DESCENT INTO THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 181sister Clarita, Mme Seminario, where he finished the revision of
La Mort de Baldassare Silvande. The figure of the dying
Baldassare, little Alexis's uncle with the riotous past, was no doubt
suggested (though Baldassare is a young man of thirty-six) by
the now aged and ailing Louis Weil; but he also contains elements
which recall the later years of Jean Santeuil and even Swann
himself; and in his musical career he is based on both Reynaldo
and, Prince Edmond de Polignac. It was probably Baldassare's
gift of a pony to little Alexis (who is Proust as a child) which
made Reynaldo nickname his friend 'Pony': at first much to
Proust's distress (,Marcel the Pony sounds as bad as Jack the
Ripper'), though soon he grew to like it. The story was published
in the Revue Hebdomadaire of 29 October 1895, with the dedica-
tion 'To Reynaldo Habn, poet, singer and musician', and earned
Proust 150 francs. This not inconsiderable sum was worth six
pounds then, but would to-day represent nearer fifty: it was an
argument to show his parents that even a writer's career might
be more remunerative than that of an honorary, unpaid librarian
on indefinitely prolonged leave.
Soon, from about 8 August to the end of the month, Proust
was staying with Reynaldo at Mme Lemaire's villa on the sea-
front at 32 Rue Aguado,! Dieppe. As a little bird, who was not
improbably Proust himself, informed the society columnist of Le
Gaulois: 'Everyone is talking about the well-known members of
Parisian society who happen to be at Dieppe just now. All Paris
is there, the Comte and Comtesse Louis de Talleyrand-Perigord,
Due J osselin de Rohan, Madeleine Lemaire, and MM. Marcel
Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, who are the guests of that eminent
artist!' But Proust was collecting impressions for Balbec, and
composing a sketch called 'Underwood' for Les Plaisirs et les
Jours: 'Lying on our backs, with our heads pillowed in dead
leaves,' he wrote, 'we followed the joyous agility of our thoughts
as they climbed, without making a single leaf quiver, to the
highest branches, where they perched on the edge of the hazy sky,
beside a singing bird.' He wrote to Reynaldo's charming elder
1 Through a misunderstanding of the words 'Petit-Abbeville (Dieppe)
August 1895' at the end of Proust's sketch 'Sous-Bois' in Les Plaisirs et les
lours, 232-4, it has been wrongly supposf!d that Mme Lemaire's villa
was called Petit-Ahbevilll!. In fact tIlt: name is that of a vilbge a rnil~ or two
::iuuth-west of Dicppt!.