In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI_ Time Regained - Marcel Proust [85]
he manages to make me believe it? What charming little eyes he has! There, I’m going to give you two big kisses for your trouble, my dear boy. You will think of me in the trenches. Things are not too bad there?” “Whew, there are some days, when a grenade just misses you …” And the young man proceeded to imitate the noise of the grenade, the aeroplanes, etc. “But one’s got to do what the others do, and you can be absolutely sure that we will go on to the end.” “To the end! If one only knew to what end!” said the Baron in a melancholy manner, giving rein to his “pessimism.” “You haven’t seen what Sarah Bernhardt said in the papers: ‘France will go on to the end. If necessary, the French will let themselves be killed to the last man.’” “I do not doubt for a single moment that the French would bravely let themselves be killed to the last man,” said M. de Charlus, as if this were the simplest thing in the world and although he himself had no intention of doing anything whatsoever, hoping by this remark to correct the impression of pacifism which he gave when he forgot himself. “That I do not doubt, but I ask myself to what extent Madame Sarah Bernhardt is qualified to speak in the name of France … But I don’t think I have made the acquaintance of this charming, this delightful young man,” he added, spying another whom he did not recognise or perhaps had not seen before. He greeted him as he would have greeted a prince at Versailles, and making the most of this opportunity to have a supplementary pleasure for nothing—just as, when I was little and my mother had finished giving an order at Boissier’s or Gouache’s, I would accept the offer of a sweet which one of the ladies behind the counter would invite me to select from those glass bowls over which she and her colleagues held sway—he took the hand of the charming young man and gave it a long squeeze, in the Prussian manner, smilingly fixing him with his eyes for the interminable time which photographers used to take to pose you when the light was bad. “Sir, I am charmed, I am enchanted to make your acquaintance. What pretty hair he has!” he said, turning to Jupien. Next he went up to Maurice to give him his fifty francs, but first, putting his arm round his waist: “You never told me that you had knifed an old hag of a concierge in Belleville.” And M. de Charlus shrieked with ecstatic laughter and brought his face close to that of Maurice. “Oh! Monsieur le Baron,” said the gigolo, who had not been warned, “how can you believe such a thing?” Whether the report was in fact false, or whether it was true and the perpetrator of the deed nevertheless thought it abominable and one of those things that it is better to deny, he went on: “Me touch a fellow-creature? A Boche, yes, because that’s war, but a woman, and an old woman at that!” This declaration of virtuous principles had the effect of a douche of cold water upon the Baron, who brusquely moved away from Maurice, having first handed him his money, but with the disgusted air of someone who has been cheated, who pays because he does not want to make a fuss but is far from pleased. The bad impression made upon the Baron was accentuated by the manner in which the recipient thanked him, with the words: “I shall send this to the old folks and keep a bit for my brother at the front as well.” By these touching sentiments M. de Charlus was almost as gravely disappointed as he was irritated by the rather conventional peasant’s language in which they were expressed. Occasionally Jupien warned the young men that they ought to be more perverse. Then one of them, as if he were confessing to something diabolical, would hazard: “I say, Baron, you won’t believe me, but when I was a kid I used to watch my parents making love through the key-hole. Pretty vicious, wasn’t it? You look as if you think that’s a cock and bull story, but I swear it’s the truth.” And M. de Charlus was driven at once to despair and to exasperation by this factitious attempt at perversity, the result of which was only to reveal such depths both of stupidity and of innocence.