THE GARDEN OF THE CHAMPS-EL YSEES 49and the company she kept. There were to be at least two other
ladies who contributed to the character of Odette; but the one
who kept mixed company (Mme Hayman) was unmarried, and
the one who was married (Mme Straus) had a salon of extreme
distinction and was notoriously faithful to her husband.
In the spring of 1887 he ceased to see Marie. In Jean Santeuil it
is because his parents, alarmed at the unhappiness and emotional
instability caused by his passion, forbid their meetings, while in
A l'Omhre the Narrator, convinced at last that his friend does not
return his love, decides for himself never to see her again. Perhaps
both versions were true in real life; but for a time in his despair
Marcel wished to commit suicide, to throw himself from the
balcony of 9 Boulevard Malesherbes-the former barometer of
his hopes-on the pavement below; and when he recovered, his
life was irretrievably changed. His first attempt to love and be
loved by someone other than his mother-to escape, that is, from
incest-had failed. Ability to love a person of the opposite sex,
and of one's own age, is the only valid escape from the prison of
the family; and that way was now barred. Ifhe were to risk loving
another young girl his suffering, his humiliation and his mother's
displeasure would only be repeated. No doubt he was doomed
even before he met Marie de Benardaky-if not by some ante-
natal predisposition, then by tensions whose work was done for
ever in his early childhood-to lifelong homosexuality. Perhaps,
too, as not infrequently happens in the puberty of a future homo-
sexual, his unconscious mind had deliberately made a hetero-
sexual choice which was certain to fail, in order to set itself free
for its true desire. In every homosexual, perhaps, there is a
heterosexual double, uppermost at first, who must be imprisoned
and made powerless before his stronger brother can come to life.
Marcel had tried to be 'normal': if he had failed, it was Marie's
fault for rejecting him; and his mother had wished it, and was
therefore partly to blame. He was absolved. But Marie had also
taught him to believe, perhaps rightly, that love, outside the
family, is the only feeling which can never be returned.
During most of his life he continued to be intermittently
fascinated by young girls. They inspired him with a mingled
attraction and repulsion, desire and fear, and a whole little band
of them invaded his novel; but there was safety in numbers. Once
and only once, after his mother's death, when he was at the