Le Côté de Guermantes
Esquisse XXIV
(Cahier 14, 86v)
A few lines earlier in the carriage
On two or three occasions in our carriage my grandmother was stricken
with nausea. We had to stop the carriage, she did not have enough time to
go back to the Champs-Élysées nor to return home. I gave her my
handkerchief. On the third occasion she said to me: "I am so sorry for the
trouble I'm causing my poor little one, you must forgive me." At which
point I felt an impulse that would fill me with shame and horror every
time I thought back about it, I made the polite but smilingly disdainful
gesture of a man who feels his own importance - had I not just had an
article published and was I not looked upon with favour in the eyes of the
Guermantes' set? - yet despite that I was like a man who was happy to
perform a service however beneath him it was, yes, who was quite happy to
do so but at the same time made sure you understood the price of such a
service. What did it matter that through imagination I had taken on within
myself the most sublime sentiments in the world if the reflex that
resulted from that appeal to reality had been this ignoble and mean
response which gave every appearance of an admission that it was an
irritation, an irritation that was beneath me, but that I was fulfilling
willingly and without any bad grace?
Created 19.01.21