MARCEL PROUSTchauffeurs. The motor-car, a few years later-such was the in-
direct consequence of the visit to Coppet-was to become an
indispensable factor in the liberation which enabled him to
conceive A la Recherche, and in the web of new habits which
enabled him to write it. Meanwhile Mme d'HaussonviIle sent a
most amiable letter of disappointment at missing her visitors, with
a whole page devoted to Proust himself and only a single line
for Abel Hermant, who was given to putting his aristocratic
acquaintances into his novels and making them commit the most
appalling crimes in the last chapter. Proust forwarded it to his
mother for safe keeping, remarking: 'Here is a letter from Pauline,
or How to show one's good-breeding gracefully.'
Autumn arrived at the end of September, rain swept the lake,
and the hotel was about to close. Just as at Rivebelle 'one could
be sure of two or three supplementary months of warmth after
the cold weather had reached Balbec? so on the southward-
facing Swiss bank of the lake opposite Evian the sunlight was still
on the hillsides and the season just beginning; but Mme Proust
begged her son in vain to move there. The staff at the Splendide,
like their colleagues at Balbec, began to leave for Nice, headed
by the obliging lift-boy, who was unpopular with the rest, being
a Dreyfusard and a Jew. The omnibus-driver called on Proust to
shake hands and say, with a warmth that was all the more touching
since he had already received his tip: "Ever since I've worked in
hotels, I've never known anyone so kind to the 'employees'.2
\Ve're all devoted to you, and I think it's a shame you're so iII,
because if anyone doesn't deserve to be, it's you!"
Proust had a momentary scare when he heard Anatole F ranee
was thinking of him as a possible husband for his daughter
Suzanne. She was now a charming girl of eighteen, but perma-
nently unsettled by the rift between her parents, who alternately
fought for her possession and neglected her." 'I shall never do it,'
1 1,67 6
2 "A charming euphemism," Proust observed to his mother, and used it
for the lift-boy at Balbec (I, 800).
a Suzanne ended by marrying Captain Henri Mallin, an assistant to the
Dreyfusist War Minister General Andre, on 10 December 1901: lithe
young man speaks with due admiration of Picquart, and seems a decenl
[;ort, so let us rejoice," said her prodigal father.