BERGOTTE AND DONCIERES 79love with one who is far above me.'" In September Proust spent
a short leave with her at Cabourg, and immediately on his return
to Orleans wrote to his father, who was staying at Aix-Ies-Bains
at the country-house of Dr Cazalis. On his way to the station at
Cabourg a group of housemaids, stirred by his soldier's uniform,
had blown kisses, much to the horror of his mother's friends. 'So
the maids of Orleans whom I had abandoned had their revenge,
and I am punished-if M. Cazalis will allow me to quote one of
his finest lines-ufor scorning the rosebuds of their naked
breasts" .'1
For the last few months of his military service Proust was
placed in the instruction-squad, with a view to promotion to the
rank of sous-officier. '1 am having great difficulty in fixing my
attention and learning by heart,' he told his father; and his final
position was sixty-third in a squad of sixty-four. 'Because of my
wretched health, 1 was such a mediocre soldier that 1 remained a
mere private',' he wrote thirty years later. As a last incongruous
episode of his life in the army, he begged Colonel Arvers to be
allowe~ to stay on for a few months; alas, it could not be arranged.
He was free to continue his climb into society and his wooing of
Jeanne Pouquet; but his release seemed more like an expulsion
from yet another paradise. Now he must try to satisfy not a
fatherly colonel, but an actual father, who demanded that he
should face the claims of adult life and adopt a bread-winning
career.
1 At Aix Dr Proust had met Maupassant: 'r hope you liked him,' writes
his son; (I've only met him twice, but he must know more or less who I am.'
This is interesting, since the novelist C., who is the putative author of Jean
Santeuil, so closely resembles Maupassant in appearance and habits. In A fa
Recherche, Co's function is taken over by Elstit; and it will be seen later how
an incident at Beg~Meil in 189S cau<:ed the novelist to be changed into a
painter. Proust's meetings with Malil'assant were no doubt in the salon of
. Mme Straus, which Maupassant frequented in the late 18805. For a time
Maupassant was unsuccessfully in love with his hostess, and he made her
one of the heroines in his last novel, Fort comme fa Mort.
S As Proust was in an infantry regiment, he was not strictly speaking a
'trooper'; but the nickname was given him by his family, no doubt because his
training included riding exercises.