0072 Un jour que des réflexions de ce genre le ramenaient encore au souvenir du temps

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Un jour que des réflexions de ce genre le ramenaient encore au souvenir du temps où on lui avait parlé d’Odette comme d’une femme entretenue, et où une fois de plus il s’amusait à opposer cette personnification étrange: la femme entretenue,—chatoyant amalgame d’éléments inconnus et diaboliques, serti, comme une apparition de Gustave Moreau, de fleurs vénéneuses entrelacées à des joyaux précieux,—et cette Odette sur le visage de qui il avait vu passer les mêmes sentiments de pitié pour un malheureux, de révolte contre une injustice, de gratitude pour un bienfait, qu’il avait vu éprouver autrefois par sa propre mère, par ses amis, cette Odette dont les propos avaient si souvent trait aux choses qu’il connaissait le mieux lui-même, à ses collections, à sa chambre, à son vieux domestique, au banquier chez qui il avait ses titres, il se trouva que cette dernière image du banquier lui rappela qu’il aurait à y prendre de l’argent. En effet, si ce mois-ci il venait moins largement à l’aide d’Odette dans ses difficultés matérielles qu’il n’avait fait le mois dernier où il lui avait donné cinq mille francs, et s’il ne lui offrait pas une rivière de diamants qu’elle désirait, il ne renouvellerait pas en elle cette admiration qu’elle avait pour sa générosité, cette reconnaissance, qui le rendaient si heureux, et même il risquerait de lui faire croire que son amour pour elle, comme elle en verrait les manifestations devenir moins grandes, avait diminué. Alors, tout d’un coup, il se demanda si cela, ce n’était pas précisément l’«entretenir» (comme si, en effet, cette notion d’entretenir pouvait être extraite d’éléments non pas mystérieux ni pervers, mais appartenant au fond quotidien et privé de sa vie, tels que ce billet de mille francs, domestique et familier, déchiré et recollé, que son valet de chambre, après lui avoir payé les comptes du mois et le terme, avait serré dans le tiroir du vieux bureau où Swann l’avait repris pour l’envoyer avec quatre autres à Odette) et si on ne pouvait pas appliquer à Odette, depuis qu’il la connaissait (car il ne soupçonna pas un instant qu’elle eût jamais pu recevoir d’argent de personne avant lui), ce mot qu’il avait cru si inconciliable avec elle, de «femme entretenue». Il ne put approfondir cette idée, car un accès d’une paresse d’esprit, qui était chez lui congénitale, intermittente et providentielle, vint à ce moment éteindre toute lumière dans son intelligence, aussi brusquement que, plus tard, quand on eut installé partout l’éclairage électrique, on put couper l’électricité dans une maison. Sa pensée tâtonna un instant dans l’obscurité, il retira ses lunettes, en essuya les verres, se passa la main sur les yeux, et ne revit la lumière que quand il se retrouva en présence d’une idée toute différente, à savoir qu’il faudrait tâcher d’envoyer le mois prochain six ou sept mille francs à Odette au lieu de cinq, à cause de la surprise et de la joie que cela lui causerait.


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0072 One day, when reflections of this order had brought him

Submitted by PROUST on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 18:24.

Marcel Proust

"Remembrance of Things Past" (In Search of Lost Time),

translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)

One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to the memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of a ‘kept’ woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with contrasting that strange personification, the ‘kept’ woman—an iridescent mixture of unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered, as in some fantasy of Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers, interwoven with precious jewels—with that Odette upon whose face he had watched the passage of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer, resentment of an act of injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness, which he had seen, in earlier days, on his own mother’s face, and on the faces of friends; that Odette, whose conversation had so frequently turned on the things that he himself knew better than anyone, his collections, his room, his old servant, his banker, who kept all his title-deeds and bonds;—the thought of the banker reminded him that he must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And indeed, if, during the current month, he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in her financial difficulties than in the month before, when he had given her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering her a diamond necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her admiration for his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made him so happy, and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not precisely what was implied by ‘keeping’ a woman (as if, in fact, that idea of ‘keeping’ could be derived from elements not at all mysterious nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life, such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying the household accounts and the rent, had locked up hi a drawer in the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with four others, to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to Odette, since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that she could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title, which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of ‘kept’ woman. He could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential, happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his brain, as instantaneously as, at a later period, when electric lighting had been everywhere installed, it became possible, merely by fingering a switch, to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind fumbled, for a moment, in the darkness, he took off his spectacles, wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light until he found himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the realisation that he must endeavour, in the coming month, to send Odette six or seven thousand-franc notes instead of five, simply as a surprise for her and to give her pleasure.