Chapter 7THE STUDENT IN SOCIETYO
N 20 November 1890, soon after his unwilling release from
the army, Proust enrolled as a student in the F aculte de
Droit at the Sorbonne. By way of having two strings to his bow
he also joined the Ecole des Sciences Politiques: at the end of his
three years as a student, he thought, he would at least have the
choice between two equally uninviting careers, the law and the
diplomatic service. Among his fellow-students were Robert de
Billy, Gabriel Trarieux, who became a symbolist poet, and Jean
Boissonnas, a future ambassador. He listened with respect to the
lectures of the distinguished historians, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu
and Alhert Sorel, and of the philosophers Paul Desjardins and
Henri Bergson. Bergson became his cousin-in-Iaw when he
married a niece ofMme Proust, Mile Neuburger, in 1892. For the
platitudes of Comte Alhert Vandal, however, he felt only amused
contempt: the object of his course, it seemed, was to teach the
budding diplomat to think and speak like M. de Norpois. One
morning Vandal was explaining the origin of the Russo-Turkish
war of 1877. A Serb had been killed by a Turkish soldier when
trying to draw water from a forbidden well: "Gentlemen," said
Vandal, "from that well came a conflagration which set fire to the
whole of Eastern Europe." Proust suddenly began to write in his
hitherto virgin notebook, and Billy looking over read the
following doggerel:
'For exquisite Vandal's Attic salt
Who cares ada· ,n? Not Gaoriel,
Robert, or Jean, or eyen Marcel,
Though he is serious to a fault.'
Vandal had a nervous trick of suddenly closing one eye, so that
people thought he must be winking at them: a weakness shared
by Dr Cottard, who made Swann fear they might have met on
the stairs in a brothel, while Charlus suspected him of making
immoral advances.! But as the four young men strolled back from
1 I, 202.; II, 919