JI2 MARCEL PROUST
the pews; instead, he stood in the aisle looking like Tweedledum,
'his Lazarus-like face with its melancholy moustache rising like a
surprise out of his woolly black cerements. He felt he had to
explain himself, and to each row in rum he announced in a loud
voice that he was not able to dress otherwise, that he had been
ill for months, that he would be still more ill that evening, that
it was not his fault.' After the midday reception at 6 Rue de
Messine he took to his bed for a fortnight. 'Robert's wedding has
been the death of me,' he wrote to Mme Catusse. But the ill wind
of Saint-Augustin's brought him rwo fur coats, one from the
good-hearted Robert as the obligatory present to his best man,
and one from Antoine Bibesco, which he returned without
opening the parcel: he did not wish to hurt Robert's feelings by
accepting it, he explained, nor to let his parents think it a strata-
gem in his campaign against the meagreness of his allowance.
Since Antoine's absence and Fenelon's departure Proust had
engaged in a new and even more than usually disappointing
friendship with a certain 'M'. Antoine was thinking of a visit to
Fenelon at Constantinople-'but if you won't come too, I shan't
go'. In a letter of consent so provisional as to be almost a refusal
Proust took the opporrunity to tell Antoine and Bertrand some
home-truths: 'it's curious that each of you has an opposite gift,
yours being to dissipate mistrust, his to inspire it; so that you're
both likely to make enemies, but yours will be people who don't
know you and might well become your friends if you wished it,
while Bertrand's enemies will always be his former friends ....
This doesn't prevent me from being very fond of Bertrand.
We're never more unjust than in those affections which we think
must be prejudiced just because they're blind, and because for
fear of liking him less we shut our eyes to the possible faults of
the friend we cherish, and so prevent ourselves from seeing his
virrues. I've had proof of this lately with M., whom 1 respected
less the more 1 liked him, convinced as 1 was that because 1 was
fond of him 1 was certain to be over-indulgent. Now 1 realise he
was infinitely superior to the image of him constructed by my
consciously indulgent, but therefore depreciatory affection. He
would have had everything to gain from a severe, just and clear-
sighted friendship.' Proust's biting letter of dismissal to M.
survives: '1 don't wish to see you any more, or to write to you,
or to know you'; he keeps the inkstand M. has given him for