In Search of Lost Time

kind of social intercourse was fatal to me and that I was “worthy of better things.” Then, clasping me by the hand, with the sentimentality of a drunkard, albeit his drunkenness was purely nervous: “Believe me,” he said, “and may the black Ker seize me this instant and bear me across the portals of Hades, hateful to men, if yesterday, when I thought of you, of Combray, of my boundless affection for you, of afternoon hours in class which you do not even remember, I did not lie awake weeping all night long. Yes, all night long, I swear it, and alas, I know⁠—for I know the human soul⁠—you will not believe me.” I did indeed “not believe” him, and to his words which, I felt, he was making up on the spur of the moment, and expanding as he went on, his swearing “by Ker” added no great weight, the Hellenic cult being in Bloch purely literary. Besides, whenever he began to grow sentimental and wished his hearer to grow sentimental over a falsehood, he would say: “I swear it,” more for the hysterical satisfaction of lying than to make people think that he was speaking the truth. I did not believe what he was saying, but I bore him no ill-will for that, for I had inherited from my mother and grandmother their incapacity for resentment even of far worse offenders, and their habit of never condemning anyone.

Besides, he was not altogether a bad youth, this Bloch; he could be, and was at times quite charming. And now that the race of Combray, the race from which sprang creatures absolutely unspoiled like my grandmother and mother, seems almost extinct, as I have hardly any choice now save between honest brutes, insensible and loyal, in whom the mere sound of their voices shows at once that they take absolutely no interest in one’s life⁠—and another kind of men who so long as they are with one understand one, cherish one, grow sentimental even to tears, take their revenge a few hours later by making some cruel joke at one’s expense, but return to one, always just as comprehending, as charming, as closely assimilated, for the moment, to oneself, I think that it is of this latter sort that I prefer if not the moral worth at any rate the society.

“You cannot imagine my grief when I think of you,” Bloch went on. “When you come to think of it, it is a rather Jewish side of my nature,” he added ironically, contracting his pupils as though he had to prepare for the microscope an infinitesimal quantity of “Jewish blood,” and as might (but never would) have said a great French noble who among his ancestors, all Christian, might nevertheless have included Samuel Bernard, or further still, the Blessed Virgin from whom, it is said, the Lévy family claim descent, “coming out. I rather like,” he continued, “to find room among my feelings for the share (not that it is more than a very tiny share) which may be ascribed to my Jewish origin.” He made this statement because it seemed to him at once clever and courageous to speak the truth about his race, a truth which at the same time he managed to water down to a remarkable extent, like misers who decide to pay their debts but have not the courage to pay more than half. This kind of deceit which consists in having the boldness to proclaim the truth, but only after mixing with it an ample measure of lies which falsify it, is commoner than people think, and even among those who do not habitually practise it certain crises in life, especially those in which love is at stake, give them an opportunity of taking to it.

All these confidential diatribes by Bloch to Saint-Loup against me and to me against Saint-Loup ended in an invitation to dinner. I am by no means sure that he did not first make an attempt to secure Saint-Loup by himself. It would have been so like Bloch to do so that probably he did; but if so success did not crown his effort, for it was to myself and Saint-Loup that Bloch said one day: “Dear master, and you, O horseman beloved of Ares, de Saint-Loup-en-Bray, tamer of horses, since I have encountered you by the shore of Amphitrite, resounding with foam, hard by the tents of the swift-shipped Méniers, will both of you come to dinner any day this week with my illustrious sire, of blameless heart?” He proffered this invitation because he desired to attach himself more closely to Saint-Loup who would, he hoped, secure him the right of entry into aristocratic circles. Formed by me for myself, this ambition would have seemed to Bloch the mark of the most hideous snobbishness, quite in keeping with the opinion that he already held of a whole side of my nature which he did not regard⁠—or at least had not hitherto regarded⁠—as its most important side; but the same ambition in himself seemed to him the proof of a finely developed curiosity in a mind anxious to carry out certain social explorations from which he might perhaps glean some literary benefit. M. Bloch senior, when his son had told him that he was going to bring one of his friends in to dinner, and had in a sarcastic but satisfied tone enunciated the name and title of that friend: “The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray,” had been thrown into great commotion. “The Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray! I’ll be jiggered!” he had exclaimed, using the oath which was with him the strongest indication of social deference. And he cast at a son capable of having formed such an acquaintance an admiring glance which seemed to say: “Really, it is astounding. Can this prodigy be indeed a child of mine?” which gave my friend as much pleasure as if his monthly allowance had been increased by fifty francs. For Bloch was not in his element