My Years With Proust - Day 425

   "Do you intend to remain long on this coast?" Mme Verdurin asked M. de Charlus, in whom she foresaw an addition to the faithful and trembled lest he should be returning too soon to Paris.

   "Goodness me, one never knows," replied M. de Charlus in a nasal drawl.  "I should like to stay until the end of September."

   "You are quite right," said Mme Verdurin; "that's when we get splendid storms at sea."

   "To tell you the truth, that is not what would influence me.  I have for some time past unduly neglected the Archangel Michael, my patron saint, and I should like to make amends to him by staying for his feast, on the 29th of September, at the Abbey on the Mount."

   "You take an interest in all that sort of thing?" asked Mme Verdurin, who might perhaps have succeeded in hushing the voice of her outraged anti-clericalism had she not been afraid that so long an expedition might make the violinist and the Barton "defect" for forty-eight hours.

   "You are perhaps afflicted with intermittent deafness," M. de Charlus replied insolently.  "I had told you that Saint Michael is one of my glorious patrons." Then, smiling with a benevolent ecstasy, his eyes gazing into the distance, his voice reinforced by an exaltation which seemed now to be not merely aesthetic but religious: "It is so beautiful at the Offertory when Michael stands erect by the altar, in a white robe, swinging a golden censer heaped so high with perfumes that the fragrance of them mounts up to God."

   "We might go there in a party," suggest Mme Verdurin, notwithstanding her horror of the clergy.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 989

M. de Charlus and Mme Verdurin are discussing his travel plans.  While I like the subtle Proustian ironic juxtoposition of M. de Charlus discussing his faith with moments such as Mme Verdurin considering M. de Charlus to be a member of "the faithful," although in this case a social one, and the mention of "splendid storms at sea," I think I mainly included this passage because it somehow seems to relate to my last post about the trip to the masjid.  When I was considering bringing the students I thought there might be two very different students who might kick back a bit - students who were remarkably religious but tied to a different faith or students who were passionately atheistic (and, truthfully, I was more worried about the latter than the former).  However, in some ways both ends of the spectrum can have something in common: intolerance of other ideas.  We discussed Nasr's idea of a "secular fundamentalist" before, and I figured this is what I might run into on the proposed masjid trip.  Happily, the students were excited, or at least accepting, of the opportunity, which I will attribute to the wonderfully tolerant nature of life in Vermont.