My Years With Proust - Day 451

   When he had written eight pages: "May I ask you to do me a great service?" he said to me. "You will excuse my sailing this note.  But I must.  You will take a carriage, a motor-car if you can find one, to get there as quickly as possible.  You are certain to find Morel in his quarters, where he has gone to change.  Poor boy, he tried to bluster a little when we parted, but you may be sure that his heart is heavier than mine.  You will give him this note, and, if he asks you where you saw me, you will tell him that you stopped at Doncieres (which, for that matter, is the truth) to see Robert, which is not quite the truth perhaps, but that you met me with a person whom you did not know, that I seemed to be extremely angry, that you thought you heard something about sending seconds (I am in fact fighting a duel tom-morrow).  Whatever you do, don't say that I'm asking for him, don't make any effort to bring him here, but if he wishes to come with you, don't prevent him from doing so.  Go, my boy, it is for his own good, you may the means of averting a great tragedy.  While you are away, I shall write to my seconds."

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1099

Here we have one of the most absurd, and amusing, passages in Remembrance of Things Past, and one that proves, if, indeed, we needed more proof (to quote the excellent Sanford Zale), that when we are in love we are little more than idiots.  M. de Charlus and Morel have a lover's spat and the younger man leaves in a huff.  The Baron then, in a scheme worthy of an old I Love Lucy episode, pretends to be involved in an upcoming duel to get him back. I now have a plan in place for my next fight with my girlfriend.

Now, on the one hand it is pretty funny, and we'll spend the next few days revealing the almost slapstick nature of the plan, but on the other hand I have a feeling that it is going to play a role a much darker role in the Baron's future because it is bringing him more and more into the limelight (now, truthfully, I haven't read that far ahead in my note-taking reading, but I just have a feeling that this will have great ramifications).