My Years With Proust - Day 677

  My departure from Paris was delayed by a piece of news which caused me such grief that I was for some time rendered incapable of travelling.  This was the death of Robert de Saint-Loup, killed two days after his return to the front while covering the retreat of his men.  Never had any man felt less hatred for a nation than he (and as for the Emperor, for particular reasons, very possibly incorrect, he thought that William II had tried rather to prevent the war than to bring it about).  Nor had he hated Germanism; the last words which I had heard on his lips, six days before he died, were the opening words of  Schumann song which he had started to hum in German on my staircase, until I had made him desist because of the neighbours.  Accustomed by supreme good breeding to eliminate from his conduct all trace of apology or invective, all rhetoric, he had avoided in face of the enemy, as he had at the time of mobilisation, the actions which would have ensured his survival, through that tendency to efface himself before others of which all his behaviour was symbolic, down to his manner of coming out into the street bare-headed to close the door of my cab, every time I visited him.  I recalled his arrival the first time at Balbec, when, in an almost white suit, with his eyes greenish and mobile like the waves, he had crossed the hall adjoining the great dining-room whose windows gave on to the sea.  I recalled the very special being that he had then seemed to me to be, the being for whose friendship I had so greatly wished.  That wish had been realised beyond the limits of what I should ever have thought possible, without, however, at the time giving me more than a very slight pleasure; and then later I had come to understand the great many virtues and something else as well which lay concealed behind his elegant appearance.  All this, the good as well as the bad, he had given without counting the cost, every day, as much on the last day when he advanced to attack a trench, out of generosity and because it was his habit to place a the service of others all that he possessed, as on that evening when he had run along the backs of the seats in the restaurant in order not to disturb me.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 878-879

Marcel receives some terrible news: his long-time friend Robert de Saint-Loup was killed at the front, only a few days after taking leave of his friend.  There are many reasons, obviously, why this is terribly painful to Marcel, and one of them being that, " Never had any man felt less hatred for a nation than he (and as for the Emperor, for particular reasons, very possibly incorrect, he thought that William II had tried rather to prevent the war than to bring it about)." Robert had no hatred for the Germans (in fact, Marcel's last memory of him was Saint-Loup humming a passage from Schumann) so he didn't die fighting for a "glorious cause."  Rather, he was just doing his duty, not even in a patriotic fashion, but instead almost in a collegial way.  As we often do in horrible situations like this, Marcel reflected back on the first time he ever met Robert: "I recalled his arrival the first time at Balbec, when, in an almost white suit, with his eyes greenish and mobile like the waves, he had crossed the hall adjoining the great dining-room whose windows gave on to the sea.  I recalled the very special being that he had then seemed to me to be, the being for whose friendship I had so greatly wished."  I'm reaching the age where my friends are starting to slip away, not as dramatically as Robert de Saint-Loup, but still as sadly, and I'm increasingly left with the ghosts of first meetings.