À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Esquisse LXV
(Cahier 12, 122-124r)
A few days afterwards I was returning from the beach with my grandmother, quite dirty and eager not to be seen. Fortunately the people we met were friends of the magistrate who was even more badly dressed than us and we were returning in convoy when we heard the sound of an engine and we stood aside, the lady friend of the magistrate had said: "It's the Comtesse's motor car". She looked at the motor car with an air of curiosity which irritated me by adding to our mediocre appearance an air of envy for such grandeur, when my heart skipped a beat as I noticed sitting beside old Mme de Chemisey, who appeared to be fully occupied in showing her every indulgence, the beautiful Spanish girl, looking more beautiful than ever; the extraordinary impression with which she appeared before me, the very fact that she was there, that the air, the people in the street, the day suddenly took on an extraordinary value, responded by giving them a material realization of my constant thoughts, placed her, my dream, into something in real time, which caused me to feel a voluptuousness that was so profound that I forgot all about the humiliation of being seen like that; in any case she had hardly ever seen me, she had not even noticed me at the artist's studio, she would not be able to recognize me; at the same moment I saw her head begin to nod and to pour forth from her eyes and her mouth the florid blue cloudburst of a smile that fell upon me in a thousand little rivulets perfumed with her light. I asked myself who it could have been directed to and I would have been very careful to appear not to have noticed anything when, as the motor car was slowing down and turning, she passed in front of me, raised her gloved hand and waved it in a sign of friendship: "It was nice the other day at XXX's, so see you soon"; and perceiving how stupefied, confused, elated, exalted I looked, I saw that Mme de Chemisey, observing her friend's cordiality, greeted me with the same rocking of the head, mitred above her episcopal bosom and continuing her pastoral tour, she too dipped her hand that was adorned with a ring and which held out the crozier of her parasol without losing hold of her bag and her little dog, in a gesture of allegiance and benediction.
Created 09.10.19