The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust by Joachim Neugroschel Read Free Book Online

moved to the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday,
     seen him still so joyful: here the sick man could watch the sea, the pier, and, on
     the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he began to speak; but his
     words showed no traces of the thoughts from on high which, during the past few weeks,
     had purified him with their visits. Savagely cursing an invisible person who was teasing
     him, he kept repeating thathe was the premier musician of the century and the most illustrious aristocrat in
     the universe. Then, suddenly calm, he told his coachmen to drive him to some low den,
     to have the horses saddled for the hunt. He asked for stationery in order to invite
     all the European sovereigns to a dinner celebrating his marriage to the sister of
     the Duke of Parma; horrified at being unable to pay a gambling debt, he picked up
     the paper knife next to his bed and aimed it like a gun. He dispatched messengers
     to find out whether the policeman he had thrashed last night was dead, and he laughingly
     muttered obscenities to someone whose hand he thought he was holding. Those exterminating
     angels known as Will and Thought were no longer present to drive the evil spirits
     of his senses and the vile emanations of his memory back into the darkness.
    Three days later, around five o’clock, he woke up as if from a bad dream for which
     the dreamer is responsible yet which he barely remembers. He asked whether any friends
     or relatives had been here during the hours when he had presented an image of only
     his lowliest, most archaic, and most extinct part; and he told his servants that if
     he became delirious, they should have his visitors leave instantly and they should
     not readmit them until he regained consciousness.
    He raised his eyes, surveyed the room, and smiled at his black cat, who, perched on
     a Chinese vase, was playing with a chrysanthemum and inhaling its fragrance with a
     mime-like gesture. He sent everyone away and conversed at length with the priest who
     was keeping watch over him. Yet he refused to take communion and asked the physician
     to say that the patient’s stomach was in no condition to tolerate a host. An hour
     later he had the servant bring in his sister-in-law and Jean Galeas. He said:
    “I’m resigned, I’m happy to die and to come before God.”
    The air was so mild that they opened the windows facing the ocean but not seeing it,
     and because the wind blowing from the opposite direction was too brisk, they did not
     open the windows giving upon the pastures and the woods.
    Baldassare had them drag his bed near the open windows. A boat was just nosing out
     to sea, guided by sailors towing the lines on the pier. A handsome cabin boy of about
     fifteen was leaning over the bow; each billow seemed about to knock him into the water,
     but he stood firm on his solid legs. With a burning pipe between his wind-salted lips,
     he spread his net to haul in fish. And the same wind that bellied the sail blew into
     the rotunda, cooling Baldassare’s cheeks and making a piece of paper flutter through
     the room. He turned his head to avoid seeing the happy tableau of pleasures that he
     had passionately loved and that he would never enjoy again. He eyed the harbor: a
     three-master was setting sail.
    “It’s the ship that’s bound for the Indies,” said Jean Galeas.
    Baldassare was unable to distinguish the people waving their handkerchiefs on the
     pier, but he sensed their thirst for the unknown, a thirst that was parching their
     eyes; those people still had a great deal to experience, to get to know, to feel.
     The anchor was weighed, shouts arose, the ship cut across the dark sea, toward the
     west, where, in a golden mist, the light blended the skiffs with the clouds, murmuring
     hazy and irresistible promises to the voyagers.
    Baldassare had the servants shut the windows on this side of the rotunda and open
     the ones facing the pastures and