The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust Read online

  He voiced an idea, and Jean Galeas, who knew that Baldassare was cured, disagreed violently and poked fun at him. His sister-in-law, who had been visiting him every morning and every evening for two months, had not shown up in two days. This was too much! He had long since grown unused to the burden of life and he did not want to shoulder it again. For life had not recaptured him with its charms. His strength was restored and, with it, all his desires to live; he went out, began living again, and died a second time for himself. At the end of a month the symptoms of general paralysis recurred. Little by little, as in the past, walking became difficult, impossible, gradually enough for him to adjust to his return to death and to have time to look the other way. His relapse did not even have the quality of the first attack, at the end of which he had started to withdraw from life, not in order to see it in its reality but to view it like a painting. Now, on the contrary, he grew more and more egotistical, irascible, desperately missing the pleasures he could no longer enjoy.

  His sister-in-law, whom he loved tenderly, was the only person to sweeten his approaching end, for she came by several times a day with Alexis.

  One afternoon, when she was en route to see the viscount, and her carriage had almost arrived, the horses bolted; she was violently flung to the ground, then trampled by a horseman who was galloping past; unconscious, with a fractured skull, she was carried into Baldassare’s home.

  The coachman, who was unscathed, promptly announced the accident to the viscount, who turned livid. He clenched his teeth, his blazing eyes bulged out of their sockets, and in a dreadful fit of anger he railed and ranted against the coachman, on and on; but apparently his violent outburst was meant to smother a painful cry for help, which could be softly heard during the pauses. It was as if an invalid were moaning next to the furious viscount. Soon, these moans, initially faint, drowned out his shrieks of rage, and the sobbing man collapsed into a chair.

  Next he wanted to wash his face so that his sister-in-law would not be upset by the traces of his grief. The domestic sadly shook his head; the injured woman had not regained consciousness. The viscount spent two desperate days and nights at his sister-in-law’s bedside. She might die at any moment. The second night, the doctor attempted a hazardous operation. By the third morning her fever had abated, and the patient smiled at Baldassare, who, unable to restrain his tears, wept and wept for joy. When death had inched toward him bit by bit, he had refused to face it; now he suddenly found himself in its presence. Death had terrified him by threatening his most prized possession; the viscount had pleaded with death, had moved it to mercy.

  He felt strong and free, proud to see that his own life was not as precious to him as his sister-in-law’s, and that he felt as much scorn for his own life as pity for hers. He now looked death in the face and no longer beheld the scenes that would surround his death. He wanted to remain like that until the end, no longer prey to his lies, which, by trying to bring him a beautiful and wonderful agony, would have added the last straw to his profanations by soiling the mysteries of his death just as it had concealed from him the mysteries of his life.

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

  To the last syllable of recorded time;

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

  And then is heard no more; it is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.

  —SHAKESPEARE: MACBETH

  Baldassare’s emotions and fatigue during his sister-in-law’s illness had stepped up the advance of his own disease. He had just been told by his confessor that he had only one month left; it was ten A.M., the rain was coming down in torrents. A carriage halted in front of the castle. It was Duchess Oliviane. Earlier, when harmoniously adorning the scenes of his death, he had told himself:

  “It will be on a clear evening. The sun will be down, and the sea, glimpsed through the apple trees, will be mauve. As airy as pale and faded wreaths and as persistent as regrets, blue and rosy cloudlets will drift along the horizon. . . .”

  It was at ten A.M., in a downpour, under a foul and low-lying sky, that Duchess Oliviane arrived; exhausted by his illness, fully absorbed in higher interests, and no longer feeling the grace of things that he had once prized as the charm, the value, and the refined glory of life, Baldassare had his servant tell the duchess that he was too weak. She insisted, but he would not receive her. He was not even acting out of necessity: she meant nothing to him anymore. Death had rapidly broken the bonds whose enslavement he had been dreading for several weeks. When he tried to think of Oliviane, nothing presented itself to his mind’s eye: the eyes of his imagination and of his vanity had closed.

  Yet roughly a week before his death, his furious jealousy was aroused by the announcement that the Duchess of Bohemia was giving a ball, at which Pia was to lead the cotillion with Castruccio, who was leaving for Denmark the next day. The viscount demanded to see Pia; his sister-in-law was reluctant to summon her; he believed that they were preventing him from seeing her, that they were persecuting him; he lost his temper, so, to avoid tormenting him, they sent for her immediately.

  By the time she arrived, he was perfectly calm, but profoundly sad. He drew her close to his bed and instantly spoke about the ball being hosted by the Duchess of Bohemia. He said:

  “We’re not related, so you won’t wear mourning for me, but I have to ask you one favor: Do not go to the ball, promise me you won’t.”

  They locked gazes, showing their souls on the edge of their pupils, their melancholy and passionate souls, which death was unable to unite.

  He understood her hesitation; his lips twisting in pain, he gently murmured:

  “Oh, don’t promise me, after all! Don’t break a promise made to a dying man. If you’re not certain of yourself, don’t promise me anything.”

  “I can’t promise you that; I haven’t seen him in two months and I may never see him again; if I miss the ball, I’ll be inconsolable for all eternity.”

  “You’re right, since you love him, and since death may come. . . . And since you’re still alive with all your strength. . . . But you can do a small something for me; to throw people off the scent, you’d be obliged to spend a bit of time with me at the ball; subtract that time from your evening. Invite my soul to remember a few moments with you, think of me a little.”

  “I can scarcely promise you even that much, the ball will be so brief. Even if I don’t leave, I’ll barely have time to see him. But I’ll give you a moment every day after that.”

  “You won’t manage, you’ll forget me; but if after a year, alas, more perhaps, a sad text, a death, or a rainy evening reminds you of me, you can offer me some altruism! I will never, never be able see you again . . . except in my soul, and this would require that we think about each other simultaneously. I’ll think about you forever so that my soul remains open to you endlessly in case you feel like entering it. But the visitor will keep me waiting for a long time! The November rains will have rotted the flowers on my grave, June will have burned them, and my soul will always be weeping impatiently. Ah! I hope that someday the sight of a keepsake, the recurrence of a birthday, the bent of your thoughts will guide your memory within the circle of my tenderness. It will then be as if I’ve heard you, perceived you, a magic spell will cover everything with flowers for your arrival. Think about the dead man. But, alas! Can I hope that death and your gravity will accomplish what life with its ardors, and our tears, and our merry times, and our lips were unable to achieve?”

  Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince;

  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

  —SHAKESPEARE: HAMLET

  Meanwhile a violent fever accompanied by delirium never left the viscount;
his bed had been moved to the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday, seen him still so joyful: here the sick man could watch the sea, the pier, and, on the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he began to speak; but his words showed no traces of the thoughts from on high which, during the past few weeks, had purified him with their visits. Savagely cursing an invisible person who was teasing him, he kept repeating that he was the premier musician of the century and the most illustrious aristocrat in the universe. Then, suddenly calm, he told his coachmen to drive him to some low den, to have the horses saddled for the hunt. He asked for stationery in order to invite all the European sovereigns to a dinner celebrating his marriage to the sister of the Duke of Parma; horrified at being unable to pay a gambling debt, he picked up the paper knife next to his bed and aimed it like a gun. He dispatched messengers to find out whether the policeman he had thrashed last night was dead, and he laughingly muttered obscenities to someone whose hand he thought he was holding. Those exterminating angels known as Will and Thought were no longer present to drive the evil spirits of his senses and the vile emanations of his memory back into the darkness.

  Three days later, around five o’clock, he woke up as if from a bad dream for which the dreamer is responsible yet which he barely remembers. He asked whether any friends or relatives had been here during the hours when he had presented an image of only his lowliest, most archaic, and most extinct part; and he told his servants that if he became delirious, they should have his visitors leave instantly and they should not readmit them until he regained consciousness.

  He raised his eyes, surveyed the room, and smiled at his black cat, who, perched on a Chinese vase, was playing with a chrysanthemum and inhaling its fragrance with a mime-like gesture. He sent everyone away and conversed at length with the priest who was keeping watch over him. Yet he refused to take communion and asked the physician to say that the patient’s stomach was in no condition to tolerate a host. An hour later he had the servant bring in his sister-in-law and Jean Galeas. He said:

  “I’m resigned, I’m happy to die and to come before God.”

  The air was so mild that they opened the windows facing the ocean but not seeing it, and because the wind blowing from the opposite direction was too brisk, they did not open the windows giving upon the pastures and the woods.

  Baldassare had them drag his bed near the open windows. A boat was just nosing out to sea, guided by sailors towing the lines on the pier. A handsome cabin boy of about fifteen was leaning over the bow; each billow seemed about to knock him into the water, but he stood firm on his solid legs. With a burning pipe between his wind-salted lips, he spread his net to haul in fish. And the same wind that bellied the sail blew into the rotunda, cooling Baldassare’s cheeks and making a piece of paper flutter through the room. He turned his head to avoid seeing the happy tableau of pleasures that he had passionately loved and that he would never enjoy again. He eyed the harbor: a three-master was setting sail.

  “It’s the ship that’s bound for the Indies,” said Jean Galeas.

  Baldassare was unable to distinguish the people waving their handkerchiefs on the pier, but he sensed their thirst for the unknown, a thirst that was parching their eyes; those people still had a great deal to experience, to get to know, to feel. The anchor was weighed, shouts arose, the ship cut across the dark sea, toward the west, where, in a golden mist, the light blended the skiffs with the clouds, murmuring hazy and irresistible promises to the voyagers.

  Baldassare had the servants shut the windows on this side of the rotunda and open the ones facing the pastures and the woods. He gazed at the fields, but he could still hear the farewells shouted from the three-master and he could see the cabin boy holding his pipe between his teeth and spreading his nets.

  Baldassare’s hand stirred feverishly. All at once he heard a faint, silvery tinkle as deep and indistinct as the beating of a heart. It was the bells pealing in an extremely distant village, a sound that, thanks to the limpid evening air and the favorable breeze, had traveled across many miles of plains and rivers to be picked up by his infallible ear. It was both a current and ancient voice; now he heard his heart beating to the harmonious flight of the bells, the sound pausing the moment they seemed to inhale it, then exhaling with them in a long and feeble breath. Throughout his life, upon hearing faraway bells, he had spontaneously remembered their sweetness in the evening air when, as a little boy, he had crossed the fields on his way home to the castle.

  At that instant the physician beckoned everyone over, saying: “It’s the end!”

  Baldassare was resting, his eyes closed, and his heart was listening to the bells, which his ear, paralyzed by imminent death, could not catch. He saw his mother kissing him upon his return, then putting him to bed at night, rubbing his feet to warm them, remaining with him if he could not fall asleep; he recalled his Robinson Crusoe and the evenings in the garden when his sister would sing; he recalled the words of his tutor, who predicted that someday he would be a great musician, and he recalled his mother’s thrilled reaction, which she tried but failed to conceal. Now there was no time left to realize the passionate expectations of his mother and his sister, whom he had so cruelly disappointed. He saw the large linden tree under which he had gotten engaged and he saw the day on which his engagement had been broken, and only his mother had managed to console him. He believed he was kissing his old nanny and holding his first violin. He saw all these things in a luminous remoteness as sweet and sad as the one that the windows facing the fields were watching but not seeing.

  He saw all these things, and yet not even two seconds had passed since the physician had listened to his heart and said:

  “It’s the end!”

  The physician stood up, saying:

  “It’s over!”

  Alexis, his mother, and Jean Galeas knelt down together with the Duke of Parma, who had just arrived. The servants were weeping in the open doorway.

  VIOLANTE OR HIGH SOCIETY

  Have few dealings with young men and persons of the upper classes. . . . Do not desire to appear before the powerful.

  —THOMAS À KEMPIS: IMITATION OF CHRIST, BOOK I, CHAPTER 8

  Violante’s Meditative Childhood

  The Viscountess of Styria was generous and affectionate and thoroughly imbued with an enchanting grace. Her husband the viscount had an extremely nimble mind, and his facial features were of an admirable regularity. But any grenadier was more sensitive than he and less vulgar. Far from society, they reared their daughter Violante at their rustic estate in Styria, and she, as lively and attractive as her father and as benevolent and mysteriously seductive as her mother, seemed to unite her parents’ qualities in a perfectly harmonious proportion. However, the fickle strivings of her heart and her mind did not encounter a will in her that, without limiting them, could guide them and keep her from becoming their charming and fragile plaything. For her mother this lack of willpower inspired anxieties that might eventually have borne fruit if the viscountess and her husband had not been violently killed in a hunting accident, leaving Violante an orphan at fifteen. Residing nearly alone, under the watchful but awkward supervision of old Augustin, her tutor and the steward of the Styrian castle, Violante, for lack of friends, dreamed up enchanting companions, promising to be faithful to them for the rest of her life. She took them strolling along the paths in the park and through the countryside, and she leaned with them on the balustrade of the terrace that, marking the boundary of the Styrian estate, faced the sea. Raised by her dream friends virtually above herself and initiated by them, Violante was sensitive to the visible world and had a slight inkling of the invisible world. Her joy was infinite, though broken by periods of sadness that were sweeter than her joy.

  Sensuality

  Do not lean on a wind-shaken reed and do not place your faith upon it, for all flesh is like grass, and its glory fades like the flower of the fields.

  —THOMAS À KEMPIS: IMITATION OF C
HRIST

  Aside from Augustin and a few local children, Violante saw no one. Her sole guest from time to time was her mother’s younger sister, who lived in Julianges, a castle located several miles away. One day, when the aunt came to see her niece, she was accompanied by a friend. His name was Honoré, and he was sixteen years old. Violante did not care for him, but he visited her again. Roaming along a path in the park, he taught her highly inappropriate things, whose existence she had never suspected. She experienced a very sweet pleasure, of which she was instantly ashamed. Then, since the sun was down, and they had walked and walked, they sat down on a bench, no doubt to gaze at the reflections with which the rosy sky was mellowing the sea. Honoré drew closer to Violante so she would not feel cold; he fastened her fur coat around her throat, ingeniously drawing out his action, and he offered to help her try to practice the theories he had just been teaching her in the park. He wanted to whisper, his lips approached her ear, which she did not withdraw; but then they heard a rustling in the foliage.

  “It’s nothing,” Honoré murmured tenderly.

  “It’s my aunt,” said Violante.

  It was the wind. But Violante, cooled just in time by the wind and now standing, refused to sit down again; she said goodbye to Honoré despite his pleading. She felt remorse, suffered a hysterical fit, and had a very hard time falling asleep during the next two nights. Her memory was a burning pillow which she kept turning and turning. Two days later Honoré asked to see her. She had her butler reply that she had gone for a walk. Honoré did not believe a word of it and did not dare come back.