Day One Hundred Ten: Sodom and Gomorrah, pp. 137-150

Part II, Chapter I, from "I made a pretense of being busy writing...." to "...a state of euphoria whose source she never divined."

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When Albertine enters, the narrator pretends to be writing his note to Gilberte, and when she admires the slipcase that Gilberte had given him, he presents it to her. "The slipcase, Gilberte's agate marble, all that had once derived its importance from a purely internal state, since now, for me, they were just any old slipcase, any old marble." When Albertine leaves, he resumes writing the letter. 

Then he reports that, after returning from a visit to a spa, the Duc de Guermantes, influenced by some Italian "women of superior intellect" he had met, has become "a rabid Dreyfusard," following the pattern of the Prince de Guermantes. This seems to be a prelude to a seismic shift in the Guermantes's social standing, for the narrator notes that Mme. Verdurin, through her association with the Princess Yourbeletieff, a patron of the Ballets Russes, which were taking Paris by storm, has risen in social prominence. Moreover, so has Odette Swann: "Her salon had crystallized around a man, a dying man, who had passed almost overnight, at a time when his talent was running dry, from obscurity to great fame. The infatuation with the works of Bergotte was immense." 

Odette has a reputation as an anti-Dreyfusard, which has drawn others to her, such as Mme. d'Épinoy who, visiting Odette to ask for a contribution to the right-wing Patrie Française, is surprised to find her salon filled with fashionable people. "Since, without her being aware of it, the Princesse d'Épinoy saw people's place in society as internal to them, she was obliged to disincarnate Mme Swann and reincarnate her in a fashionable woman." So now Odette is seen in the company of "Mme de Marsantes and the woman who, thanks to the progressive effacement of the Duchesse de Guermantes (sated with honors, and annihilating herself by putting up no reisistance), was on the way to becoming the 'lioness,' the queen of the hour, the Comtesse Molé." 

Even the narrator's role in society has begun to change: "Mme Swann was able to believe I was making up with her daughter out of snobbery." Adding to this is Gilberte's inheritance of "nearly eighty million francs" from "an uncle of Swann's." As for Swann himself, his Dreyfusism does no harm to Odette's standing, "because they said, 'He's senile, an idiot, no one pays him any attention, only his wife counts and she's charming.'" Odette's reputation as an "intellectual," though wholly undeserved, also counts in her favor: "to prefer Mme Swann was to prove that you were intelligent, like going to a concert rather than a tea party." The narrator is surprised to hear Mme. de Montmorency compare Odette to the Duchesse de Guermantes, to the latter's disadvantage, saying that if the Duchesse had "stuck at it more, she'd have managed to create a salon." He comments, "If Mme de Guermantes did not have a 'salon,' what, then, was a 'salon'?"

                                   

Day Eighty-Nine: The Guermantes Way, pp. 275-290

From "We returned to the drawing room...." to "... off they set at a brisk trot." 

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The selection begins with one of Proust's occasional slips that suggest a lack of serious editing: One not-very-long sentence begins "Robert was unaware of almost all the infidelities of his mistress, ..." And the next sentence is: "He was unaware of almost all these infidelities." The repetition may possibly be intentional, a reinforcement of the point, but it's hardly necessary. I think it more likely just a moment of inattentiveness as he launches into a discussion of Saint-Loup's relationship with Rachel, one that more and more seems to resemble Swann's with Odette. 

Mme. de Marsantes bids the narrator "an anxious goodbye" -- although he isn't really planning to leave -- and then switches back to the more formal manner of "a grande dame who knew exactly how to conduct herself." But when Mme. de Villeparisis overhears him telling Saint-Loup's mother that he is in no hurry and is waiting for Charlus, she surprises him by being displeased at his being on "friendly terms" with the Baron, and urges him to go on without Charlus. So, "under the impression that she had some important business to discuss with her nephew," he takes his leave. 

As he's descending the staircase, he hears Charlus call out to him, "So this is what you call waiting for me, is it?" And so the two of them set out together on foot, Charlus saying that he wants to wait until he sees a cab to his liking. On the street, cab after cab passes without being hailed, some of them even stopping, but Charlus says he's waiting for one with the right kind of lamps. He talks to the narrator "with the same sporadic familiarity that had already struck me in Balbec, and which was in such contrast with the harshness of his tone." 

"I have often thought, monsieur, that there was in me, thanks not to my humble gifts but to circumstances that you may one day have occasion to learn, a wealth of experience, a kind of secret dossier of inestimable worth, which I have not felt it proper to use for my own purposes, but which would be of priceless benefit to a young man to whom I would hand over, in a matter of months, what it has taken me more than thirty years to acquire, and which I am perhaps alone in possessing."

The narrator has no idea what he's getting at, and is further puzzled when he breaks off this thread to ask him about Bloch and whether "my school friend was young, good-looking, and so forth." When the narrator says Bloch is French, Charlus says, "'I took him to be Jewish.' His assertion of such an incompatibility led me to believe that M. de Charlus was more anti-Dreyfusard than anyone I had met. And yet he went on to protest against the charge of treason leveled against Dreyfus." The narrator's confusion about Charlus's attitude continues when the Baron asserts that Dreyfus "would have committed a crime against his country if he had betrayed Judaea, but what has that got to do with France?" And nothing the narrator can say, such as observing that if there were a war against France, Jews would have to serve, too, can dislodge Charlus from his course of thought. Charlus even pursues a fantasy in which Bloch stages some "biblical entertainment" that involved Bloch as David and Bloch's father as Goliath, and an "excellent spectacle" in which Bloch attacks his mother: "to thrash that non-European bitch would be giving the old cow what she deserves." 

The narrator rightly characterizes these as "dreadful, almost deranged remarks," noting that as he makes them, "M. de Charlus squeezed my arm until it hurt," and reflects "that the connections, scantily investigated to date, I felt, between goodness and evil in the same heart, various as they might be, would be an interesting area of study." Then, coincidentally, he sees Bloch's father on the street, and offers to introduce him to the Baron, who takes umbrage at the very idea, citing "the youth of the person making the introduction, and the unworthiness of the person introduced."

But as it happened, M. Bloch was paying no attention to us. He was busy greeting Mme Sazerat effusively, to her great delight. This startled me, for previously, in Combray, she was so anti-Semitic that she had been indignant with my parents for allowing young Bloch into the house. But Dreyfusism, like a strong gust of wind, had blown M. Bloch right up against her a few days before this. My friend's father had found Mme Sazerat charming and was particularly gratified by the lady's anti-Semitism, which he saw as a proof of the sincerity of her faith and the authenticity of her Dreyfusard views. 

Clearly, the Dreyfus affair made strange bedfellows. 

Again, we have to wonder how the narrator knows all of this, including the conversation that Bloch père is said to have had with Nissim Bernard about his encounter with Mme. Sazerat, which elicits this wonderful portrait of M. Bernard: 

Saddened by the misfortune of the Jews, remembering his friendship with Christians, increasingly mannered and affected as time went on, for reasons to be revealed in due course, he now looked like a Pre-Raphaelite worm onto which hairs had been indecently grafted, like threads in the depths of an opal. 

Charlus continues with his baffling ramble, mentioning in the course of it the loss of his wife, "the loveliest, noblest, most perfect creature imaginable," and then bristling at the sight of M. d'Argencourt, who "tried to avoid us" but is thwarted by Charlus, who insists on talking to d'Argencourt about the narrator. "I noted that M. d'Argencourt, to whom I had barely been introduced at Mme. de Villeparisis's, and to whom M. de Charlus had now spoken at length about my family, was appreciably colder to me than he had been an hour ago, and subsequently, for a long time, he behaved with the same reserve whenever we met." Clearly, Charlus has an odd effect on people. 

As they walk on, the narrator introduces the topic of the Duchesse de Guermantes, but elicits from Charlus only the demand that he "give up society life. It pained me to see you at that ridiculous gathering." He asks this as part of a kind of Mephistophelian bargain, as a "sacrifice" in return for which he can bestow all manner of gifts on the narrator: "The 'Open Sesame' to the Guermantes mansion, and any others worthy of throwing open their doors to you, lies with me." 

Then the narrator asks about Mme. de Villeparisis and her family, and learns that she gained the name when she married a M. Thirion, who "thought that he could adopt some defunct aristocratic name with impunity," and chose Villeparisis because, "there have been no Villeparisis since 1702." 

The fact that Mme de Villeparisis as merely Mme Thirion completed her downfall in my estimation, which had begun when I saw the uneven gathering of people in her salon.... I continued to visit her occasionally, and from time to time she sent me tokens of remembrance. But in no way did it seem to me that she was part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and if I had needed any information about it, she was one of the last people I should have asked.

Charlus continues with some modified praise for Saint-Loup as a suitable friend for the narrator: "At least he's a proper man, not one of those effeminate creatures one comes across everywhere nowadays, who look just like rent boys capable of bringing their innocent victims to a sorry end at the drop of a hat.' (I did not know the meaning of this slang expression, 'rent boy.')" And with that, Charlus hires a cab driven by a drunken cabbie, gets into the cab beside him and drives the cab himself.  

Day Eighty-Seven: The Guermantes Way, pp. 248-261

From "'Well, speak of the devil! And here is...'" to "...identify her with the 'lady in pink.'" 

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Saint-Loup arrives, and after he speaks to her, the Duchesse de Guermantes turns her attention to the narrator. But it's clear that she does so only because Saint-Loup insists, and when he leaves to speak to his mother their conversation is stilted. 

The arrival of "the Prince de Faffenheim-Munsterberg-Weiningen" to see M. de Norpois causes a small stir. "'Oh, I know he's very sound,' said Mme de Marsantes, 'and that's so rare among foreigners. But I've taken the trouble to find out. He's anti-Semitism personified." The Prince's elaborate name causes the narrator to go off into a reverie on visiting a German spa when he was a child, but his romantic notions of Germany are at odds with the truth: 

I speedily learned that the revenues he drew from the forest and the river inhabited by gnomes and water sprites, from the magic mountain on which rose the ancient Burg that still held memories of Luther and Louis the German, were spent on running five Charron motorcars, on a house in Paris and another in London, a Monday-night box at the Opéra, and another for the Tuesday-night performances at the Théâtre-Français.

And the Prince himself undermines the narrator's expectations of national character; he "had expected to hear the rustlings of elves and the dance of the kobolds" in the Prince's speech, but "as he made his bow to Mme de Villeparisis, this short, red-faced, pot-bellied Rhinegrave said to her 'Gut-tay, Matame la Marquise,' in the accent of a concierge from Alsace." The Prince is chiefly there because he is courting M. de Norpois to get elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and wants the Marquise's social influence too. The narrator gives us a humorous account of the delicate diplomatic negotiations involved.  

The narrator's tête-à-tête with the Duchesse ends abruptly. 

She rose without bidding me goodbye. She had just caught sight of Mme Swann, who seemed somewhat embarrassed by my presence. Doubtless she remembered that she had been the first to assure me that she was convinced of Dreyfus's innocence.

"I don't want my mother to introduce me to Mme Swann," Saint-Loup said to me. "She's an ex-prostitute. Her husband's a Jew, and she comes here to parade as a Nationalist."

The narrator's interest in seeing Odette is heightened because he has recently had a visit from Charles Morel, the son of his late uncle Adolphe's valet. Morel, "a handsome young man of eighteen," came at his father's request to bring some items possessed by the narrator's uncle which he had thought "inappropriate to send to my parents, and had set them aside as something that might interest a young man of my age" -- photographs of actresses and courtesans he had known, "the last images of the rakish proclivities he kept hermetically sealed from his family life." 

Morel proves to be an ambitious young man, "dressed expensively rather than with taste," who treats the narrator as an equal and flirts with Jupien's niece, finally ordering from her a velvet waistcoat "that was so bright-red and so loud that, for all his bad taste, he was never able to bring himself to wear."

But the thing that strikes the narrator most about the visit is the photograph he find among his uncle's collection: the sketch by Elstir of "Miss Sacripant," whom the narrator had recognized as Odette. And Morel reveals that his father had singled out this picture as one the narrator would be particularly interested in: "She's the very demimondaine who was lunching with him on that last occasion you saw him. My father was not at all sure about letting you in. It seems that you made a great impression on that loose lady, and she hoped to see you again." 

Odette was the "lady in pink" whose presence brought about Uncle Adolphe's estrangement from the narrator's parents.

Day Eighty-Six: The Guermantes Way, pp. 237-248

From "'You're not going to Mme Sagan's ball...'" to "...and Robert himself entered the room." 

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Bloch's bumptiousness continues, but it doesn't seem to bother de Norpois, "who told us afterward, somewhat naïvely, remembering perhaps the few surviving traces in Bloch's speech of the neo-Homeric manner he had largely outgrown: 'He is rather amusing, with that slightly outmoded, solemn manner of speaking he has.'" But the argument about the Dreyfus case persists until the Duc de Châtelleraut, "who could feel that everyone was turning against Bloch, and who, like many society people, was a coward," makes a remark about the fact that Bloch is Jewish. Bloch replies, "'But how did you know? Who told you?,' as though he had been the son of a convict. Yet, given his last name, which was not exactly Christian in flavor, and his face, there was something rather naïve in his startled words." 

Mme. de Villeparisis, in the meantime, had come to the conclusion "that he could be a compromising person for M. de Norpois to know.... So she decided to make it clear to Bloch that he need not come to the house again." She does so by feigning a kind of drowsiness when Bloch comes to take his leave, and by not extending her hand. Bloch persists, in an effort not to lose face, and 

thrust out the hand she had refused to shake. Mme de Villeparisis was shocked. But ... she merely let her eyelids droop over her half-closed eyes.

"I think she's asleep," said Bloch to the archivist.... "Goodbye madame," Bloch shouted. 

The Marquise moved her lips slightly, like a dying woman who wants to open her mouth but whose eyes show no sign of recognition. Then she turned, brimming with renewed vitality, to the Marquis d'Argencourt, while Bloch left the room convinced that she must be soft in the head.

Nevertheless, the narrator tells us, she received Bloch a few days later because she still wanted him to stage the play for her. Meanwhile, her dismissal of Bloch has become society gossip, "but in a version that had already ceased to bear any relation to the truth.

After Bloch's departure, Saint-Loup's mother, Mme. de Marsantes, arrives. She is also, as the narrator tells us, the Duc de Guermantes's sister. "She was especially friendly to me because I was Robert's friend, and also because I did not move in the same world as Robert." 

Then Mme. de Villeparisis informs the Duchesse de Guermantes that she's expecting the arrival of "someone whom you've no desire to know": Odette Swann. Odette, the narrator comments, has become an ardent anti-Dreyfusard, because she was afraid that Swann's Jewish "origins might  turn to her disadvantage." She was also "following the example of Mme Verdurin, in whom a latent bourgeois anti-Semitism had awakened and grown to a positive frenzy." The Duchesse thanks Mme. de Villeparisis for the warning and assures her that since she knows Odette by sight, she'll "be able to leave at the right moment." Mme. de Marsantes, however, tells the Duchesse that Odette is "very nice. She's an excellent woman." 

Mme. de Villeparisis changes the subject to Lady Israels, and Mme. de Marsantes reveals that she has broken off relations with her. 

"It seems she's one of the very worst of them and makes no secret of the fact. Besides, we've all been too trusting, too hospitable. I shall never go near anyone of that race again. While we closed our doors to old country cousins, our own flesh and blood, we opened them to Jews. Now we can see what thanks we get for it."

Then she stops, noting that her son, "young fool that he is," has very different feelings on the matter. And shortly after that, Saint-Loup himself arrives.