I had in any case left my dear Albertine too long alone. "D'you know," I said to her as I climbed into the carriage, "the seaside life and the life of travel make me realise that the theatre of the world is stocked with fewer settings than actors, and with fewer actors than situations." "What makes you say that?" "Because M. de Charlus asked me just now to fetch on of his friends, whom this instant, on the platform of this station, I have just discovered to be one of my own." But as I uttered these words, I began to wonder how the Baron could have bridged the social gulf to which I had not given a thought. It occurred to me first of all that it might be through Jupien, whose niece, as the reader may remember, had seemed to become enamored of the violinist. However, what baffled me completely was that, when due to leave for Paris in five minutes, the Baron should have asked for a musical evening. But, visualising Jupien's niece again in my memory, I was beginning to think that "recognitions" might indeed express and important part of life, if one knew how to penetrate to the romantic core of things, when all of a sudden the truth flashed across my mind and I realised that I had been absurdly ingenuous. M. de Charlus had never in his life set eyes upon Morel, nor Morel upon M. de Charlus, who, dazzled but also intimidated by a solider even though he carried no weapon but a lyre, in his agitation he called up me to bring him the person whom he never suspected that I already knew. In any case, for Morel, the offer of five hundred francs must have made up for the absence of any previous relations, for I saw that they were going on talking, oblivious of the fact that they were standing close beside our train. And remembering the manner in which M. de Charlus had come up to Morel and myself, I saw at once the resemblance to certain of his relatives when they picked up a woman in the street. The desired object had merely changed sex. After a certain age, and even if we develop in quite different ways, the more we become ourselves, the more our family traits are accentuated. For Nature, even while harmoniously fashioning the design of its tapestry, breaks the monotony of the composition thanks to the variety of the faces it catches. Besides, the haughtiness with which M. de Charlus had eyed the violinist is relative, and depends upon the point of view one adopts. It would have been recognised by three out of four society people, who bowed to him, not by the prefect of police who, a few years later, was to keep him under surveillance.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 891-892
We're continuing the encounter that we started yesterday, except that we're fleshing it out a bit and getting at a bit of the backstory. In a train station M. de Charlus had sent Marcel over to contact a violinist that Marcel assumed M. de Charlus knew, only to discover that he, in fact, knew him - and only later does it occur to him that the older man didn't know him at all. Essentially, M. de Charlus was using Marcel to pimp for him. When Marcel was talking to his friend M. de Charlus suddenly bursts in and says, "I should like to listen to a little music this afternoon. I pay five hundred frances for the evening, which may perhaps be of interest to one of your friends, if you have any in the band." M. de Charlus instantly engages Morel, the violinist, in an intimate conversation, and suddenly decides to leave the train. When a flower seller interrupts them, M. de Charlus laments, "Good God, why can't she leave us alone." The use of the word "us", especially from a man as self-absorbed as M. de Charlus, tells the reader volumes.
We also have a little foreshadowing as Proust, when talking about M. de Charlus, includes the line, "It would have been recognised by three out or four society people, who bowed to him, not by the prefect of police who, a few years later, was to keep him under surveillance." Proust has devoted most of this volume of Remembrance of Things Past exploring the shadow world of the homosexual community in France at the time, but clearly there are rules and their are limits; not everyone plays by the rules of society.
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