My Years With Proust - Day 667

Walking close behind two zuoaves who seemed hardly to be aware of him, I noticed a tall, stout man in a soft felt hat and a long heavy overcoat, to whose purplish face I hesitated whether I should give the name of an actor or a painter, both equally notorious for innumerable sodomist scandals.  I was certain in any case that I was not acquainted with him; so I was not a little surprised, when his glance met mine, to see that he appeared to be embarrassed and deliberately stopped and came towards me like a man who wants to prove that you have not surprised him in an occupation which he would prefer to remain secret. For a second I asked myself who it was that was greeting me: it was M. de Charlus.  One may say that for him the evolution of his malady or the revolution of his vice had reached the extreme point at which thee tiny original personality of the individual, the specific qualities he has inherited from his ancestors, are entirely eclipsed by the transit across them of some generic defect or malady which is their satellite.  M. de Charlus had travelled as far as was possible from himself, or rather he was himself but so perfectly masked by what he had become, by what belonged not to him alone but to many other inverts, that for a moment I had taken him for some other invert, as he walked behind these zouaves down the wide pavement of the boulevard, for some other invert who was not M. de Charlus, who was not a great nobleman or a man of imagination and intelligence and whose only point of resemblance to the Baron was the look that was common to them all, which in him now, at least until one had taken the trouble to observe him carefully, concealed every other quality from view.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 786-787

M. de Charlus reappears on the scene, although in an unexpected fashion.  Marcel stumbles across him along the street. The Baron has continued his decline, and Marcel also doesn't recognize him. Proust tells us, "M. de Charlus had travelled as far as was possible from himself, or rather he was himself but so perfectly masked by what he had become, by what belonged not to him alone but to many other inverts, that for a moment I had taken him for some other invert . . ."  When last we saw the Baron he was becoming increasingly indiscreet in his romantic liaisons, which, in an age not favorably disposed towards homosexuality, placed him in a delicate situation.  In Marcel's mind, this was the inevitable result of this indiscretion.  Or, as Proust writes, "One may say that for him the evolution of his malady or the revolution of his vice had reached the extreme point at which thee tiny original personality of the individual, the specific qualities he has inherited from his ancestors, are entirely eclipsed by the transit across them of some generic defect or malady which is their satellite."  Considering Proust's own sexuality it's impossible to read his descriptions of M. de Charlus and not view them as either hypocritical or biographical or self-loathing.