Time Regained & a Guide to Proust Page 13

  “It is a strange thing,” M. de Charlus went on, in the shrill little voice with which he sometimes spoke, “I hear people who appear to be perfectly happy all day long and enjoy their cocktails, declare that they will never last until the end of the war, that their hearts won’t stand it, that they can think of nothing else, that they will quite suddenly die. And what is really extraordinary is that this does in fact happen! How curious it is! Is it a question of nourishment, because the food they eat is all so badly prepared now, or is it because, to prove their zeal, they harness themselves to tasks which are useless but destroy the mode of life which kept them alive? Anyhow, I have noted an astonishing number of these strange premature deaths, premature at least from the point of view of the deceased. I forget what I was saying to you just now, about Norpois and his admiration for the war. But what a singular manner he has of writing about it! First, have you noticed the pullulation in his articles of new expressions which, when they have eventually worn themselves out by dint of being employed day after day—for really Norpois is indefatigable, I think the death of my aunt Villeparisis must have given him a second youth—are immediately replaced by yet other commonplaces? In the old days I remember you used to amuse yourself by recording the fashionable phrases which appeared and had their vogue and then disappeared: ‘he who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind’; ‘the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on’; ‘give me a good policy and I will give you good finances, as Baron Louis said’; ‘these are symptoms which it would be exaggerated to take tragically but wise to take seriously’; ‘to work for the King of Prussia’ (this last, inevitably, has come to life again). Well, since then, alas, how many of the species have I seen born and die! We have had ‘the scrap of paper,’ ‘the Empires of Prey,’ ‘the famous Kultur which consists in massacring defenceless women and children,’ ‘victory belongs, as the Japanese say, to the side which can hold out for a quarter of an hour longer than the other,’ ‘the Germano-Turanians,’ ‘scientific barbarism,’ ‘if we want to win the war, as Mr Lloyd George has forcibly said’ (but that’s out of date now), and ‘the fighting spirit of our troops’ or ‘the pluck of our troops.’ Even the syntax of the excellent Norpois has undergone in consequence of the war as profound a change as the baking of bread or the speed of transport. Have you observed that the excellent man, wanting to proclaim his own desires as a truth on the verge of being realised, does not dare nevertheless to employ the future pure and simple, since this would run the risk of being contradicted by events, but has adopted as a sign of future tense the verb ‘to know’?”

  I confessed to M. de Charlus that I did not quite understand what he meant.

  (I ought to mention here that the Duc de Guermantes by no means shared his brother’s pessimism. Furthermore, he was as anglophile as M. de Charlus was anglophobe. And he regarded M. Caillaux as a traitor who deserved a thousand times over to be shot. When his brother asked him for proofs of the man’s treason, M. de Guermantes replied that, if we were only to convict people who signed a statement saying “I am a traitor,” the crime of treason would never be punished. But in case I should not have occasion to return to the subject, I will mention also that a few years later, when Caillaux was on trial, the Duc de Guermantes, animated as he was by the purest anti-Caillautism, met an English military attaché and his wife, an exceptionally cultivated couple with whom he made friends, as he had done at the time of the Dreyfus case with the three charming ladies; that on the first day of the acquaintance he was astounded, talking of Caillaux, whom he regarded as obviously guilty and certain to be convicted, to hear the cultivated and charming couple say: “But he will probably be acquitted, there is absolutely no evidence against him.” M. de Guermantes tried to argue that M. de Norpois, in the witness box, had fixed the unhappy Caillaux with his gaze and said to him: “You are the Giolitti of France, yes, Monsieur Caillaux, you are the Giolitti of France.” But the cultivated and charming couple had smiled, made fun of M. de Norpois, cited proofs of his senility and concluded that, though Le Figaro might have said that he had addressed these words to “the unhappy M. Caillaux,” he had probably in fact addressed them to a highly amused M. Caillaux. The Duc de Guermantes lost no time in changing his opinions. That this change could be brought about by the influence of an Englishwoman is not so extraordinary as one might have supposed had it been foretold even as late as 1919, when the English still spoke of the Germans only as “the Huns” and demanded savage penalties for the guilty. For their opinions too had changed and now—less than a year later—they approved every decision which was likely to distress France and be of help to Germany.)

  To return to M. de Charlus: “Yes,” he said, in reply to my confession that I did not quite understand. “I mean exactly what I say: ‘to know,’ in the articles of Norpois, indicates the future, it indicates, that is to say, the desires of Norpois, and indeed the desires of us all,” he added, perhaps without complete sincerity. “I am sure you will agree with me. If ‘to know’ had not become simply a sign of the future tense, one might just find it intelligible for the subject of this verb to be a country. For instance, every time Norpois says: ‘America would not know how to remain indifferent to these repeated violations of international law,’ ‘the Dual Monarchy would not know how to fail to come to its senses,’ it is clear that such phrases express the desires of Norpois (they are also mine, and yours)—but here nevertheless the verb can still just retain its original meaning, for a country can ‘know,’ America can ‘know,’ the Dual Monarchy itself can ‘know’ (in spite of its eternal ‘lack of psychology’). But when Norpois writes: ‘These systematic devastations would not know how to persuade the neutrals,’ ‘the region of the Lakes would not know how to fail to fall speedily into the hands of the Allies,’ ‘the results of these neutralist elections would not know how to reflect the opinion of the vast majority of the country,’ there is no longer any possibility of doubt. For it is certain that these devastations, these regions, these electoral results are inanimate things which cannot ‘know.’ And in using this formula Norpois is simply addressing to the neutrals an injunction (which, I regret to say, they do not appear to be obeying) to abandon their neutrality, or to the region of the Lakes an injunction no longer to belong to the ‘Boches’” (M. de Charlus gave the impression of having to pluck up courage to pronounce the word “Boche,” very much as in the past, in the “tram” at Balbec, he had when he had talked about men whose taste is not for women).

  “And then, have you noticed the wily fashion in which, ever since 1914, Norpois has begun his articles to the neutrals? He starts by declaring that of course it is not for France to interfere in the politics of Italy (or of Romania or Bulgaria or whatever country it may be). These powers alone must decide, in full independence and with only their own national interests in view, whether or no it is their duty to abandon neutrality. But if these opening statements of the article (what would once have been called the exordium) are disinterested, the sequel is generally much less so. ‘Nevertheless’—this is the gist of what Norpois goes on to say—‘it is quite clear that only those nations will derive a material benefit from the struggle which have ranged themselves on the side of Law and Justice. It cannot be expected that the Allies should reward, by bestowing upon them the territories which for centuries have resounded with the groans of their oppressed brethen, those peoples who, taking the line of least resistance, have not drawn their sword in the service of the Allies.’ Once he has taken this first step towards a counsel of intervention, there is no holding Norpois, it is not only the principles but the moment of intervention as to which, with less and less attempt at disguise, he delivers advice. ‘Certainly,’ he says, sailing, as he himself would say, under false colours, ‘it is for Italy, for Romania alone to decide when the hour has come to strike and what form their intervention shall take. They cannot, however, be unaware that, if they protract their tergiversations, they run the risk of losing their opportunity. Already the hoofs of the Russian cavalry a
re sending a shiver of unspeakable panic through the trapped millions of Germany. It must be evident that the peoples who have done nothing more than fly to the help of that victory of which already we see the resplendent dawn, will have no right or title to the reward that they may still, if they hasten, etc.’ It is like the notices you see at the theatre: ‘Book now. The last remaining seats will soon be sold.’ And what makes this reasoning all the stupider is that Norpois has to revise it every six months, saying to Romania at regular intervals: ‘The hour has come for Romania to determine whether or no she wishes to realise her national aspirations. Any further delay and it may be too late.’ But though he has been saying this for three years, not only has the ‘too late’ not yet come, the offers that are made to Romania are constantly being improved. In the same way he invites France, etc., to intervene in Greece by virtue of her status as a protective power because the treaty that bound Greece to Serbia has not been observed. But, candidly, if France were not at war and did not desire the assistance or the benevolent neutrality of Greece, would she take it into her head to intervene as a protective power? Those moral sentiments which make France raise her voice in horror because Greece has not kept her engagements towards Serbia, are they not silent the moment it is a question of the equally flagrant violation of treaties by Romania or Italy, which countries—rightly I think, and the same is true of Greece—have failed to carry out their obligations (though these are less imperative and less far-reaching than they are said to be) as allies of Germany? The truth is that people see everything through the medium of their newspaper, and what else could they do, seeing that they are not personally acquainted with the men or the events under discussion? At the time of the Affair in which you took so passionate and so bizarre an interest, in that epoch from which it is now the convention to say that we are separated by centuries—for the philosophers of the war have spread the doctrine that all links with the past are broken—I was shocked to see men and women of my family express high esteem for anti-clericals with a Communard past whom their newspaper represented to them as anti-Dreyfusards, and at the same time severe disapproval of a Catholic general of good family who was in favour of a retrial. I am no less shocked now to see all Frenchmen execrate that same Emperor Franz Josef whom once they venerated—and rightly, I may say, I who have known him well and whom he is gracious enough to treat as his cousin. Ah! I haven’t written to him since the war,” he added, as if he were boldly confessing a fault for which he knew quite well he could not be blamed. “No, the first year I did write, but once only. But what would you have me do? My respect for him is unaltered, but I have many young relatives here fighting in our lines who would, I know, be most displeased were I to carry on a regular correspondence with the head of a nation that is at war with us. How could I? Criticise me who will,” he continued, and again he seemed bravely to invite my reproaches, “but in these times I have not wanted a letter signed Charlus to arrive in Vienna. There is only one point in the conduct of the old monarch that I would wish to criticise at all severely, and that is that a nobleman of his rank, head of one of the most ancient and illustrious houses of Europe, should have allowed himself to be led astray by a petty landowner—a very intelligent man, of course, but still a complete upstart—like William of Hohenzollern. It is one of the more shocking anomalies of this war.”

  And as, the moment he returned to considerations of genealogy and precedence, which for him fundamentally dominated all others, M. de Charlus became capable of extraordinary childishness, he said to me, in the tone that he might have used in speaking of the Marne or Verdun, that there were important and extremely curious things which ought not to be omitted by anyone who came to write the history of this war. “For instance,” he said, “everybody is so ignorant that no one has bothered to point out this very striking fact: the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, who is a pure Boche, continues none the less to live in Rome where, as Grand Master of our order, he enjoys the privilege of extraterritoriality. Most interesting,” he added significantly, as if to say: “You see that you have not wasted your evening by meeting me.” I thanked him, and he assumed the modest air of one who asks no reward for services rendered.

  M. de Charlus still retained all his respect and all his affection for certain great ladies who were accused of defeatism, just as he had in the past for others who had been accused of Dreyfusism. He regretted only that by stooping to meddle in politics they had given a handle to the “polemics of the journalists.” In his own attitude to them nothing had changed. So systematic was his frivolity that for him birth, combined with beauty and with other sources of prestige, was the durable thing and the war, like the Dreyfus case, merely a vulgar and fugitive fashion. Had the Duchesse de Guermantes been shot for trying to make a separate peace with Austria, he would still have considered her no less noble than before, no more dishonoured by this mischance than is Marie-Antoinette in our eyes from having been condemned to the guillotine. He was speaking seriously now and for a brief instant, with the noble air of a Saint-Vallier or a Saint-Mégrin, erect and stiff and solemn, he was free of all those mannerisms by which men of his sort betray themselves. And yet, why is it that not one of these men can ever have a voice which hits absolutely the right note? Even at this moment, when M. de Charlus’s voice was so very near to solemnity, its pitch was still false, it still needed the tuning-fork to correct it. “Now, what was I saying to you?” he went on. “Ah! yes, that people hate Franz Josef now, because they take their cue from their newspaper. As for King Constantine of Greece and the Tsar of Bulgaria, the public has oscillated more than once between aversion and sympathy, according as it has been said turn and turn about that they would join the side of the Entente or of what Brichot calls the Central Empires. Brichot, by the way, is telling us at every moment that ‘the hour of Venizelos will strike.’ Now I do not doubt that M. Venizelos is a statesman of great capabilities, but who says that the Greeks are so particularly eager to have him? We are told that he wanted Greece to keep her engagements towards Serbia. Even so, it would be as well to know what these engagements were and whether they were more far-reaching than those which Italy and Romania did not scruple to violate. We display for the manner in which Greece implements her treaties and respects her constitution an anxiety which we certainly would not display were it not in our interest to do so. Had there been no war, do you think the ‘guarantor’ powers would even have noticed the dissolution of the Chambers? What I see is simply that one by one the supports of the King of Greece are being withdrawn from him, so that when the day arrives when he no longer has an army to defend him he can be thrown out of the country or put into prison. I was saying just now that the public judges the King of Greece and the King of the Bulgars only as it is told to judge them by the newspapers. But here again, what opinion of these monarchs could people have except that of their newspapers, seeing that they are not acquainted with them? I personally have seen a great deal of them both, I knew Constantine of Greece very well indeed when he was Diadoch, he is a really splendid man. I have always thought that the Emperor Nicholas had a great affection for him. Of course I mean to imply nothing dishonourable. Princess Christian used to talk openly about it, but she is a terrible scandalmonger. As for the Tsar of the Bulgars, he is an out-and-out nancy and a monstrous liar, but very intelligent, a remarkable man. He likes me very much.”

  M. de Charlus, who could be so delightful, became horrid when he touched on these subjects. He brought to them that same sort of complacency which we find so exasperating in the invalid who keeps drawing attention to his good health. I have often thought that in the “twister” of Balbec, the faithful who so longed to hear the admission which he avoided making, would in fact have been unable to endure any real display of his mania; ill at ease, breathing with difficulty as one does in a sick-room or in the presence of a morphine addict who takes out his syringe in public, they would themselves have put a stop to the confidences which they imagined they desired. It was, indeed, ex
asperating to hear the whole world accused, and often without any semblance of proof, by someone who omitted himself from the special category to which one knew perfectly well that he belonged and in which he so readily included others. In spite of all his intelligence, he had in this context fabricated for himself a narrow little philosophy (at the bottom of which there was perhaps just a spark of that interest in the curiousness of life which Swann had felt) which explained everything by reference to these special causes and in which, as always happens when a man stoops to the level of his own vice, he was not only unworthy of himself but exceptionally satisfied with himself. Thus it was that this dignified and noble man put on the most imbecile smile to complete the following little speech: “As there are strong presumptions of the same kind as for Ferdinand of Coburg in the case of the Emperor William, this may well be the reason why Tsar Ferdinand has joined the side of the ‘Empires of Prey.’ After all, it is very understandable, one is indulgent to a sister, one refuses her nothing. To my mind that would be a very pretty explanation of Bulgaria’s alliance with Germany.” And at this stupid explanation M. de Charlus pealed with laughter as though he really found it most ingenious—an explanation which, even had it been based upon true facts, was in the same puerile category as the observations which M. de Charlus made about the war when he judged it from the point of view of a feudal lord or a Knight of St John of Jerusalem. He ended with a more sensible remark: “What is astonishing,” he said, “is that this public which judges the men and events of the war solely from the newspapers, is persuaded that it forms its own opinions.”