114 MARCEL PROUST
respective years of philosophie at Condorcet, the title was
borrowed from the French name of Plato's Symposium. In theory
the magazine was to be directed by an editorial committee
consisting of Daniel Halevy, Robert Dreyfus and Proust; but
the management of the second number by Femand Gregh, a
young poet who had reached Condorcet in the term after Proust
left in 1889, was found so successful that Gregh became sole
editor. Other contributors, several of whose names are still not
unknown to fame, included Jacques Bizet, Robert de Flers,
Gaston de Caillavet, Louis de la Salle, Gabriel Trarieux, Henri
Barbusse author of Le Feu, Henri Rabaud the composer, and
Leon Blum the socialist prime minister. Each gave ten francs
monthly, and four hundred copies of each number were hand-
somely pdnted for a mere hundred francs by Eugene Reiter, son
of JaGques Bizet's former wet-nurse, then director of the printing-
works of the newspaper Le Temps. Even so, Gregh took panic at
the sight of the bill for the first number, and ordered only two
hundred of the second, which is consequently even more un-
procurable to-day than the rest. Thereafter circulation rose to
safety-level, and Mme Straus's visitors, hearing of her son
Jacques's and nephew Daniel's new venture, would take out a
subscription with the same benevolent and fashionable air with
which they contributed to her charities. The company met above
Rouquette's bookshop at 71 Passage Choiseul, in a room magni-
ficently surrounded by green and crimson rows of rare books in
glass-fronted bookcases. Jacques's friend Henri de Rothschild
procured them this privilege, and even offered to guarantee the
costs of printing if they would promise in return to accept his
articles; but they refused for the sake of independence.
Le Ban9uet ran from March 1892 till March 1893. It did not
always succeed in appearing monthly, and during this period of
thirteen months only eight numbers appeared. In each except the
fourth and eighth Proust contributed sketches and short stories,
all but two of which were collected in Les Plaisirs et les Jours,
and essays and reviews, mostly reprinted in Chroni9ues. Next to
the exuberant Gregh, who wrote under several pseudonyms as
weJl as his own name, he was the most assiduous contributor. Yet
his companions felt it was they who were writers by vocation,
while Proust, who appeared to give only a part of himself to his
art, could never be more than a talented amateur. 'He seemed to