Marcel Proust: A Biography

MARCEL PROUST
symptoms of romantic love, which loves not a person but an
ideal, a personified desire, a projection of one's self.
In February he was kept away from the Champs-Elysees by a
bout of influenza; but his agony at the thought that Marie would
be enjoying prisoner's base without him was happily relieved by
the news that she was ill too. When he was convalescent a letter
came from her asking him in her mother's name to tea, 'at five
o'clock, on any day you wish'. He entered the house he had
thought inaccessible for ever, outside which he had stood and
stared on afternoons when Marie had stayed away from the
Champs-Elysees, and whose number in the Rue de Chaillot,
together with the name of that poetic street, had echoed in his
thoughts with 'a painful and deleterious enchantment'. The stair-
case was dark, and in the profound obscurity of the vestibule it
was impossible to tell whether the dim figure standing by a gothic
side10ard was some footman waiting for his mistress to end her
visit, or the master of the house himself. In the drawing-room the
paintings on the ceiling, the coloured glass in the windows, the
lap-dog and the tea-table seemed not only part of the beauty and
mystery of his beloved and her mother, but also evidence of a
social superiority of which Marie must never become aware. He
tried in vain to persuade his parents to change their furniture and
their habits; and then, reflecting that Marie would in all prob-
ability never visit them and learn the humiliating truth, he assured
her next time that in his home as in hers there were loose-covers
on the chairs, and chocolate was never served at tea-time. The
awe-inspiring concierge bowed affably before him, her parents
changed from 'implacable deities' into a lady and gentleman who
urged him to come often, to 'teach Marie all about literature', and
assured him that he had a good influence upon her. His parents,
however, were not altogether content with this new acquaintance.
Certainly, it was only proper that M. and Mme de Benardaky
should admire the intelligence of Marcel; but they were out of his
class, and perhaps not very favourable representatives of their
own. "Mme de Benardaky has reached such a high position in
society," said the witty Mile de Malakoff, "that the only person
you see in her house who isn't out of the top drawer is herself."
Even Marcel himself, now or later, came to look critically on
Marie's parents: there is a distinct resemblance between Odette
Swann and her louche salon in A I'Omhre. and Mme de Benardaky