In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [6]
Albertine, even in the discussion of the most trivial matters, expressed herself very differently from the little girl that she had been only a few years earlier at Balbec. She would go so far as to declare, in connexion with a political incident of which she disapproved: “I consider that fearsome,” and I am not sure that it was not about this time that she learned to say, when she wanted to indicate that she thought a book badly written: “It’s interesting, but really, it might have been written by a pig.”
The rule that she must not enter my room until I had rung amused her greatly. As she had adopted our family habit of quotation, and in following it drew upon the plays in which she had acted at her convent and for which I had expressed a liking, she always compared me to Assuerus:1
And death is the reward of whoso dares
To venture in his presence unawares …
None is exempt; nor is there any whom
Degree or sex can save from such a doom;
Even I myself …
Like all the rest, I by this law am bound;
And, to address him, I must first be found
By him, or he must call me to his side.
Physically, too, she had changed. Her blue, almond-shaped eyes—now even more elongated—had altered in appearance; they were indeed of the same colour, but seemed to have passed into a liquid state. So much so that, when she closed them, it was as though a pair of curtains had been drawn to shut out a view of the sea. It was no doubt this aspect of her person that I remembered most vividly each night on leaving her. For, quite contrarily, every morning the ripple of her hair, for instance, continued to give me the same surprise, as though it were some novelty that I had never seen before. And yet, above the smiling eyes of a girl, what could be more beautiful than that clustering coronet of black violets? The smile offers greater friendship; but the little gleaming coils of blossoming hair, more akin to the flesh of which they seem to be a transposition into tiny wavelets, are more provocative of desire.
As soon as she entered my room, she would spring on to my bed and sometimes would expatiate upon my type of intellect, would vow in a transport of sincerity that she would sooner die than leave me: this was on mornings when I had shaved before sending for her. She was one of those women who can never distinguish the cause of what they feel. The pleasure they derive from a fresh complexion they explain to themselves by the moral qualities of the man who seems to offer them a possibility of future happiness, which is capable, however, of diminishing and becoming less compelling the longer he refrains from shaving.
I would inquire where she was thinking of going.
“I believe Andrée wants to take me to the Buttes-Chaumont; I’ve never been there.”
Of course it was impossible for me to discern among so many other words whether beneath these a falsehood lay concealed. Besides, I could trust Andrée to tell me of all the places that she visited with Albertine. At Balbec, when I had felt utterly weary of Albertine, I had made up my mind to say, untruthfully, to Andrée: “My little Andrée, if only I had met you again sooner, it’s you that I would have loved! But now my heart is pledged to another. All the same, we can see a great deal of each other, for my love is causing me great unhappiness, and you will help me to find consolation.” And now these same lying words had become true within the space of three weeks. Perhaps Andrée had believed in Paris that it was indeed a lie and that I was in love with her, as she would doubtless have believed at Balbec. For the truth is so variable for each of us, that other people have difficulty in recognising what it is. And as I knew that she would tell me everything that she and Albertine had done, I had asked her, and she had agreed, to come and call for Albertine almost every day. Thus I could without anxiety remain at home. Also, Andrée’s privileged position as one of the girls