Marcel Proust: A Biography

DESCENT INTO THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 189
Meanwhile, however, perhaps at first only by way of retalia-
tion, Reynaldo himself was straying from their friendship. For a
few months, in the spring and early summer of 1896, Proust
suffered from excruciating jealousy, in which his anguished
curiosity characteristically turned from the present to the past. 'I
deserve your reproaches, oftener than you imagine,' he wrote,
'but if ever 1 do not deserve them, it is in those moments of
torturing effort, when by watching a face, or linking one name
with another, or reconstituting a past event, 1 endeavour to fill
in the gaps in a life which is dearer to me than all else, but which
will continue to cause me the most anxious sorrow until, even in
its most innocent details, 1 know it all.' One evening in society
Hahn insisted on staying to supper when Proust begged him to
come home. "You'll regret this one day," declared the furious
Reynaldo, only to be punished next morning by an appalling
letter. 'lowe it to our former friendship not to let you commit
such acts of stupidity, spite and cowardice without trying to
arouse your conscience, and to persuade you-not to admit, for
your pride forbids it-but at least to realise what you have
done ..•• You don't see that when, after we say good-bye in the
evening, I carry away with me the image of a Reynaldo who has
ceased to care how he hurts me, I shall no longer have any
obstacle to put in the way of my desires, and then nothing will
stop me... • Overwhelmed with remorse for so many evil
thoughts, so many weak and wicked intentions, 1 can't claim to
be any better than you are' -and so on. This is the pattern of the
many scenes of jealousy in Les Plaisirs et les Jours, some written
before he met Hahn, all before this most serious of their quarrels:
they had occurred, therefore, in Proust's earlier friendships, and
we shall find them recurring in later attachments. But the situation
revealed in these terrible letters leaves no doubt that in the
Fran90ise episode of Jean Santeuil, in Swann's jealousy over
Odette and the Narrator's over Albertine, Proust was remember-
ing not only his total experience of love, but the rupture of his
love for Reynaldo. His agonies, however, lasted only a few
months: it was some consolation for his wounded pride to know
that he, in the first place, had jilted Reynaldo, not Reynaldo him;
and he still had Lucien. In July, as we shall see shortly, the worst
was already over.
Only one obstacle now delayed the publication of Les Plaisirs