The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust William C. Carter

Author:Marcel Proust,William C. Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

And then it had ended. I had given up my morning walks, and with so little difficulty that I thought myself justified in the prophecy (which we will see was to prove false later on) that I would easily grow accustomed in the course of my life to no longer see a woman. And when, shortly afterward, Françoise had reported to me that Jupien, eager to enlarge his business, was looking for a shop in the neighborhood, wishing to find one for him (quite happy, moreover, when strolling along a street, which already from my bed I had heard luminously vociferous like a peopled beach, to see behind the raised iron shutters of the dairy shops the young milkmaids with their white sleeves), I had been able to begin these outings again. Nor did I feel the slightest constraint; for I was conscious that I was no longer going out with the object of seeing Mme de Guermantes; much as a married woman who takes endless precautions so long as she has a lover, from the day she has broken with him leaves his letters lying about, at the risk of disclosing to her husband an infidelity that ceased to alarm her the moment she ceased to be guilty of it.

What troubled me now was the discovery that almost every house sheltered some unhappy person. In one the wife was always in tears because her husband was unfaithful to her. In the next it was the other way around. In another a hardworking mother, beaten black and blue by a drunkard son, was trying to conceal her sufferings from the eyes of the neighbors. Quite half of the human race was in tears. And when I came to know the people who composed it, I saw that they were so exasperating that I asked myself whether it might not be the adulterous husband and wife (who were so simply because their lawful happiness had been denied them, and showed themselves charming and loyal to everyone but their respective wife and husband) who were in the right. Presently I ceased to have even the excuse of being useful to Jupien for continuing my morning peregrinations. For we learned that the cabinetmaker in our courtyard, whose workrooms were separated from Jupien’s shop only by the flimsiest of partitions, was shortly to be “given notice” by the duke’s agent because his hammering made too much noise. Jupien could have hoped for nothing better; the workrooms had a basement for storing timber, which communicated with our cellars. He could keep his coal there, he could knock down the partition, and would then have one huge shop. However, Jupien, finding the rent that M. de Guermantes was asking him exorbitant, was having the premises inspected in the hope that, discouraged by his failure to find a tenant, the duke would resign himself to accepting a lower offer. Françoise, noticing that, even at an hour when no prospective tenant was likely to call, the concierge left

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