[94 MARCEL PROUST
her to corroborate his story if Montesquiou and Y turri, as they
threatened, should call to ask her to relent; but neimer mourning
nor a new attack of asmma prevented him from a round of visits
to Mme Arman, Mme Lemaire, Reynaldo at Saint-Cloud, and his
publisher Calmann-Levy. His momer, he told Reynaldo, seemed
to be taking her bereavements remarkably well: in fact, as he was
to realise a few monms later, her heart was broken.
In August he spent a few weeks wim her at Mont-Dore, a
healm-resort in me mountains of me Puy-de-Dome. Born as a
complete mental rest, and as an indirect communication wim
Reynaldo, he read Reynaldo's favourite author, Dumas; he
challenged a fellow-guest at me hotel to a duel, wimout result;
and he received from Dr Cazalis, me original of Legrandin, an
over-gushing and under-paid telegram of manks for a copy of
Les Plaisirs et les Jours, which cost Mme Proust mree francs,
'mus offending,' as he wrote to Reynaldo, 'her twin instincts for
economy and concision'. But even in mat mountain-air asthma
awaited him. Hay-making, several monms late in me high hills,
was in full progress, and a violent attack of hay-fever drove him
back to Paris.
On me eve of his departure he wrote to Reynaldo-who was
now, after five weeks spent in Hamburg wim Proust's blessing,
at Villers-sur-Mer near Cabourg-a letter which sounded me knell
of meir love and marked the beginning of their friendship. They
had released one another from all vows of fidelity and chastity:
'it would be noble, perhaps, but it would not be natural at our
age to live as Tolstoy demands of us'. Proust had made me
condition that Reynaldo should confess any new lapses, while
poor Reynaldo, on the contrary, asked only that Proust should
keep quiet about his. 'In future you needn't tell me anything,'
Proust wrote, 'seeing it upsets you so. But you'll never find a
confessor more gentle, more understanding (alas!) and more un-
humiliating-since, if it hadn't been you who asked for silence,
and I for avowal, me situation would be reversed: your heart
would be the confessional, and I me sinner begging for absolu-
tion, for I am as weak as you, or weaker.'
In September Mme Proust continued her interrupted holiday
at Dieppe, bathing under medical orders, bruising her feet on me
pebbles, and walking like her dead mother in me wind and rain.
Proust stayed alone wim me servants at home, smoking Espic