Time Regained Volume VI

Marcel and M. Charlus walk the boulevards 

9/17/2017 Julius Young home on Oakland

“But to return to the war itself, can we say that the man who first began it was the Emperor William**? I am very doubtful about that. And if it was, what has he done that Napoleon, for instance, did not do—something that I certainly find abominable, but that I am astonished to see also inspiring such horror in those who burn incense before Napoleon, those who on the day that war was declared exclaimed like General Pau: ‘I have been waiting forty years for this day.”

**​​Wilhelm II or William II (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert von Preußen, English: Frederick William Victor Albert of Prussia; 27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe.

Acceding to the throne in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led in a matter of days to the First World War. Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview in 1908 that cost him most of his influence. [1] His leading generals, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, dictated policy during the First World War with little regard for the civilian government. An ineffective war-time leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

“madwoman came within an inch of presenting me to M. Syveton, as if I were his inferior”

Gabriel Syveton (21 February 1864 – 8 December 1904) was a French historian and politician. He was one of the founding members of the patriotic and anti-Dreyfus Ligue de la patrie française. He was elected as deputy for the Seine in 1902. He was involved in scandal when he exposed the existence of a card file compiled from Freemason reports on public officials. It listed practicing Catholics, who should be passed over for promotion. He died, apparently from suicide, the day before being required to appear in court after physically attacking the Minister of War in the Chamber of Deputies.


“We shall struggle against an implacable and cruel enemy until we have obtained peace…”

Charlus comments are: A.) war amps the economy; and B.) he cannot tell the difference between the Kaiser Wilhelm and Poincare’ who are saying the same thing.

Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré 20 August 1860 – 15 October 1934) was a French statesman who served three times as 58th Prime Minister of France, and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. He was a conservative leader, primarily committed to political and social stability.[1]

Trained in law, Poincaré was elected as a Deputy in 1887 and served in the cabinets of Dupuy and Ribot. In 1902, he co-founded the Democratic Republican Alliance, the most important centre-right party under the Third Republic, becoming Prime Minister in 1912 and President in 1913. He was noted for his strongly anti-German attitudes, and twice visited Russia to maintain strategic ties. At the Paris Peace Conference, he favoured re-occupation of the Rhineland, which he was able to carry out in 1923 as Prime Minister.

(Charlus becomes very excited and speaks in a high squeal.)

Marcel sees “suspicious-looking individuals drawn out of the shadows…wondered whether it would be more agreeable to him if I left him alone or remained with him.”

Charlus “dragged me down a side-street.”

Soldiers everywhere, “a rising youthful tide.”

Aeroplanes and Zeppelins “like insects, as brown dots upon the surface of the blue evening.”

Marcel feels safe as he did “in Saint Loup’s room at Doncieres…in the cloistered cell…where fervent hearts were exercising themselves…for the day when, in the midst of their youth, they would consummate their sacrifice.”

The Baron speaks of his admiration for “the Germans who go up in Gothas. And when it comers to Zeppelins, think of the courage that is needed!”

Much holding forth by Charlus… should “one be afraid of bombardment…possible death.” And reflection by Marcel on the soldiers employing aircraft and searchlights over Paris securing his feeling of safety and gratefulness. “their strength and beautiful precision.”
“The night was as beautiful as in 1914, and the threat to Paris was as great.”


Charlus claims he no longer visits the Verdurins but “that Morel still goes there a lot… it is rumoured… he would like to make up with me”

Charlus goes on…”it was not for him (Charlus) to take the first step.”


Marcel now takes the leap back of many years to describe two incidents.  The first was about two years after “this evening.” When I urged Morel to “go and see him…he is an old man now and may die”  Morel confesses he is afraid of Charlus. 

“The second incident dates from after the death of M. Charlus. I was brought one or two things which he had left me as mementoes.”

The letter says “you know Morel, you know the humbleness of his origin and the height (my own level, no less) to which I wished to raise him…”

Charlus resolves that Morel in “resisting my appeals…should not leave my house alive. One of the two of us had to disappear. I had decided to kill him.”

“But I must return to my narrative. I am walking down the boulevards by the side of M. Charlus.”

Ambrine a paraffin miracle product for the faces of the women.

German Vesuvius a merged metaphor. In both death: “eternized their gestures by interrupting them” as when Vesuvius erupted or

due to bombings by the Gotha's and Zeppelins spewing poison gasses interrupting  “Mme Mole' about to put on a last layer of powder before going out to dine with a sister-in-law, 

or Sosthene de Guermantes adding the final touches to his eyebrows.”

“Like the priests of Herculaneum whom death surprised in the act of carrying away the sacred vessels”

The talk continues… “of the accursed cities of the Bible. On the wall of a house in Pompeii has been found the revealing inscription: Sodoma, Gomora.”

And “our poilus, the young Parisian boys, like one there for instance…” perhaps a farm boy:

“I have always lived a lot in the country, I have slept in farms, I know how to talk to them.”


Charlus rhapsodizes about the young German soldiers, “doing the goose-step, unter den Linden….splendid sturdy fellow the Boche soldier…Deutschland uber alles, which is not so stupid as you might think.”

All the while we, the French “were hopelessly sunk in dilettantism.”

Well he says, “I must leave you… off to bed like a very old gentleman.”

“he said goodbye to me with a shake of my hand powerful enough to crush it to pieces…and continued, as Cottard would have said, to “knead” my hand, as if he had wished to restore to my joints a suppleness which they had never lost.”

Marcel notices a Senegalese soldier looking their way “with a gaze…greater than propriety would permit.” (see https://osf.io/zn79k/ on current facial recognition software)

Charlus is immobilized by the passage of the Senegalese.

Marcel begins to think of Arabian Nights. Becoming thirsty, he seeks a bar. All are closed. Shuttered. But he sees an officer come out of a building and “walk rapidly away.” (We soon learn it was St. Loup) Marcel knowing his friend already thinks it is St. Loup and thinks he is a spy. But now other soldiers enter in the dim light. Marcel enters.

“Soldier enters and is promptly given Room 28.”

“Stiflingly hot little room, gaudily decorated with colored pictures of women cut from illustrated magazines and reviews.”

(probably not an error by the translator as Gaudi resided in Barcelona from 1905 to 1925 and may have met Proust, even)

The young soldiers and one sailor, “chatted quietly together…expounding patriotic ideas.”

”I’m amazed the boss isn’t back yet, damn it, at this hour of the night I don’t know where he’s going to find any chains.”

Can’t show any light because of the Zeppelins. Boss arrives with “heavy chains”… "I told him I wanted a room… Just for a few hours. I can’t find a cab and I am rather unwell.”

I’m taken up to Room 43.

“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.”

Once again Marcel spies on Charlus first at the beginning of "Cities of the Plain" and again in the midst of this scene. C and Jupien have a chat. “I don’t find him sufficiently brutal.” says Charlus

It’s too late for the old man. Marcel sees that the abuser resembles Morel. An “ephebe” (Greek soldier), It occurs to Marcel that Charlus may never have anything more than a friendship with Morel and satisfied himself by going to Jupien’s and selecting a young man that resembles Morel.

“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.”

Excessive love, infatuations are the topic. Apparently Marcel thought that a response to excessive love from a young man toward a woman may frighten the women, which resulted in the “platonic nature of their relations.”

Drugs and draughts. (Bill Cosby stuff)

The fustigations of Charlus

The Rape of Belgium was the German mistreatment of civilians during the invasion and subsequent occupation of Belgium during World War I. The term initially had a propaganda use but recent historiography confirms its reality.[1] One modern author uses it more narrowly to describe a series of German war crimes in the opening months of the war (August–September 1914).[2]

The neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by the Treaty of London (1839), which had been signed by Prussia. However, the German Schlieffen Plan required that German armed forces violate Belgium’s neutrality in order to outflank the French Army, concentrated in eastern France. The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg dismissed the treaty of 1839 as a "scrap of paper".[3] Throughout the beginning of the war, the German army engaged in numerous atrocities against the civilian population of Belgium, including the destruction of civilian property; 6,000 Belgians were killed, and 17,700 died during expulsion, deportation, imprisonment, or a death sentence by court.[4] 25,000 homes and other buildings in 837 communities were destroyed in 1914 alone, and 1.5 million Belgians (20% of the entire population) fled from the invading German army.[5]:13

The Baron, wounded, comes down. Marcel is hidden by Julien.  Jupien warns the young men they must be more perverse. He has risen in the world and no longer a tailor but a hotelier.

A car comes and drives Charlus away. A priest comes out the door and says “What do you expect? I am not (I expected him to say ‘a saint’) “a good girl.”

The doctrine of the Carmelites.

The aristocracy seeks out friendships with lower class people. Not the Baron: He wanted
“No half-way houses—either Phaedra or Les Saltimbanques.”



Baron offers young boy money who “Hearing all the promises of money, he has taken the Baron as a spy.”

Jupien has set up this house for the Baron, reducing the Baron’s risk, “I have very few scruples about making money in this way.”

“And the truth is that, when one knew M. de Charlus well—his pride, his satiety with social pleasures, his fancies which changed easily into passions for men of the lowest class and the worst character—one could very easily understand that the possession of a huge fortune, the charm of which, had he been an upstart, would have been that it enabled him to marry his daughter to a duke and invite Highnesses to his shooting-parties, pleased him simply because it allowed him to have at his disposal in this way one or perhaps several establishments with a permanent supply of young men whose company he enjoyed. And perhaps this might have come to pass even without his special vice, heir as he was to so many great noblemen, dukes or princes of the blood, of whom Saint-Simon tells us that they never associated with anybody “who could boast a name.”