Marcel Proust: A Biography

(Ben Green) #1
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 121

His new friendships in 1892 were symptoms, though he could
not know it, of the approaching change; and young Robert de
Billy was the involuntary cause of their beginning. Billy, his
fellow-soldier and fellow-student, was a Protestant from Alsace
and a lover of mountaineering. In the summer vacation of 1891
he had visited Geneva, where his religion and noble birth enabled
him to move in the aristocratic society of the Rue des Granges and
to make friends with a young Swiss named Edgar Aubert. In the
winter Aubert returned the visit, and was introduced by Billy and
Proust to the salons ofMme Straus and the cousins Charlotte and
Laure Baigneres. His elegance, sincerity and cosmopolitan culture
made him an instant success; but his qualities were appreciated by
no one more than by Proust himself. Edgar knew English, the
language of Dickens and George Eliot, whom Proust could read
only in translation. He spoke it at the Finalys', and when he gave
Proust a photograph of his austerely handsome features a few
lines of an English poet were written on the back: 'the words
seem rather sad to me,' Proust commented.
'


He learned from
Aubert, moreover, of the intricate social structure of the Swiss
Protestant upper classes: they were a fascinating replica in minia-
ture of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and yet, since their hier-
archy was based not on a titled nobility but on the more abstract
conception of 'good family', it resembled also the Jewish caste-
system which included the Rothschilds, Charles Haas, the Finalys
and Mme Proust's relatives. After cross-examining Aubert,
Proust made researches of his own, and was particularly delighted
when he could discover some scandalous secret in an otherwise
respectable Huguenot family: "I'm telling you this for your own
good, mon petit Robert," he would say to Billy with an air of
innocence, "to save you from making some awful gaffe." But
perhaps the most impressive characteristic of Edgar Aubert was
his religious fervour: in his steady eyes Proust saw, together with
irony, affection and disenchantment, the light of faith; he thought
of his mother's and dead grandmother's grace and good works,
and felt a vague remorse for sins he had not yet committed.
1 The quotaL _.n was very probably from Rossetti's sonnet (The House 0/
Life, XCVII):
'Look in my face~' my name is Afight-have-heenJ·
1 am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell:
Cf. Corr. Gen., III, 66
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