54 MARCEL PROUST
game of croquet in the hotel garden; but instead he sat down at
the desk of Mile Biraben, the proprietress, to write about Mme
Catusse to his grandmother in Paris. The embarrassed boy
describes the young woman's eyes, complexion, hair and figure
for a reward ('the divine melodies of Massenet and Gounod') and
in a manner ('it's frightfully difficult to rival Alfred de Musset')
which recall the confession-album of the previous year. But the
banalities of gallantry are mixed with the more interesting cliches
of his new love for the Homeric translations of Leconte de Lisle;
and as he swears 'by Artemis the white goddess and Pluto of the
burning eyes', the voice of Bloch is heard. Perhaps his ardour is
almost genuine, and he has already turned from the love of young
girls to the pursuit of a mother-substitute; but soon he curses 'the
genii hostile to the peace of mankind who have forced me to
write such nonsense about someone I really like and who has
been so kind to me'; and seeing the absurdity of the situation, he
ends with a cheerful 'Good-morning, Grandmama, and how do
you do?'
In the first half of 1887, cured of his first love, and of the no
less detrimental habits of loitering on the way home from the
Lycee Condorcet, spoiling his dinner by devouring rich cakes at
a patisserie, and chatting for hours with the concierge, Marcel had
begun to work hard at school. He was rewarded in July by a
second prize for history and geography, a third for Latin and a
fourth for 'general excellence'. His worst subject was mathematics;
and when Robert, in his efforts to help his elder brother, entreated
him: "Really, Marcel, you must at least try to understand,"
Marcel would reply: "Impossible!" A letter to his mother of 2.4
September, after his return from Salies-de-Bearn, shows him
reading Loti, visiting the Louvre, and walking in the Bois de
Boulogne, where his Great-Uncle Louis meets him in the Avenue
des Acacias with his carriage. He is experimenting with his health:
he has had 'transparent nights, with the conscious feeling that I
am asleep, but am on the point of waking up', a sensation well
known to the Narrator of A fa Recherche; and then, one morning,
he utters a cry of surprise on waking, because he has slept calmly
and his mouth tastes fresh. The day before he had driven in the
Bois in a closed carriage; and he draws the not very hygienic
conclusion that he had better try to stop his open-air walks there.
Perhaps it was in this summer that he accompanied Mme Catusse