BERGOTTE AND DONCIERESa Captain Saivrin, a friend of friends of Mme Proust, from whom
she sometimes had indirect news of her 'little wolf'. In immediate
command over Proust was Lieutenant de Cholet, a handsome
young officer with black moustaches, who presented him at the
end of his year with a signed photograph 'to Marcel Proust,
volunteer cadet (conditwnnel), from one of his torturers'. It
was Cholet who once, like Saint-Loup,! hurt his feelings by
saluting him coldly, pretending not to recognise him, in the
street.
In theory the volunteers were strictly forbidden to take
lodgings in town; but in practice they would hire a private room
-Proust's was at Mme Renvoyze's in the Rue des Bons Enfants
near the cathedral-where they would dine and drink champagne
or punch in the evening, while late-comers shaved and changed
into their best uniforms in the adjoining dressing-rooms. When
an officer met them on the stairs he would smile, seeming to cast
a wistful eye on the champagne visible through the open door;
and to make his good-will perfectly clear, he might even con-
descend to ask one of them for a light. "You ought to have asked
him in, he'd have been quite welcome," someone would sayafter-
wards, 'with the jesting air', as Proust wrote in Jean Santeuil, 'of a
bourgeois saying to a friend who has just seen the Tsar of Russia
drive past: "You should have brought him along to dinner, you
could have told him I'd be delighted."'2 A few yards from the Rue
des Bons Enfants and the nearby much-restored cathedral, tradi-
tionally known as 'the ugliest in France', were the church and
street of Saint-Euverte, after which Proust named in his novel
the hostess who was the Baron de Charlus's pet aversion, and
at whose reception Swann hea. j the Vinteuil Sonata. On the
bank of the Loire two miles above the town is the Chateau de
Saint-Loup.
In February an introduction from Dr Proust brought an
invitation to dinner from the Prefect of the Loire, M. Boegner,
to Proust and another gentleman-ranker named Mayrargues.
Young Robert de Billy, a volunteer in the 30th Artillery stationed
at Orleans, was also there, with his gaiters and buttons brilliantly
polished, his white gloves newly washed, and the handle of his
sabre resting in the regulation position in the crook of his arm.
1 II, lJ8
II jean Sanleuil, vol. 2, 2.9 1