TIME BEGINS TO BE LOSTnot be made to reply. They broke the door in, and found the
professor huddled on the floor, paralysed, unconscious and
speechless. He was carried on a stretcher to 45 Rue de Courcelles.
Marcel, of course, was still asleep; he remembered ever afterwards
how his mother tapped on his bedroom door to say: "Forgive me
for waking you, my dear, but your father has been taken rather
ill at the Ecole de Medecine."l Dr Proust died thirty-six hours
later, early in the morning of Thursday, 26 November, without
regaining consciousness. As she watched by his side, waiting for
the end, Mme Proust wrote a journal, as she had done for her
own father and mother, of her husband's illness. A few hours
before, on the 25th, Robert's only child Suzy had been born.
Dr Proust's funeral procession to Saint-Philippe du Roule on
the 28th was an imposing occasion. The mourners were led by
Marcel and Robert, followed by the Council of the University
and the entire Faculty and Academy of Medicine, the statesmen
Meline, F allieres and Barthou, and other colleagues and friends of
the doctor. Marcel's group was represented by Antoine Bibesco,
Albufera, Baron Henri de Rothschild (who had helped to finance
Le Banquet eleven years before) and Mathieu de Noailles. Marie
Nordlinger was present, and remembered the frosty morning sun-
light, and Marcel in full mourning at Robert's side, tottering with
grief and fatigue. The farewell speech over Dr Proust's grave at
Pere La Chaise was delivered by Professor Debove, doyen of the
Faculty of Medicine. "He was sceptic enough to be indulgent to
people who left what we like to believe is the path of virtue,
epicurean enough to enjoy life without taking the petty miseries
of human existence too tragically, and stoic enough to face death
without flinching," said Professor Debove rather finely.
Montesquiou, Mme de N oailles, her sister the Princesse de
Chimay, Robert Dreyfus and many others wrote charming
letters of sympathy. Proust noticed, without surprise, that his
mother seemed her usual energetic self, apparently unchanged
since the last day, only a week before, when her husband had still
appeared strong and well. 'But I know the depth and violence
and duration of the drama that is going on inside her,' he told
1 Proust used the circumstances of his father's illness for the Narrator·s
grandmother's stroke in the public lavatory at the Champs-Ely .. !es, and the
words uForgive me for waking you," for the Narrator's mother when she
calls him (II, 335) to witness the grandmother's death-agony.