My Years With Proust - Day 452

   "Wouldn't it be better to open it? I suspect it's something serious."

   "Not on your life.  You've no idea what lies, what internal tricks that old scoundrel gets up to.  It's a dodge to make me go and see him.  Well, I'm not going.  I want to spend the evening in peace."

   "But isn't there going to be a duel to-morrow?" I asked him, having assumed that he was in the know.

   "A duel?" he repeated with an air of stupefaction, "I never heard a word about it.  Anyhow, I don't give a damn - the dirty old beast can go and get plugged in the guts if he likes.  But wait a minute, this is interesting.  I'd better look at his letter after all.  You can tell him you left it here for me, in case I should come in."

   While Morel was speaking, I looked with amazement at the beautiful books which M. de Charlus had given him and which littered his room.  The violinist having refused to accept those labelled: "I belong to the Baron" etc., a device which he felt to be insulting to himself, as a mark of vassalage, the Baron, with the sentimental ingenuity in which his ill-starred love abounded, had substituted others, borrowed from his ancestors, but ordered from the binder according to the circumstances of a melancholy friendship. . . .

   . . . If M. de Charlus, in dashing this letter down upon paper, had seemed to be carried away by the daemon that was inspiring his flying pen, as soon as Morel had broken the seal (a leopard between two roses gules, with the motto: Atavis et armis) he began to read the letter as feverishly as M. de Charlus had written it, and over those pages covered at breakneck speed his eye ran no less swiftly than the Baron's pen.  "Good God!" he exclaimed, "this is the last straw!  But where am I to find him? Heaven only knows where he is now."

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1100-1101

Marcel delivers the hastily - well, it was eight pages, so I guess not that hastily - written note from M. de Charlus to Morel.  While the plot - that is, the Baron being involved in a duel - seems painfully foolish and patently unbelievable, it appears to have achieved its purpose as Morel, after initially feigning indifference, is immediately drawn into the adventure. Morel, in the face of the absurd news of the Baron's impending duel, nevertheless exclaims, "Good God!" he exclaimed, "this is the last straw!  But where am I to find him? Heaven only knows where he is now."  Keep in mind that this is about two minutes after he informed Marcel, "You've no idea what lies, what internal tricks that old scoundrel gets up to.  It's a dodge to make me go and see him." Every relationship has its own internal logic, and sometimes that internal logic is decidedly illogical.  One would suppose that the partnership of M. de Charlus and Morel was defined by and fueled by high drama.