by Morel for Jupien’s niece had been sincere. Unfortunately, it was not the first time (nor would it be the last) that he had behaved thus, that he had suddenly “ditched” a girl to whom he had sworn undying love, going so far as to produce a loaded revolver and telling her that he would blow out his brains if ever he was vile enough to desert her. He would nevertheless desert her in time, and feel, instead of remorse, a sort of rancour against her. It was not the first time that he had behaved thus, and it was not to be the last, with the result that many young girls—girls less forgetful of him than he was of them—suffered—as Jupien’s niece, continuing to love Morel while despising him, was to suffer for a long time—their heads ready to burst with the stabbing of an inner pain, because in each of them, like a fragment of a Greek sculpture, an aspect of Morel’s face, hard as marble and beautiful as the art of antiquity, was embedded in the brain, with his blossoming hair, his fine eyes, his straight nose—forming a protuberance in a cranium not shaped to receive it, and on which no one could operate. But in the fullness of time these stony fragments end by slipping into a place where they cause no undue laceration, from which they never stir again; their presence is no longer felt: the pain has been forgotten, or is remembered with indifference.
Meanwhile I had gained two things in the course of the day. On the