)20 MARCEL PROUST
taking morphine."l Soon Proust was racked with misgivings: '1
see before me the dead, reproachful face of what might have been
but is not,' he wrote, remembering the words of Rossetti's sonnet
written ten years before by Edgar Aubert on the back of his
photograph, 'I mean, of the better person 1 might have been, if
to satisfy your curiosity at all costs 1 hadn't sold what no one
ought ever to have bought, and in fact the Devil alone can buy!'
The first move to break the bargain came from him: 'if you agree,
shall we renounce this cruel and impossible pact, which has
already made me so miserable?' But the habit had. become too
strong-'the habit of not Jiving for myself alone, of extending
the horizon of my life past the furthest frontiers of another
person, of allowing the stream of my existence to overflow into
this indiscernible prolongation of myself with all the gold and
mud it carried with it day by day, all the sights it had surprised
and reflected, the secrets that had been dropped in its waters'.
But now-he continued his river-metaphor-'just as a river cut
off by a high, impenetrable dike turns its course and fertilises
other lands, so I've been forced to pour into another confidant
what you refuse to accept from me, and to receive from him the
confidences which have become indispensable to me since you
gave me the habit of making them. Let's say no more-what I've
just written makes me blush for shame.' This letter, which marks
the end of the phase, can be dated to the first week in May 1903;
the new friend may be either Albufera or Guiche, or even,
already, 'Loche' Radziwill. But Proust's sufferings during these
two months need not be taken too tragically: in the whole series
1 Leon Daudet had in fact taken his doctor's degree in the late 18805, but
turned to writing without going into practice. His revelation was no doubt
made with the best intentions, from friendly concern, and without malice or
even untruth; for (a) the dangers of morphine were little understood at that
time. It was prescribed for asthma and other nervous ailments, and to take it
was thought at most an imprudence, certainly not a vice, unless it was taken
for mere pleasure; (6) Daudet of all people was particularly exercised about
the use of morphine, and had written a propaganda novel, La Luue, against
the drug and doctors who prescribed it; (c) Proust undoubtedly took
morphine occasionally at this time, with his parents' knowledge, but disliked
it and never acquired the habit. (Cf. Mm, Proust, 134 [20 Sept. 1899-but
this is only morphine ointment for his wrist at Evian]; ihid., 190 [15 Aug.
I902-'Dr Vaquez told me not to let myself be carried away by morphine
(he needn't worry!) or alcohol, which he con,iders equally detrimental in
all forms'].)