My Year With Proust - Day 296

   This scene was not, however, positively comic; it was stamped with a strangeness, or if you like a naturalness, the beauty of which was steadily increased.  Try as M. de Charlus might to assume a detached air, to let his eyelids nonchalantly droop, every now and then he raised them, and at such moments turned on Jupien an attentive gaze.  But (doubtless because he felt that such a scene could not be prolonged indefinitely in this place, whether for reasons which we shall understand later on, or possibly from that feeling of the brevity of all things which makes us determine that every blow must strike home, and renders so moving the spectacle of every kind of love), each time that M. de Charlus looked at Jupien, he took care that his glance should be accompanied by a word, which made it infinitely unlike the glances we usually direct at a person whom we scarcely know or do not know at all; he stared at Jupien with the peculiar fixity of the person who is about to say to you: "Excuse my taking the liberty, but you have a long white thread hanging down your back," or else: "Surely I can't be mistaken, you come from Zurich too; I'm certain I must have seen yo there often at the antique dealer's."

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 627

When reading Remembrance of Things Past it is sometimes difficult to remember that it was written a century ago.  Sometimes his views of certain human acts seem a tad old-fashioned, but beneath it is always a very modern understanding of the beauty of human nature.  When discussing the scene between Jupian and M. de Charlus, Proust on the one hand proposes that it was "not, however, positively comic," but then a few sentences reflects that the Baron "felt that such a scene could not be prolonged indefinitely in this place, whether for reasons which we shall understand later on, or possibly from that feeling of the brevity of all things which makes us determine that every blow must strike home, and renders so moving the spectacle of every kind of love."  Proust understand the complexity and pain and transience of love, and definitely includes the relationship between M. de Charlus and Jupien as love.