In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI_ Time Regained - Marcel Proust [78]
At that very moment the door was heard to open and everyone was silent, thinking it was the boss, but it was only a foreign chauffeur who was welcomed as an old friend by everybody in the room. But seeing a magnificent watchchain displayed upon the chauffeur’s jacket, the young man of twenty-two threw him a questioning and amused glance, followed by a frown and a severe wink in my direction. I understood that the first look meant: “What’s that, did you steal it? My congratulations.” And the second: “Don’t say anything, because of this fellow we don’t know.” Suddenly the boss came in, carrying several yards of heavy iron chains—sufficient to secure quite a number of convicts—and sweating. “What a weight!” he said. “If you weren’t all so idle, I shouldn’t be obliged to fetch them myself.” I told him that I wanted a room. “Just for a few hours. I can’t find a cab and I am rather unwell. But I should like something to drink sent up.” “Pierrot, go and fetch some cassis from the cellar and tell them to get No. 43 ready. There’s 7 ringing again. They say they’re ill. Ill my foot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been doping themselves, they look half cracked, it’s time they were shown the door. Has anybody put a pair of sheets in 22? Good! There goes 7 again, run and see what it is. Well, Maurice, what are you standing there for? You know someone’s waiting for you, go up to 14b. And get a move on.” And Maurice hurried out after the boss, who seemed a little annoyed that I had seen his chains and disappeared carrying them with him. “How is it you’re so late?” the young man of twenty-two asked the chauffeur. “What do you mean, late? I’m an hour early. But it’s too hot in the streets. My appointment’s not till midnight.” “Who have you come for then?” “Pretty Pamela,” said the dark-skinned chauffeur, whose laugh uncovered a set of fine white teeth. “Ah!” said the young man of twenty-two.
Presently I was taken up to Room 43, but it was so unpleasantly stuffy and my curiosity was so great that, having drunk my cassis, I started to go downstairs again, then, changing my mind, turned round and went up past the floor of Room 43 to the top of the building. Suddenly from a room situated by itself at the end of a corridor, I thought I heard stifled groans. I walked rapidly towards the sounds and put my ear to the door. “I beseech you, mercy, have pity, untie me, don’t beat me so hard,” said a voice. “I kiss your feet, I abase myself, I promise not to offend again. Have pity on me.” “No, you filthy brute,” replied another voice, “and if you yell and drag yourself about on your knees like that, you’ll be tied to the bed, no mercy for you,” and I heard the noise of the crack of a whip, which I guessed to be reinforced with nails, for it was followed by cries of pain. At this moment I noticed that there was a small oval window opening from the room on to the corridor and that the curtain had not been drawn across it; stealthily in the darkness I crept as far as this window and there in the room, chained to a bed like Prometheus to his rock, receiving the blows that Maurice rained upon him with a whip which was in fact studded with nails, I saw, with blood already flowing from him and covered with bruises which proved that the chastisement was not taking place for the first time—I saw before me M. de Charlus.
Suddenly the door opened and a man came in who fortunately did not see me. It was Jupien. He went up to the Baron with an air of respect and a smile of understanding: “Well, you don’t need me, do you?” The Baron asked Jupien to send Maurice out of the room for a moment. Jupien did so with perfect unconcern. “We can’t be heard, can we?” said the Baron to Jupien, who assured him that this was the case. The Baron knew that Jupien, with an intelligence worthy of a man of letters, was yet quite lacking in practical sense and constantly talked about people in their presence with innuendoes which deceived nobody and nicknames which everybody understood.
“Just