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By Root 1987 0

velvet” (I thought at once of Elstir and of Fortuny’s dresses) “which I would not be afraid of weighing down even more with incrustations or pendants of stones, marvellous and outmoded—I can think of no higher praise—such as the peridot, the marcasite and the incomparable labradorite. Moreover she herself seems to have an instinct for the counter-balance that a somewhat heavy beauty calls for. Remember, on the way to dinner at La Raspelière, all that accompaniment of pretty cases and weighty bags, into which, when she is married, she will be able to put more than the whiteness of face-powder or the crimson of cosmetics but—in a casket of lapis lazuli not too tinged with indigo—those of pearls and rubies, not imitation ones, I suspect, for she may well marry into money.”

“Well, well, Baron,” interrupted Brichot, fearing that I might be distressed by these last words, for he had some doubts as to the purity of my relations and the authenticity of my cousinage with Albertine, “you do take an interest in young ladies!”

“Will you please hold your tongue in front of this child, you nasty thing,” M. de Charlus replied with a giggle, raising and lowering, in the gesture of imposing silence on Brichot, a hand which he did not fail to let fall on my shoulder. “We shall regret your cousin’s absence this evening. But you did just as well, perhaps, not to bring her with you. Vinteuil’s music is admirable. But I heard from Charlie this morning that there’ll be the composer’s daughter and her friend, who both have a terrible reputation. That sort of thing is always awkward for a young girl. I’m even a trifle worried about my guests. But since they’re practically all of advanced years it’s of no consequence to them. They’ll be there, unless the two young ladies haven’t been able to come, because they were to have been present without fail all afternoon at a rehearsal Mme Verdurin was giving earlier and to which she had invited only the bores, the family, the people who were not to be invited this evening. But just before dinner, Charlie told me that the Misses Vinteuil, as we call them, though positively expected, had failed to turn up.”

In spite of the intense pain I felt at this sudden association (as of the cause, at last discovered, with the effect, which I had already known) of Albertine’s desire to be there that afternoon with the expected presence (unknown to me) of Mlle Vinteuil and her friend, I still had the presence of mind to notice that M. de Charlus, who had told us a few minutes earlier that he had not seen Charlie since the morning, was now brazenly admitting that he had seen him before dinner. But my anguish was becoming visible.

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” said the Baron, “you’ve turned quite green. Come, let’s go in; you’ll catch cold, you don’t look at all well.”

It was not my first doubt as to Albertine’s virtue that M. de Charlus’s words had awakened in me. Many others had penetrated my mind already. Each new doubt makes us feel that the limit has been reached, that we cannot cope with it; then we manage to find room for it all the same, and once it is introduced into the fabric of our lives it enters into competition there with so many longings to believe, so many reasons to forget, that we speedily become accustomed to it, and end by ceasing to pay attention to it. It lies there dormant like a half-healed pain, a mere threat of suffering which, the reverse side of desire, a feeling of the same order that has become, like it, the focus of our thoughts, irradiates them from infinite distances with wisps of sadness, as desire irradiates them with unidentifiable pleasures, wherever anything can be associated with the person we love. But the pain revives as soon as a new doubt enters our mind intact; even if we assure ourselves almost at once: “I shall deal with this, there’ll be some way of avoiding suffering, it can’t be true,” nevertheless there has been a first moment in which we suffered as though we believed it. If we had merely limbs, such as legs and arms, life would be endurable. Unfortunately we