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were enlisting simply in order to join in the latest sport—in the spirit in which one year everybody plays diabolo—for Saint-Loup, on the other hand, war was the very ideal which he imagined himself to be pursuing in his desires (which were in fact much more concrete but were clouded by ideology), an ideal which he could serve in common with those whom he preferred to all others, in a purely masculine order of chivalry, far from women, where he would be able to risk his life to save his orderly and die inspiring a fanatical love in his men. And thus, though there were many elements in his courage, the fact that he was a great nobleman was one of them, and another, in an unrecognisable and idealised form, was M. de Charlus’s dogma that it was of the essence of a man to have nothing effeminate about him. But just as in philosophy and in art ideas acquire their value only from the manner in which they are developed, and two analogous ones may differ greatly according to whether they have been expounded by Xenophon or by Plato, so, while I recognise how much, in his behaviour, the one has in common with the other, I admire Saint-Loup, for asking to be sent to the point of greatest danger, infinitely more than I do M. de Charlus for refusing to wear brightly coloured cravats.

I spoke to Saint-Loup about my friend the manager of the Grand Hotel at Balbec, who, it seems, had alleged that at the beginning of the war there had been in certain French regiments defections, which he called “defectuosities,” and had accused what he called the “Prussian militariat” of having provoked them; he had even, at one moment, believed in a simultaneous landing by the Japanese, the Germans and the Cossacks at Rivebelle as threatening Balbec, and had said that the only thing to do was to “decramp.” He also thought that the departure of the government and the ministries for Bordeaux was a little precipitate and declared that they were wrong to “de-cramp” so soon. This German-hater would say with a laugh of his brother: “He is in the trenches, twenty-five yards away from the Boches,” until the authorities, having discovered that he was a “Boche” himself, put him in a concentration camp. “Talking of Balbec, do you remember the lift-boy who used to be in the hotel?” said Saint-Loup as he left me, in a tone suggesting that he did not quite know who the lift-boy was and was counting on me for enlightenment. “He is joining up and has written to ask me to get him into the flying corps.” No doubt the young man was tired of going up in the captive cage of the lift, and the heights of the staircase of the Grand Hotel no longer sufficed him. He was going to “get his stripes” otherwise than by becoming a hall-porter, for our destiny is not always what we had supposed. “I shall certainly support his application,” said Saint-Loup. “I was saying to Gilberte only this morning, we shall never have enough aeroplanes. It is aeroplanes that will enable us to see what the enemy is preparing, and aeroplanes that will rob him of the greatest advantage of attack, which is surprise. The best army will be, perhaps, the army with the best eyes.”

(I had met this lift-boy airman a few days earlier. He had spoken to me about Balbec, and, curious to know what he would say about Saint-Loup, I brought the conversation round to the subject by asking whether it was true, as I had heard, that towards young men M. de Charlus had … etc. The lift-boy seemed surprised, he knew absolutely nothing about it. But on the other hand he made accusations against the rich young man, the one who lived with a mistress and three friends. As he seemed to lump all of them together, and as I knew from M. de Charlus who, it will be remembered, had informed me in front of Brichot that it was not so, I told the lift-boy that he must be mistaken. He met my doubts with the firmest avowals. It was the girlfriend of the rich man who had the job of picking up young men, and they all took their pleasure together. Thus M. de Charlus, the best-informed of men on the subject, had been entirely wrong, so fragmentary,