no MARCEL PROUST
which his family called 'the autographs'. "Marcel Proust's the
Devil Himself," he would remark with amused awe, when faced
with some new example of his psychological insight; and Proust
would be welcomed with a smile when he burst into the study
at 3 I Rue de Bellechasse to enquire: "Do you know when Lucien
will be back from Jullian's?" "The great stumbling-block
('ccueil') in your life, my dear boy, will be your health," he once
told Proust; and the saying supplied a theme for Jean Santeuil and
a hint for Bergotte's prophecy to the Narrator.
For three days Proust and Reynaldo rallied round the dis-
traught and weeping Lucien. They saw Alphonse Daudet lying
in state, like Bergotte, on his flower-strewn bed: La Gandara was
sketching his friend for the last time, while Barres stood in
mournful contemplation, and Hervieu in tears kissed the death-
cold forehead. In the funeral procession from Sainte-Clotilde to
Pere la Chaise on the 21st they walked behind Zola, Drumont
and Anatole France, enemies united for a moment in their love
for the dead writer. From time to time Proust hurried forward
to take Lucien's arm; and that evening he called again to beg his
friend to try to sleep. An epoch was over; and as the deaths of
Calmette and Agostinelli seventeen years later seemed, for Proust,
to herald the World War, so the passing of Alphonse Daudet
marked the real beginning of the Dreyfus Affair, the end of the
cul-de-sac of the Guermantes Way.