In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Page B

we are doing there. And when we invent the story that we have something urgent to say to his relative or friend, he assures us that nothing could be simpler, brings us into the hall and promises to send her to us in five minutes. How we love him, as at that moment I loved Françoise – the well-intentioned intermediary who with a single word has just made tolerable, human and almost propitious the unimaginable, infernal festivity into the thick of which we had been imagining that hostile, perverse and exquisite vortices of pleasure were carrying away from us and inspiring with derisive laughter the woman we love! If we are to judge by him, the relative who has come up to us and is himself also one of the initiates in the cruel mysteries, the other guests at the party cannot have anything very demoniacal about them. Those inaccessible and excruciating hours during which she was about to enjoy unknown pleasures – now, through an unhoped-for breach, we are entering them; now, one of the moments which, in succession, would have composed those hours, a moment as real as the others, perhaps even more important to us, because our mistress is more involved in it, we can picture to ourselves, we possess it, we are taking part in it, we have created it almost: the moment in which he will tell her we are here, downstairs. And no doubt the other moments of the party would not have been essentially very different from this one, would not have had anything more delectable about them that should make us suffer so, since the kind friend has said to us: ‘Why, she’ll be delighted to come down! It’ll be much nicer for her to chat with you than to be bored up there.’ Alas! Swann had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third person have no power over a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a party by someone she does not love. Often, the friend comes back down alone.
    My mother did not come, and with no consideration for my pride (which was invested in her not denying the story that she was supposed to have asked me to let her know the results of some search) asked Françoise to say these words to me: ‘There is no answer,’ words I have so often since then heard the doormen in grand hotels or the footmen in bawdy-houses bring back to some poor girl who exclaims in surprise: ‘What, he said nothing? Why, that’s impossible! Did you really give him my note? All right, I’ll go on waiting.’ And – just as she invariably assures him she does not need the extra gas-jet which the doorman wants to light for her, and remains there, hearing nothing further but the few remarks about the weather exchanged by the doorman and a lackey whom he sends off suddenly, when he notices the time, to put a customer’s drink on ice – having declined Françoise’s offer to make me some tea or to stay with me, I let her return to the servants’ hall, I went to bed and closed my eyes, trying not to hear the voices of my family, who were having their coffee in the garden. But after a few seconds, I became aware that, by writing that note to Mama, by approaching, at the risk of angering her, so close to her that I thought I could touch the moment when I would see her again, I had closed off for myself the possibility of falling asleep without seeing her again, and the beating of my heart grew more painful each minute because I was increasing my agitation by telling myself to be calm, to accept my misfortune. Suddenly my anxiety subsided, a happiness invaded me as when a powerful medicine begins to take effect and our pain vanishes: I had just formed the resolution not to continue trying to fall asleep without seeing Mama again, to kiss her whatever the cost, even though it was with the certainty of being on bad terms with her for a long time after, when she came up to bed. The calm that came with the end of my distress filled me with an extraordinary joy, quite