SALVATION THROUGH RUSKIN ~85-the canal on whose yielding waters he seems 'to penetrate
further and further into the depths of some secret thing', the
moonlit campo which he discovers hidden in a labyrinth of
narrow streets and can never find again-seems full of symbols
of voluptuous desire and possession. He wanders alone, 'through
humble campi and little abandoned rii', in search of the working-
class girls whom Albertine might have loved when she was alive
and in Venice.^1 Perhaps for Proust, too, Venice was linked with
the Cities of the Plain; and perhaps he sought and found there on
this second visit the sinister enchantments known to Byron and
John Addington Symonds, Henry James, Housman and Baron
Corvo, of which Ruskin had nothing to say.
The business on which Mme Proust was recalled to Paris in
September was nothing less than the removal of the Proust
family to a new home, into which they moved probably about I
October, the beginning of the new quarter. They had been
house-hunting all summer, and thought for a time of taking a
second-floor apartment at 127 Boulevard~ Haussmann. The
proprietor of the house, me Marquis des Reaulx, was understood
to be unwilling to let to professional men; and Proust asked
Pierre Lavallee, who was a friend of the marquis's grandson and
tenant, Edouard de Monicault, to explain that Dr Proust had so
nearly given up his practice that 'he now has fewer visitors than
ordinary persons'. But in the end they decided upon 45 Rue de
Courcelles, on me corner of the Rue Monceau, which satisfied
their needs for more quiet, and living-space, and a more fashion-
able address to reflect the eminence Dr Proust had reached during
me mirty years since his marriage.
At first sight there is little difference between the architecture
of the Boulevard Malesherbes and that of the Rue de Courcelles.
Both have the same unbroken line of dignified, seven-storey-. high buildings, with iron balconies running along the upper
floors. But the Boulevard Malesherbes was Second Empire, put
up in the late I860s and beginning to go down in the world; it
was a little too showy, and already far too noisy. The Rue de
Courcelles was Third Republic-me foundation-stone of No. 45
is dated 1881; it was solid, narrow, quiet, gloomy and treeless;
and almough less man half a mile from meir old home, it ran,
between me Boulevard Haussmann and the Avenue Hoclte,
1 III, 626-7, 650