My Year With Proust - Day 330

   While, before she had even left the entrance hall, I was talking to Mme de Guermantes, I could hear a voice of a sort which henceforth I was able to identify without the least possibility of effort.  It was, in this particular instance, the voice of M. de Vaugoubert talking to M. de Charlus.  A skilled physician need not even make his patient unbutton his shirt, nor listen to his breathing - the sound of his voice is enough.  How often, in time to come, was my ear to be caught in a drawing-room by the intonation or laughter of some man whose artificial voice, for all that he was reproducing exactly the language of his profession or the manners of his class, affecting a stern aloofness or a coarse familiarity, was enough to indicate "He is a Charlus" to my trained ear, like the note of a pitch-fork!  At that moment the entire staff of one of the embassies went past, pausing to greet M. de Charlus.  For all that my discovery of the sort of malady in question dated only from that afternoon (when I had surprised M. de Charlus with Jupien) I should have had no need to ask questions or to sound the chest before giving a diagnosis.  But M. de Vaugoubert, when talking to M. de Charlus, appeared uncertain.  And yet he should have known where he stood after the doubts of his adolescence.  The invert believes himself to be the only one of his kind in the universe; it is only in later years that he imagines - another exaggeration - that the unique exception is the normal man.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 688-689

Proust revisits the theme of the loneliness and alienation that homosexuals felt in society at that time.  He suggests, "The invert believes himself to be the only one of his kind in the universe. . ."  However, he then writes that, " . . it is only in later years that he imagines - another exaggeration - that the unique exception is the normal man."  Clearly the actual number is somewhere between one and the universe, and through a process of maturation and a Hegelian dialectic swing we arrive at the actual number.  But, how does one arrive at that number?  Proust implies that as he grew older, and especially once he stumbled across the assignation between M. de Charlus and Jupien, that he could just tell, even when that person was trying "to pass" as the "normal man."  He continues, "How often, in time to come, was my ear to be caught in a drawing-room by the intonation or laughter of some man whose artificial voice, for all that he was reproducing exactly the language of his profession or the manners of his class, affecting a stern aloofness or a coarse familiarity, was enough to indicate 'He is a Charlus' to my trained ear, like the note of a pitch-fork!"  A conversation between M. de Vaugeoubert and M. de Charlus provides the evidence for Proust's analysis, with M. de Vaugoubert being another "Charlus" wondering about the proclivities of the Baron.  "But M. de Vaugoubert, when talking to M. de Charlus, appeared uncertain.  And yet he should have known where he stood after the doubts of his adolescence."  We take a step back from the philosophical and focus in on the personal and the painful.  How does one find companionship and common ground in a cold world, with the decision having profound negative consequences?