I touched my hat lightly and the people in the room, without rising to their feet, replied more or less civilly to the greeting. “Can you tell me who is in charge here? I should like a room and something to drink sent up to it.” “Will you wait a minute, the boss has gone out.” “There’s the director, he’s upstairs,” suggested one of the men who had taken part in the conversation. “But you know he can’t be disturbed.” “Do you think they will give me a room?” “Expect so.” “43 must be free,” said the young man who was sure he would not be killed because he was twenty-two years old. And he moved a little way along the sofa to make room for me. “Suppose we open the window a bit, you can cut the smoke with a knife in here!” said the airman; and indeed they all had their pipe or their cigarette. “Yes, but in that case close the shutters first, you know it’s forbidden to show any light because of the Zeppelins.” “We’ve finished with the Zeppelins. There’s even been something in the papers about their having all been shot down.” “We’ve finished with this, we’ve finished with that, what d’you know about it? When you’ve done fifteen months at the front, as I have, and shot down your fifth Boche aeroplane, you’ll be able to talk. What d’you want to believe the papers for? They were over Compiègne yesterday, they killed a mother and two children.” “A mother and two children!” said the young man who hoped not to be killed, with blazing eyes and a look of profound compassion upon his energetic and open countenance, which I found very likeable. “There’s been no news of big Julot lately. His ‘godmother’ hasn’t had a letter from him for eight days, and it’s the first time he’s been so long without writing.” “Who is she, his ‘godmother’?” “The woman who looks after the toilets just beyond the Olympia.” “Do they sleep together?” “What an idea! She’s a married woman, she couldn’t be more respectable. She sends him money every week out of pure kindness of heart. She’s a real good sort.” “Do you know him then, big Julot?” “Do I know him!” retorted scornfully the young man of twenty-two. “He’s a close friend of mine and one of the best. There’s not many I think as highly of as I do of him: a real pal, always ready to do you a good turn. Yes, it would be a catastrophe all right if anything had happened to him.” Someone proposed a game of dice and, from the feverish haste with which the young man of twenty-two shook them and cried out the results, with his eyes starting out of his head, it was easy to see that he had the gambler’s temperament. I did not quite catch the next remark that someone made to him, but he exclaimed with a note of profound pity in his voice: “Julot a ponce! You mean he says he’s a ponce. But he’s no more a ponce than I am. I’ve seen him with my own eyes paying his woman, yes, paying her. That’s to say, I don’t say Jeanne l’Algérienne didn’t give him a little something now and then, but it was never more than five francs, and what’s that from a woman in a brothel earning more than fifty francs a day? A present of five francs! Some men are just too stupid to live. And now she’s at the front, well, her life may be hard, I grant you, but she can earn as much as she wants—and she sends him nothing. Bah, that chap a ponce? There’s plenty who could call themselves a ponce at that rate. Not only is he not a ponce, in my opinion he’s an imbecile.” The oldest of the group, whom the boss had no doubt for that reason put in charge of the others, with instructions to make them behave with a certain restraint, had been to the lavatory for a moment and heard only the end of this conversation. But he could not help looking in my direction and seemed visibly upset at the impression such talk must have made on me. Without addressing himself specially to the young man of twenty-two, though it was he who had been expounding this theory of venal love, he said, in a general manner: “You’re talking too much and too loud, the window is open, there are people asleep at this hour. You know quite well that if the boss came back and heard you talking like that, he wouldn’t be at all pleased.”
At that very moment the door was heard to open and everyone was silent, thinking it was the boss, but it was only a foreign chauffeur who was welcomed as an old friend by everybody in the room. But seeing a magnificent watchchain displayed upon the chauffeur’s jacket, the young man of twenty-two threw him a questioning and amused glance, followed by a frown and a severe wink in my direction. I understood that the first look meant: “What’s that, did you steal it? My congratulations.” And the second: “Don’t say anything, because of this fellow we don’t know.” Suddenly the boss came in, carrying several yards of heavy iron chains—sufficient to secure quite a number of convicts—and sweating. “What a weight!” he said. “If you weren’t all so idle, I shouldn’t be obliged to fetch them myself.” I told him that I wanted a room. “Just for a few hours. I can’t find a cab and I am rather unwell. But I should like something to drink sent up.” “Pierrot, go and fetch some cassis from the cellar and tell them to get No. 43 ready. There’s 7 ringing again. They say they’re ill. Ill my foot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been doping themselves, they look half cracked, it’s time they were shown the door. Has anybody put a pair of sheets in 22? Good! There goes 7 again, run and see what it is. Well, Maurice, what are you standing there for? You know someone’s waiting for you, go up to 14b. And get a move on.” And Maurice hurried out after the boss, who seemed a little annoyed that I had seen his chains and disappeared carrying them with him. “How is it you’re so late?” the young man of twenty-two asked the chauffeur. “What do you mean, late? I’m an hour early. But it’s too hot in the streets. My appointment’s not till midnight.” “Who have you come for then?” “Pretty Pamela,” said the dark-skinned chauffeur, whose laugh uncovered a set of fine white teeth. “Ah!” said the young man of twenty-two.
Presently I was taken up to Room 43, but it was so unpleasantly stuffy and my curiosity was so great that, having drunk my cassis, I started to go downstairs again, then, changing my mind, turned round and went up past the floor of Room 43 to the top of the building. Suddenly from a room situated by itself at the end of a corridor, I thought I heard stifled groans. I walked rapidly towards the sounds and put my ear to the door. “I beseech you, mercy, have pity, untie me, don’t beat me so hard,” said a voice. “I kiss your feet, I abase myself, I promise not to offend again. Have pity on me.” “No, you filthy brute,” replied another voice, “and if you yell and drag yourself about on your knees like that, you’ll be tied to the bed, no mercy for you,” and I heard the noise of the crack of a whip, which I guessed to be reinforced with nails, for it was followed by cries of pain. At this moment I noticed that there was a small oval window opening from the room on to the corridor and that the curtain had not been drawn across it; stealthily in the darkness I crept as far as this window and there in the room, chained to a bed like Prometheus to his rock, receiving the blows that Maurice rained upon him with a whip which was in fact studded with nails, I saw, with blood already flowing from him and covered with bruises which proved that the chastisement was not taking place for the first time—I saw before me M. de Charlus.
Suddenly the door opened and a man came in who fortunately did not see me. It was Jupien. He went up to the Baron with an air of respect and a smile of understanding: “Well, you don’t need me, do you?” The Baron asked Jupien to send Maurice out of the room for a moment. Jupien did so with perfect unconcern. “We can’t be heard, can we?” said the Baron to Jupien, who assured him that this was the case. The Baron knew that Jupien, with an intelligence worthy of a man of letters, was yet quite lacking in practical sense and constantly talked about people in their presence with innuendoes which deceived nobody and nicknames which everybody understood.
“Just a second,” interrupted Jupien, who had heard a bell ring in Room No. 3. It was a deputy of the Liberal Action party, who was about to leave. Jupien did not need to look at the bell-board, for he recognised the man’s ring. Indeed the deputy came every day after lunch, but today he had been obliged to re-arrange his timetable, for at twelve o’clock he had given away his daughter in marriage at the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot. So he had come in the eveni
ng but was anxious to leave early on account of his wife, who very easily became nervous if he was late in getting home, particularly in these days of bombardment. Jupien always liked to accompany him downstairs in order to show his deference for the status of “honourable,” and in this he was quite disinterested. For although this deputy (who repudiated the exaggerations of L’Action Française and would in any case have been incapable of understanding a line of Charles Maurras or Léon Daudet) stood well with the ministers, whom he flattered by inviting them to his shooting-parties, Jupien would not have dared to ask him for the slightest support in his difficulties with the police. He knew that, had he ventured to mention that subject to the affluent and apprehensive legislator, he would not have saved himself even the most harmless “raid” but would immediately have lost the most generous of his clients. After having escorted the deputy as far as the door, from which he set off with his hat pulled down over his eyes and his collar turned up and with a rapid gliding movement not unlike the style of his electoral manifestos, by which devices he hoped to render his face invisible, Jupien went upstairs again to M. de Charlus. “It was Monsieur Eugène,” he said to him. In Jupien’s establishment, as in a sanatorium, people were referred to only by their Christian names, though their real names, either to satisfy the curiosity of the visitor or to enhance the prestige of the house, were invariably added in a whisper. Sometimes, however, Jupien was unaware of the real identity of a client and imagined and said that he was some well-known financier or nobleman or artist—fleeting errors not without charm for the man to whom the wrong name was attached—and in the end had to resign himself to the idea that he still did not know who Monsieur Victor was. Sometimes too, to please the Baron, he was in the habit of inverting the procedure that is customary on certain social occasions (“Let me introduce you to M. Lebrun,” then a whisper: “He wants to be called M. Lebrun but he is really Grand Duke X———— of Russia”). Jupien on the other hand felt that it was not quite sufficient to introduce M. de Charlus to a young milkman. He would murmur to him with a wink: “He’s a milkman but he’s also one of the most dangerous thugs in Belleville” (and it was with a superbly salacious note in his voice that Jupien uttered the word “thug”). And as if this recommendation were not sufficient, he would try to add one or two further “citations.” “He has had several convictions for theft and burglary, he was in Fresnes for assaulting” (the same salacious note in his voice) “and practically murdering people in the street, and he’s been in a punishment battalion in Africa. He killed his sergeant.”
The Baron was slightly cross with Jupien for his lack of prudence, for he knew that in this house which he had instructed his factotum to purchase for him and to manage through a subordinate, everybody, thanks to the blunders of Mile d’Oloron’s uncle, was more or less aware of his identity and his name (many, however, thought that it was not a title but a nickname, and mispronounced and distorted it, so that their own stupidity and not the discretion of Jupien had served to protect the Baron). But he found it simpler to let himself be reassured by Jupien’s assurances, and now, relieved to know that they could not be heard, he said to him: “I did not want to speak in front of that boy, who is very nice and does his best. But I don’t find him sufficiently brutal. He has a charming face, but when he calls me a filthy brute he might be just repeating a lesson.” “I assure you, nobody has said a word to him,” replied Jupien, without perceiving how improbable this statement was. “And besides, he was involved in the murder of a concierge in La Villette.” “Ah! that is extremely interesting,” said the Baron with a smile. “But I’ll tell you who I have here: the killer of oxen, the man of the slaughter-houses, who is so like this boy; he happened to be passing. Would you care to try him?” “Yes, certainly I should.” I saw the man of the slaughterhouses enter the room; he was indeed a little like Maurice, but—and this was odder—they both had in them something of a type which I had never myself consciously observed in Morel’s face but which I now clearly saw to exist there; they bore a resemblance, if not to Morel as I had seen him, at least to a certain countenance which eyes seeing Morel otherwise than I did might have constructed out of his features. No sooner had I, out of features borrowed from my recollections of Morel, privately made for myself this rough model of what he might represent to somebody else, than I realised that the two young men, one of whom was a jeweller’s assistant while the other worked in a hotel, were in a vague way substitutes for Morel. Was I to conclude that M. de Charlus, at least in a certain aspect of his loves, was always faithful to a particular type and that the desire which had made him select these two young men one after the other was the identical desire which had made him accost Morel on the platform at Doncières station; that all three resembled a little the ephebe whose form, engraved in the sapphire-like eyes of M. de Charlus, gave to his glance that strange quality which had alarmed me the first day at Balbec? Or that, his love for Morel having modified the type which he pursued, to console himself for Morel’s absence he sought men who resembled him? A third hypothesis which occurred to me was that perhaps, in spite of appearances, there had never existed between him and Morel anything more than relations of friendship, and that M. de Charlus caused young men who resembled Morel to come to Jupien’s establishment so that he might have the illusion, while he was with them, of enjoying pleasure with Morel himself. It is true that, if one thought of everything that M. de Charlus had done for Morel, this hypothesis was bound to seem most unlikely, did one not know that love drives us not only to the greatest sacrifices on behalf of the person we love, but sometimes even to the sacrifice of our desire itself, a desire which in any case we find all the harder to gratify if the loved person is aware of the strength of our love.
Something else that makes this hypothesis less unlikely than at first sight it appears (though probably it does not correspond to the reality) lies in the nervous temperament, in the profoundly passionate character of M. de Charlus—in this resembling Saint-Loup—which in the early days of his relations with Morel might have played the same part, in a more decent and negative way, as it did at the beginning of his nephew’s relations with Rachel. A man’s relations with a woman whom he loves (and the same may be true of love for a young man) may remain platonic for a reason which is neither the woman’s virtue nor a lack of sensuality in the love which she inspires. The reason may be that the lover, too impatient from the very excess of his love, does not know how to wait with a sufficient show of indifference for the moment when he will obtain what he desires. Over and over again he returns to the charge, he writes incessantly to the woman, he tries constantly to see her, she refuses, he is in despair. Henceforth she understands that if she accords him her company, her friendship, this happiness in itself will seem so considerable to the man who thought he had lost it, that she may spare herself the trouble of giving him anything more and may take advantage of a moment when he can no longer endure not to see her, when he is determined at any price to end the war, to impose upon him a peace of which the first condition will be the platonic nature of their relations. In any case, during the period which preceded this treaty, the lover, always anxious, hoping all the time for a letter, a glance, has given up thinking of physical possession, which at first had been the object of the desire which had tormented him; that desire has withered away with waiting and its place has been taken by needs of another order, needs which can, however, if they remain unsatisfied, cause him yet greater pain. So that the pleasure which at the beginning he had hoped to obtain from caresses, he receives later not in its natural form but instead from friendly words, from mere promises of the loved woman’s presence, which after the effects of uncertainty—sometimes after a single look, black with a heavy cloud of disdain, which has withdrawn her to such a distance that he thinks he will never see her again—bring with them a delicious relief from tension. A woman divines these things and knows that she can afford the luxury of never giving herself to a man who, because he has been too agitated to c
onceal it during the first few days, has allowed her to become aware of his incurable desire for her. She is only too pleased to receive, without giving anything in return, much more than she is accustomed to be given when she gives herself. Men with a nervous temperament believe therefore in the virtue of their idol. And the halo which they place round her is a product, but as we have seen an indirect one, of their excessive love. The woman then finds herself very much in the position—though she of course is conscious, while they are not—of those unwittingly crafty drugs like sleeping-draughts and morphine. It is not to the people to whom they bring the pleasure of sleep or a genuine well-being that these drugs are an absolute necessity; it is not by such people as these that they would be bought at any price, bartered against all the sick man’s possessions, but by that other class of sick men (who may perhaps be the same individuals but become different with the passage of a few years), those whom the medicine does not send to sleep, to whom it gives no thrill of pleasure, but who, so long as they are without it, are prey to an agitation which at any price, even the price of their own death, they need desperately to end.