Marcel Proust: A Biography

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 137
diploma (in fact he took it on 10 October 1893, a week after Willy
Heath's death); and the holiday at Trouville, after supplying a
few hints for the second visit to Balbec, ended in an ultima-
tum, expressed with the well-meaning father's characteristic
impatience and finality: Marcel must choose a career; he must
show some will-power.
With an outbreak of genuine panic, and a mask of despairing
obedience, Marcel showed so much will-power that in the end
nothing happened. 'I had hoped, man cher petit papa,' he wrote,
'to persuade you to allow me to continue the literary and philo-
sophical studies for which I believe I am fitted.' But at this time
he felt it no less essential that he should be allowed to pursue his
social life. In A fa Recherche the Narrator is determined not to go
into the diplomatic service because he would have to live abroad
and cease to see Gilberte; and here, no doubt, Proust remembers
the year 1891, when it seemed likely that he would in due course
enter the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with his fellow-students
Trarieux and Billy, and so be separated from Jeanne Pouquet.
But in 1893 Jeanne was married and forgotten, and the danger
had changed. 'I'm determined not to go abroad,' he told Billy;
for it would mean renouncing not only the bourgeois hostesses
he already possessed, but also the noble hostesses for whom he
hoped. Nor could he endure a post that might make him socially
unacceptable: 'isn't the magistrature too much looked down
upon?' he pathetically asked Billy. 'As for going into a lawyer's
office, I'd a thousand times rather it were a stockbroker's-you
can be quite sure I wouldn't stay there three days,' he told Dr
Proust. He did in fact begin training with a lawyer, a certain
Maitre Brunet, and endured it for a whole fortnight, but no
longer; and for a time there was even some talk of buying him a
lawyer's practice. He toyed with the grim idea of the Cour des
Comptes, the Government accounting office which was tradi-
tionally regarded as being socially distinguished (Billy's father
was a conseiller referendaire there); but 'the boredom would kill
me', and mathematics had been his worst subject at Condorcet.
At last, although Marcel promised to work seriously for 'the
Foreign Affairs exam or the Ecole des Chartes, the choice to be
yours', poor Dr Proust realised it would be simpler to shelve the
whole matter. It was agreed that Marcel should spend the next
academic year studying for the licence os leures; and Proust was