Some time later, I went to spend a few days at Tansonville. This excursion was something of an inconvenience, for I was keeping a girl in Paris who slept in a bachelor flat which I had rented. As other people need the aroma of forests or the ripple of a lake, so I needed her sleep by my side during the night and, by day, to have her always by my side in the carriage. For even if one love has passed into oblivion, it may determine the form of the love that is to follow it. Already, even in the midst of the previous love, daily habits existed, the origin of which we did not ourselves remember; perhaps it was a moment of anguish early on that had made us passionately desire, then permanently adopt, like customs the meaning of which has been forgotten, the habit of those homeward drives to the beloved's door, or her resistance in our home, our presence or the presence of someone we trust during all her outings. All these habits, which are like great uniform high-roads along which our love passes daily and which were forged long ago in the volcanic fire of an ardent emotion, nevertheless survive the woman, survive even the memory of the woman. They become the pattern, if not of all our loves, at least of certain of our loves which alternate with the others. And thus my home had demanded, in memory of a forgotten Albertine, the presence of my mistress of the moment whom I concealed from visitors and who filled my life as Albertine had filled it in the past. And in order to go to Tansonville I had to obtain her consent to being looked after for a few days by one of my friends who did not care for women. But I had heard that Gilberte was unhappy, because Robert was unfaithful to her, though not in the fashion which everyone believed, which perhaps she herself still believed, which in any case she alleged. A belief that could be explained by pride, by the desire to hoodwink other people and to hoodwink oneself, not to mention the imperfect knowledge of infidelities which is all that betrayed spouses ever acquire, all the more so as Robert, a true nephew of M. de Charlus, went about openly with women whom he compromised, whom the world believed and whom Gilberte on the whole believed to be his mistresses. It was even thought in society that he was too barefaced, never stirring, at a party, from the side of some woman whom he afterwards accompanied home, leaving Mme de Saint-Loup to return as best she could. Anyone who had said that the other woman whom he compromised thus was not really his mistress would have been regarded as a fool, incapable of seeing what was staring him in the face; but I had been pointed, alas, in the direction of the truth, a truth which caused me infinite distress, by a few words let fall by Jupien. A few months before my visit to Tansonville I had gone to acquire after M. de Charlus, in whom certain cardiac symptoms had been causing his friends great anxiety, and having mentioned to Jupien, whom I found alone, some love-letters addressed to Robert and sign Bobette which Mme de Saint-Loup had discovered, I was stupefied to learn from the Baron's former factorum that the person who used the signature Bobette was none other than the violinist who had played so important a part in M. de Charlus's life.
Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 694-695
Much earlier in Remembrance of Things Past Proust had talked of the dangers of habit, which is ironic if you think about his later life and how he lived his life in an endless loop of hiding out in his apartment during the day and writing all night and never seeing anyone except in the middle of the night when we would walk to a local cafe. His entire life was dictated by habit. To be fair, he was rushing against death to finish his life's work, and maybe I need to aspire to some measure of that habit so I wouldn't waste so much of my dwindling time. I would argue that, in addition, women were a habit for him. As he admits, "For even if one love has passed into oblivion, it may determine the form of the love that is to follow it." His trip to Tansonville threw his schedule for a loop, and he was "keeping a girl in Paris" and he, after failing to arrange for her to come along, had to arrange for someone to look after her: "And in order to go to Tansonville I had to obtain her consent to being looked after for a few days by one of my friends who did not care for women." He needed her to sleep next to him and he needed to have her ride in the carriage next to him, and apparently he also needed, as he had with Albertine, to control her. As usual, Proust is spot on in his observation that the love affair that we just had shapes the ones to follow, for good or bad.
In this passage we also learn that Gilberte and Robert de Saint-Loup are already unhappy, which helps explain her being drawn back into Marcel's orbit. The popular perception is that Robert is sleeping many women, but instead Marcel learns that his friend Robert was "a true nephew of M. de Charlus," meaning, of course, that he was actually gay. He disguised his love affairs with many men, including Morel who is apparently sleeping with everyone in Remembrance of Things Past, by using a series of women as beards. Marcel reports that the news caused him "infinite distress," which I would theorize was because he wanted Robert to himself, both emotionally and sexually.
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