My Years With Proust - Day 453

Being in a mood not to be deprived of Morel's company that evening, he had pretended to have been informed that two officers of the regiment had spoken ill of him on connexion with the violinist and that he was going to send his seconds to call upon them.  Morel had foreseen the scandal - his life in the regiment made impossible - and had come at once.  In doing which he had not been altogether wrong.  For to make this lie more plausible, M. de Charlus had already written to two friends (one was Cottard) asking them to be his seconds.  And if the violinist had not appeared, we may be certain that, mad as he was (and in order to change his sorrow into rage), M. de Charlus would have sent them with a challenge to some officer or some other with whom it would have been relief to him to fight.  In the meantime M. de Charlus, remembering that he came of a race that was of purer blood than the House of France, told himself that it was really very good of him to make such a fuss about the son of a butler whose employer he would not have condescend to know.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1102

The Baron's charade grows both more absurd but also more serious.  Not to drag Presidential politics into this, but, as always, it's the mad cover-up for an earlier indiscretion, which might have been serious, but might also have just been spontaneously foolish (and thus utterly human).  In this case the need of M. de Charlus to control Morel is making this silly incident spin out of control and he's now dragging other into the vortex. And, if Proust is to believed, it is possible that the Baron have actually undertaken this mock duel, both to win back his beloved but also because of his own honor: "And if the violinist had not appeared, we may be certain that, mad as he was (and in order to change his sorrow into rage), M. de Charlus would have sent them with a challenge to some officer or some other with whom it would have been relief to him to fight." I'm thinking about Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book and her section on "Things That Have Lost Their Power" (which I think we've discussed before).  In addition to items like a boat that has been beached by the receding tide she also includes lovers who have stormed off, but then forced to come home with their tails between their legs because their lovers has called their bluff.  Both M. de Charlus and Morel are in the danger of being that disgraced lover in this farce.