3U MARCEL PROUSTThe Athenian maiden good-naturedly dismissed her partner to sit
out with her utterly un-Greek friend; and as was his habit when
overcome by the charm of a girl companion, he recited to her the
whole of La Maison du Berger.
The return of Proust's hay-fever that summer brought a
renewal of Mme Proust's indulgence and of the affection which,
said her son, 'the contemptuous irony of your many harsh words
in these last years had gone far to discourage me from cultivating'.
'It's a long time since I last thought of you with such a paroxysm
of effusion,' he wrote one night, when he came home late and
longed as of old, but forbore, to enter her room and kiss her in
her sleep. One evening in late June, when he was already
expecting the first proofs of La Bihle d'Amiens, she magnani-
mously gave a little dinner for Antoine Bibesco. Proust primed
his friend with a full list of the things he must not say: "No jokes
about tipping, for one thing, and none of your stupid questions
to Papa!" But the tact he demanded was too one-sided: in the
middle of dinner he could not resist telling the dreadful story of
Antoine singing 'En revenant de fa revue', with appropriate
dance-steps, at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent; and Antoine, in return,
began to say everything he had been begged not to say. "Don't
you think, sir, that if Marcel wrapped up less? ••. ". he began
insinuatingly. Dr Proust was in full agreement, but it was not a
subject he cared to discuss. Amid an electric silence the relentless
Antoine proceeded with an anecdote of their latest night out:
"and before I could stop him, Marcel tipped the waiter sixty
francs!!" The storm broke; Dr Proust burst into rage, the
dinner was spoiled, Marcel wept. Even Antoine was dismayed at
the effect of his little revenge; but, as Proust truly told him, "my
family affections are dearer to me than the affection of my
friends, and I can't help mistrusting anyone who attacks me
through them, just as I would someone who, in spite of a noble
heart and other remarkable qualities, was liable at times under the
influence of drink or for some similar reason to stick a knife into
me". He swore never to forgive Antoine, and perhaps he never
did. The factitious renewal of their secret game was ended; the
bewitching phantom of the ideal friend had moved to other faces,
and would never more wear Antoine Bibesco's.
Early in July Bertrand de Fenelon visited Paris for a month's
leave. The nightly symposium of the friends at Weber's or