In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [180]
At this moment there stirred beneath the domed forehead of the musical goddess the one thing that certain people cannot keep to themselves, a word which it is not merely abject but imprudent to repeat. But the need to repeat it is stronger than honour or prudence. It was to this need that, after a few convulsive twitches of her spherical and sorrowful brow, the Mistress succumbed: “Someone actually told my husband that he had said ‘my servant,’ but for that I cannot vouch,” she added. It was a similar need that had impelled M. de Charlus, shortly after he had sworn to Morel that nobody should ever know the story of his birth, to say to Mme Verdurin: “His father was a valet.” A similar need again, now that the word had been said, would make it circulate from one person to another, each of whom would confide it under the seal of a secrecy which would be promised and not kept by the hearer, as by the informant himself. These words would end, as in the game called hunt-the-thimble, by being traced back to Mme Verdurin, bringing down upon her the wrath of the person concerned, who would finally have heard them. She knew this, but could not repress the word that was burning her tongue. “Servant” could not but offend Morel. She said “servant” nevertheless, and if she added that she could not vouch for the word, this was so as to appear certain of the rest, thanks to this hint of uncertainty, and to show her impartiality. She herself found this impartiality so touching that she began to speak tenderly to Charlie: “Because, don’t you see, I don’t blame him. He’s dragging you down into his abyss, it is true, but it’s not his fault since he wallows in it himself, since he wallows in it,” she repeated in a louder tone, having been struck by the aptness of the image which had taken shape so quickly that her attention only now caught up with it and sought to make the most of it. “No, what I do reproach him for,” she went on in a melting tone—like a woman drunk with her own success—“is a want of delicacy towards you. There are certain things that one doesn’t say in public. For instance, this evening he was betting that he would make you blush with joy by telling you (stuff and nonsense, of course, for his recommendation would be enough to prevent your getting it) that you were to have the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Even that I could overlook, although I’ve never much liked,” she went on with a delicate and dignified air, “seeing someone make a fool of his friends, but, don’t you know, there are certain little things that do stick in one’s gullet. Such as when he told us, with screams of laughter, that if you want the Cross it’s to please your uncle and that your uncle was a flunkey.”
“He told you that!” cried Charlie, believing, on the strength of this adroitly interpolated remark, in the truth of everything that Mme Verdurin had said. Mme Verdurin was overwhelmed with the joy of an old mistress who, just as her young lover is on the point of deserting her, succeeds in breaking up his marriage. And perhaps the lie had not been a calculated one, perhaps she had not even consciously lied. A sort of sentimental logic, or perhaps, more elementary still, a sort of nervous reflex, that impelled her, in order to brighten up her life and preserve her happiness, to sow discord in the little clan, may have brought impulsively to her lips, without giving her time to check their veracity, these assertions that were so diabolically effective if not strictly accurate.
“If he had only said it to us it wouldn’t matter,” the Mistress went on, “we know better than to pay any attention to what he says, and besides, what does a man’s origin matter, you have your worth, you’re what you make yourself, but that he should