My Year With Proust - Day 287

   "Monsieur, I swear to you that I have said nothing that could offend you."

   "And who says that I am offended?" he furiously screamed, raising himself into an erect posture on the sofa on which hitherto, he had been reclining motionless, while, as the pallid, frothing snakes twisted and stiffened in his face, his voice became alternately shrill and solemn like the deafening onrush of a storm.  (The force with which he habitually spoke, which made strangers turn round in the street, was multiplied a hundredfold, as is a musical forte if, instead of being played on the piano, it is played by an orchestra, and changed into a fortissimo as well.  M. de Charlus roared.) "Do you suppose that is is within your power to offend me?  You are evidently not aware to whom you are speaking?  Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tip of my august toes?"

   While he was speaking, my desire to persuade M. de Charlus that I had never spoken or heard anyone else speak ill of him had given place to a wild rage, provoked by the words which, to my mind, were dictated to him solely by his colossal pride.  Perhaps they were indeed the effect, in part at any rate, of this pride.  Almost all the rest sprang from a feeling of which I was then ignorant, and for which I could not therefore be blamed for not making due allowance.  Failing this unknown element, I might, had I remembered the words of Mme de Guermantes, have been tempted to assume a trace of madness in his pride, while in me there was only fury.  This fury (at the moment when M. de Charlus ceased to shout, in order to refer to his august toes, with a majesty that was accompanied by a grimace, a vomit of disgust at his obscure blasphemers), this fury could contain itself no longer.  I felt a compulsive desire to strike something, and, a lingering trace of discernment making me respect the person of a man so much older than myself, and even, in view of their dignity as works of art, the pieces of German porcelain that were grouped around him, I seized the Barton's new silk hat, clung it to the ground, trampled it, picked it up again, began blindly pulling it to pieces, wrenched off the brim, tore the crown in two, heedless of the continuing vociferations of M. de Charlus, and, crossing the room in order to leave, opened the door.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 579-580

M. de Charlus continues to rage, more and more illogically.  I have to admit that rereading this passage influenced by portrayal of Dr. Maudsley in our school performance of Bluestockings, especially the last night.  I decided to go all in and just completely lose control, although I didn't actually use the words "august toes."  Beyond that, I was in the ballpark.  However, that said, I can never maintain my anger.  I get crazy angry, but it tends to last a couple nano-seconds and then it's gone - and, like Marcel, and unlike M. de Charlus, I always take out my frustrations on inanimate objects.