If this sort of select popularity to which Albertine had attained did
not seem likely to lead to any practical result, it had stamped
Andrée's friend with the distinctive marks of people who, being always
sought after, have never any need to offer themselves, marks (to be
found also, and for analogous reasons, at the other end of the social
scale among the leaders of fashion) which consist in their not making
any display of the successes they have scored, but rather keeping them
to themselves. She would never say to anyone: "So–and–so is anxious to
meet me," would speak of everyone with the greatest good nature, and
as if it had been she who ran after, who sought to know other people,
and not they. If you spoke of a young man who, a few minutes earlier,
had been, in private conversation with her, heaping the bitterest
reproaches upon her because she had refused him an assignation, so far
from proclaiming this in public, or betraying any resentment she would
stand up for him: "He is such a nice boy!" Indeed it quite annoyed her
when she attracted people, because that compelled her to disappoint
them, whereas her natural instinct was always to give pleasure. So
much did she enjoy giving pleasure that she had come to employ a
particular kind of falsehood, found among utilitarians and men who
have 'arrived.' Existing besides in an embryonic state in a vast
number of people, this form of insincerity consists in not being able
to confine the pleasure arising out of a single act of politeness to a
single person. For instance, if Albertine's aunt wished her niece to
accompany her to a party which was not very lively, Albertine might
have found it sufficient to extract from the incident the moral profit
of having given pleasure to her aunt. But being courteously welcomed
by her host and hostess, she thought it better to say to them that she
had been wanting to see them for so long that she had finally seized
this opportunity and begged her aunt to take her to their party. Even
this was not enough: at the same party there happened to be one of
Albertine's friends who was in great distress. "I did not like the
idea of your being here by yourself. I thought it might do you good to
have me with you. If you would rather come away from here, go
somewhere else, I am ready to do anything you like; all I want is to
see you look not so sad."—Which, as it happened, was true also.
Sometimes it happened however that the fictitious object destroyed the
real. Thus, Albertine, having a favour to ask on behalf of one of her
friends, went on purpose to see a certain lady who could help her. But
on arriving at the house of this lady—a kind and sympathetic
soul—the girl, unconsciously following the principle of utilising a
single action in a number of ways, felt it to be more ingratiating to
appear to have come there solely on account of the pleasure she knew
she would derive from seeing the lady again. The lady was deeply
touched that Albertine should have taken a long journey purely out of
friendship for herself. Seeing her almost overcome by emotion,
Albertine began to like the lady still better. Only, there was this
awkward consequence: she now felt so keenly the pleasure of friendship
which she pretended to have been her motive in coming, that she was
afraid of making the lady suspect the genuineness of sentiments which
were actually quite sincere if she now asked her to do the favour,
whatever it may have been, for her friend. The lady would think that
Albertine had come for that purpose, which was true, but would
conclude also that Albertine had no disinterested pleasure in seeing
her, which was not. With the result that she came away without having
asked the favour, like a man sometimes who has been so good to a
woman, in the hope of winning her, that he refrains from declaring his
passion in order to preserve for his goodness an air of nobility. In
other instances it would be wrong to say that the true object was
sacrificed to the subordinate and subsequently conceived idea, but the
two were so far incompatible that if the person to whom Albertine
endeared herself by stating the second had known of the existence of
the first, his pleasure would at once have been turned into the
deepest annoyance. At a much later point in this story, we shall have
occasion to see this kind of incompatibility expressed in clearer
terms. Let us say for the present, borrowing an example of a
completely different order, that they occur very frequently in the
most divergent situations that life has to offer. A husband has
established his mistress in the town where he is quartered with his
regiment. His wife, left by herself in Paris, and with an inkling of
the truth, grows more and more miserable, and writes her husband
letters embittered by jealousy. Very well; the mistress is obliged to
go up to Paris for the day. The husband cannot resist her entreaties
that he will go with her, and applies for short leave, which is
granted. But as he is a good–natured fellow, and hates to make his
wife unhappy, he goes to her and tells her, shedding a few quite
genuine tears, that, driven to desperation by her letters, he has
found the means of getting away from his duties to come to her, to
console her in his arms. He has thus contrived by a single journey to
furnish wife and mistress alike with proofs of his affection. But if
the wife were to learn the reason for which he has come to Paris, her
joy would doubtless be turned into grief, unless her pleasure in
seeing the faithless wretch outweighed, in spite of everything, the
pain that his infidelities had caused her. Among the men who have
struck me as practising with most perseverance this system of what
might be called killing any number of birds with one stone, must be
included M. de Norpois. He would now and then agree to act as
intermediary between two of his friends who had quarrelled, which led
to his being called the most obliging of men. But it was not
sufficient for him to appear to be doing a service to the friend who
had come to him to demand it; he would represent to the other the
steps which he was taking to effect a reconciliation as undertaken not
at the request of the first friend but in the interest of the second,
an attitude of the sincerity of which he had never any difficulty in
convincing a listener already influenced by the idea that he saw
before him the 'most serviceable of men.' In this fashion, playing in
two scenes turn about, what in stage parlance is called 'doubling' two
parts, he never allowed his influence to be in the slightest degree
imperilled, and the services which he rendered constituted not an
expenditure of capital but a dividend upon some part of his credit. At
the same time every service, seemingly rendered twice over,
correspondingly enhanced his reputation as an obliging friend, and,
better still, a friend whose interventions were efficacious, one who
did not draw bows at a venture, whose efforts were always justified by
success, as was shewn by the gratitude of both parties. This duplicity
in rendering services was—allowing for disappointments such as are
the lot of every human being—an important element of M. de Norpois's
character. And often at the Ministry he would make use of my father,
who was a simple soul, while making him believe that it was he, M. de
Norpois, who was being useful to my father.
Attracting people more
easily than she wished, and having no need to proclaim her conquests
abroad, Albertine kept silence with regard to the scene with myself by
her bedside, which a plain girl would have wished the whole world to
know. And yet of her attitude during that scene I could not arrive at
any satisfactory explanation. Taking first of all the supposition that
she was absolutely chaste (a supposition with which I had originally
accounted for the violence with which Albertine had refused to let
herself be taken in my arms and kissed, though it was by no means
essential to my conception of the goodness, the fundamentally
honourable character of my friend), I could not accept it without a
copious revision of its terms. It ran so entirely counter to the
hypothesis which I had constructed that day when I saw Albertine for
the first time. Then ever so many different acts, all acts of kindness
towards myself (a kindness that was caressing, at times uneasy,
alarmed, jealous of my predilection for Andrée) came up on all sides
to challenge the brutal gesture with which, to escape from me, she had
pulled the bell. Why then had she invited me to come and spend the
evening by her bedside? Why had she spoken all the time in the
language of affection? What object is there in your desire to see a
friend, in your fear that he is fonder of another of your friends than
of you; why seek to give him pleasure, why tell him, so romantically,
that the others will never know that he has spent the evening in your
room, if you refuse him so simple a pleasure and if to you it is no
pleasure at all? I could not believe, all the same, that Albertine's
chastity was carried to such a pitch as that, and I had begun to ask
myself whether her violence might not have been due to some reason of
coquetry, a disagreeable odour, for instance, which she suspected of
lingering about her person, and by which she was afraid that I might
be disgusted, or else of cowardice, if for instance she imagined, in
her ignorance of the facts of love, that my state of nervous
exhaustion was due to something contagious, communicable to her in a
kiss.
She was genuinely distressed by her failure to afford me
pleasure, and gave me a little gold pencil–case, with that virtuous
perversity which people shew who, moved by your supplications and yet
not consenting to grant you what those supplications demand, are
anxious all the same to bestow on you some mark of their affection;
the critic, an article from whose pen would so gratify the novelist,
asks him instead to dinner; the duchess does not take the snob with
her to the theatre but lends him her box on an evening when she will
not be using it herself. So far are those who do least for us, and
might easily do nothing, driven by conscience to do something. I told
Albertine that in giving me this pencil–case she was affording me
great pleasure, and yet not so great as I should have felt if, on the
night she had spent at the hotel, she had permitted me to embrace her.
"It would have made me so happy; what possible harm could it have done
you? I was simply astounded at your refusing to let me do it." "What
astounds me," she retorted, "is that you should have thought it
astounding. Funny sort of girls you must know if my behaviour
surprises you." "I am extremely sorry if I annoyed you, but even now I
cannot say that I think I was in the wrong. What I feel is that all
that sort of thing is of no importance, really, and I can't understand
a girl who could so easily give pleasure not consenting to do so. Let
us be quite clear about it," I went on, throwing a sop of sorts to her
moral scruples, as I recalled how she and her friends had scarified
the girl who went about with the actress Lea. "I don't mean to say
for a moment that a girl can behave exactly as she likes, or that
there's no such thing as immorality. Take, let me see now, yes, what
you were saying the other day about a girl who is staying at Balbec
and her relations with an actress; I call that degrading, so degrading
that I feel sure it must all have been made up by the girl's enemies,
and that there can't be any truth in the story. It strikes me as
improbable, impossible. But to let a friend kiss you, and go farther
than that even—since you say that I am your friend…" "So you are,
but I have had friends before now, I have known lots of young men who
were every bit as friendly, I can assure you. There wasn't one of them
would ever have dared to do a thing like that. They knew they'd get
their ears boxed if they tried it on. Besides, they never dreamed of
trying, we would shake hands in an open, friendly sort of way, like
good pals, but there was never a word said about kissing, and yet we
weren't any the less friends for that. Why, if it's my friendship you
are after, you've nothing to complain of; I must be jolly fond of you
to forgive you. But I'm sure you don't care two straws about me,
really. Own up now, it's Andrée you're in love with. After all, you're
quite right; she is ever so much prettier than I am, and perfectly
charming! Oh! You men!" Despite my recent disappointment, these words
so frankly uttered, by giving me a great respect for Albertine, made a
very pleasant impression on me. And perhaps this impression was to
have serious and vexatious consequences for me later on, for it was
round it that there began to form that feeling almost of brotherly
intimacy, that moral core which was always to remain at the heart of
my love for Albertine. A feeling of this sort may be the cause of the
keenest pain. For in order really to suffer at the hands of a woman
one must have believed in her completely. For the moment, that embryo
of moral esteem, of friendship, was left embedded in me like a
stepping–stone in a stream. It could have availed nothing, by itself,
against my happiness if it had remained there without growing, in an
inertia which it was to retain the following year, and still more
during the final weeks of this first visit to Balbec. It dwelt in me
like one of those foreign bodies which it would be wiser when all is
said to expel, but which we leave where they are without disturbing
them, so harmless for the present does their weakness, their isolation
amid a strange environment render them.
My dreams were now once more at liberty to concentrate on one or
another of Albertine's friends, and returned first of all to Andrée,
whose kindnesses might perhaps have appealed to me less strongly had I
not been certain that they would come to Albertine's ears. Undoubtedly
the preference that I had long been pretending to feel for Andrée had
furnished me—in the habit of conversation with her, of declaring my
affection—with, so to speak, the material, prepared and ready, for a
love of her which had hitherto lacked only the complement of a genuine
sentiment, and this my heart being once more free was now in a
position to supply. But for me really to love Andrée, she was too
intellectual, too neurotic, too sickly, too much like myself. If
Albertine now seemed to me to be void of substance, Andrée was filled
with something which I knew only too well. I had thought, that first
day, that what I saw on the beach there was the mistress of some
racing cyclist, passionately athletic; and now Andrée told me that if
she had taken up athletic pastimes, it was under orders from her
doctor, to cure her neurasthenia, her digestive troubles, but that her
happiest hours were those which she spent in translating one of George
Eliot's novels. The misunderstanding, due to an initial mistake as to
what Andrée was, had not, as a matter of fact, the slightest
importance. But my mistake was one of the kind which, if they allow
love to be born, and are not recognised as mistakes until it has
ceased to be under control, become a cause of suffering. Such
mistakes—which may be quite different from mine with regard to
Andrée, and even its exact opposite,—are frequently due (and this was
especially the case here) to our paying too much attention to the
aspect, the manners of what a person is not but would like to be, in
forming our first impression of that person. To the outward appearance
affectation, imitation, the longing to be admired, whether by the good
or by the wicked, add misleading similarities of speech and gesture.
These are cynicisms and cruelties which, when put to the test, prove
no more genuine than certain apparent virtues and generosities. Just
as we often discover a vain miser beneath the cloak of a man famed for
his bountiful charity, so her flaunting of vice leads us to suppose a
Messalina a respectable girl with middle–class prejudices. I had
thought to find in Andrée a healthy, primitive creature, whereas she
was merely a person in search of health, as were doubtless many of
those in whom she herself had thought to find it, and who were in
reality no more healthy than a burly arthritic with a red face and in
white flannels is necessarily a Hercules. Now there are circumstances
in which it is not immaterial to our happiness that the person whom we
have loved because of what appeared to be so healthy about her is in
reality only one of those invalids who receive such health as they
possess from others, as the planets borrow their light, as certain
bodies are only conductors of electricity.