BALBEC AND CONDORCEThis big white collar and flying cravat, as a sort of disturbed and
disturbing archangel'. At first Halevy responded to Marcel's
advances, then avoided him in alarm, only to bewilder him a
month later with a shy 'good-morning'. And his cousin Bizet was
just as bad: 'why did he say he was my friend, and then drop
me completely? What do they want?-to get rid of me, annoy
me, mystifY me, or what? And I thought they were so nice!'
In the little, artificial world of childhood and school, love and
friendship had disappointed him; but in the great real world out-
side, into which he would soon be released, perhaps love and
friendship would be great and real also. Moreover, he had begun
to see a third and last mirage of happiness from human relation-
ships, in the realm of high society where those relationships might,
it seemed, be considered and enjoyed as a work of art. In the
autumn of r888 he took his first tentative steps towards the
Guermantes Way.
He might, if he wished, have found his admission through the
ready-made connections of his father; for Dr Proust knew
politicians such as Felix Faure, diplomats such as Camille Barrere
and Gabriel Hanotaux, society physicians such as Dr Samuel
Pozzi. Marcel met Dr Pozzi at dinner with his parents when he
was only fifteen, and always remembered that his first 'dinner in
town', no doubt a year or two later, had been with Pozzi in the
Place Vendome. But such an entry would have been too slow,
humble and tainted, rather as if his Narrator had been reduced to
meeting the Duchesse through the combined good offices of Mme
Bontemps's husband, M. de Norpois and Dr Cottard. The high
society of Paris was never as exclusive as it is symbolically re-
presented in A la Recherche. Political, scientific or literary
eminence, even mere intelligence or charm, were valid passports
to the salons, and society was a career open to the talents. But
Marcel wanted the haut monde to be more exclusive than it
actually was, both to enhance its glamour and to increase his
merit in arriving there; and for both these reasons, again, he
wished to arrive suddenly and miraculously, and to be instantly
accepted. This second wish was granted to him in real life, as to
the Narrator in his novel; for Marcel was to discover that in this
life all our desires are fulfilled, on the condition that they do not
bring the happiness we expected from them.
The key to the Guermantes Way was absurdly simple: indeed,