My Years With Proust - Day 558

   "I don't mind telling you," Mme Verdurin went on, to remove his final scruples, "that I don't feel at all safe with a man like that in the house.  I know he's been involved in some nasty business and the police have their eye on him." And, as she had a certain talent for improvisation when inspired by malice, Mme Verdurin did not stop at this: "Apparently he's been in prison. Yes, yes, I've been told by people who knew all about it.  In any case I know from a person who lives on his street that you can't imagine the ruffians he brings to his house."  And as Brichot, who often went to the Barton's, began to protest, Mme Verdurin, growing more and more animated, exclaimed: "But I assure you!  You can take my word for it," and expression with which she habitually sought to give weight to an assertion flung out more or less an random.  "He'll be found murdered in his bed one of these days, as those people always are.  It may not quite come to that, perhaps, because he's in the clutches of that Jupien whom he had the impudence to send to me and who's an ex-convict - yes, really, I know it for a positive fact.  He has a hold on him because of some letters which are perfectly dreadful, it seems.  I got it from somebody who has seen them and who told me: 'You'd be sick on the spot if you saw them' That's how Jupien gets him to toe the line and makes him cough up all the money he wants.  I'd sooner die than live in the state of terror Charlus lives in.  In any case, if Morel's family decides to bring an action against him, I've no desire to be dragged in as an accessory. If he goes on, it will be at his own risk, but I shall have done my duty.  What is one to do?  It's no joke, I can tell you."

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 282-283

I don't have anything particularly profound to add to this passage, although, truthfully, do I ever?  Mainly I wanted to include it because it brings us back to certain hints that Proust had made earlier about the eventual fate of Baron de Charlus.  This doesn't tell us anything in particular, but earlier I proposed that maybe the Baron was getting indiscreet in his homosexual dalliances and that it would come back to haunt him; at least that seemed to be what Proust was suggesting.  However, it's difficult in this passage to determine how much of this story is true and how much of it is Mme Verdurin in a lather, because, as Proust informs us, "she had a certain talent for improvisation when inspired by malice."  I've known lots of people, and have worked for some, who would say something, sometimes out of malice and sometimes out of necessity, which would through the retelling suddenly take on Quranic veracity.  It sounds like Mme Verdurin is one of those characters, who seem to do far more harm than can be logically explained.  As the tells the story it get more and more wildly extravagant, and one wonders the nature of the initial germ of truth. Although, to be fair, the Baron led the very wild life and was increasingly sloppy in his efforts to cover his tracks.