BALBEC AND CONDORCETthird prize for Latin and Greek. Was the other half of M.
Cucheval's prophecy fulfilled, and did this success mean the
failure of fifteen imitators?
Early in September his mother took Robert to Salies-de-Bearn,
while Marcel stayed at Auteuil. He missed little, for the weather
at Salies was unbearably hot; but during the first day of parting
he wept, and was lectured by Great-Uncle Louis, who said his
grief was 'sheer egotism'. 'This little psychological discovery
caused him such pure joy of pride and self-satisfaction that he
gave me a merciless sermon'. His grandfather wa' less severe and
only called him a 'silly boy', while his grandmother shook her
head with a smile and said: "It would take more than this to prove
that you really love your motherl" But next morning he went to
the Bois de Boulogne and laughed aloud with joy; the sun was
out, the air was still cool, and he felt an unaccustomed pleasure
in breathing and walking, just as in the long-lost summer of
Augustin Thierry at IIliers. He sat on the grass by the smaller
lake, reading Le Mariage de Loti and watching the violet shadow
on the water, till the returning sunlight sparkled on lake and
leaves. At lunch he behaved particularly well, and instead of the
usual furious glares from his grandfather, there came only a mild
rebuke ("You shouldn't rub so!") when he wiped away a few last
tears with his handkerchief.
The servants, Victoire and Angelique, as he wrote to his
mother, were convinced that he had a 'little friend' who would
soon console him for her absence-and the servants were right.
During this September he was interested in a pretty Viennese girl
whom he had met at the Perrin dancing-school in the Rue de la
Victoire, not far from Condorcet. The cynicism with which he
wrote of her to Robert Dreyfus was no doubt assumed, but it
does not suggest any profound feeling or enjoyment: 'I've had
an extremely uncomplicated affair which ended very boringly in
the inevitable way, and has given birth to an absorbing liaison
that threatens to last at least a year, to the greater profit of cafe
concerts and places of that kind to which one takes that kind of
person: Perhaps the 'platonic passion for a celebrated cocotte',
which he mentions in the same letter, struck a little deeper. Her
name was Leonie Closmesnil, and he watched her every afternoon
driving along the Avenue des Acacias in the Bois, and alighting
to walk in the Tir aux Pigeons, with her characteristic lingering