THE GARDEN OF THE CHAMPS-ELY SEES 43threatened it. Marcel's parents, like Jean's, decided at last that his
failures were due not to ill-health, nor to idleness, but to 'lack of
will-power'. They repeated the accusation so often that Marcel
half believed it, and made it one of the characteristics of the heroes
of both his novels; and his critics have believed it after him.
Perhaps Marcel's prolonged stay in Class Three was caused not
by ill-health, still less by manque de yolonte, but by the sorrows of
love. His little playmate at IIIiers was already lost in the past; but
in the summer of 1886, when he was not quite fifteen,! he was
seized by a passion for her counterpart in Paris which long after-
wards, only a few years before his death, he still thought of as
'one of the two great loves of my life'. Her name was Marie de
Benardaky, and he met her in the Champs-Elysees, where he used
to play every afternoon after school (which ended at three
o'clock), and on the Thursday half-holiday, with a group of
schoolfellows from Condorcet and a little band of girls. The boys
were later to have distinguished careers, if Robert Dreyfus, who
was one of them, is to be believed: 'In our little group,' he says,
'which met so harmoniously near the roundabouts, there were
future scholars, philosophers, industrialists, doctors, engineers,
economists, politicians, barristers, generals, and an ambassador.'
The ambassador was Maurice Herbette, the politician Paul
Benazet, and the philosopher was Leon Brunschwicg, editor of
Pascal, who is said to have had much in common with Bloch in
Proust's novel. There were also two who became minor poets,
Louis de la Salle and Jean de Tinan. Among the girls were
Antoinette and Lucie Faure, daughters of the deputy from Le
Havre, who ten years later became President of the Republic, and
Gabrielle Schwartz.
Lucie Faure was five years older than Marcel, while her sister
Antoinette was his senior by only a year. His friendship with
1 The earliest stage of his acquaintance with Mile de Benardaky is dated
by a letter to Antoinette Faure written on IS July 1886. The date is fixed by
his description of the famous review of the army at Longchamp by General
Boulanger on '4 July 1886, which he saw, he says, 'yesterday'. '1 go to the
Champs·Elysees nearly every day,' he writes; 'Blanche is still very sweet,
with her angelic face so teasing and so resigned. Marie Bcnardaki [sic 1 is very
pretty and more exuberant than ever. She fOliC'" Bbnchc with her fists the
other day, and Blanche had to give in I'