In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

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Book: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Read Free
Author: Marcel Proust
Tags: Classic fiction
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holidays, in which, as she herself had
informed me, I was to see nothing of Gilberte, that prompted my mother
one day, in the hope of distracting my mind, to suggest, "If you are
still so anxious to hear Berma, I think that your father would allow
you perhaps to go; your grandmother can take you."
    But it was because M. de Norpois had told him that he ought to let me
hear Berma, that it was an experience for a young man to remember in
later life, that my father, who had hitherto been so resolutely
opposed to my going and wasting my time, with the added risk of my
falling ill again, on what he used to shock my grandmother by calling
'futilities,' was now not far from regarding this manner of spending
an afternoon as included, in some vague way, in the list of precious
formulae for success in a brilliant career. My grandmother, who, in
renouncing on my behalf the profit which, according to her, I should
have derived from hearing Berma, had made a considerable sacrifice in
the interests of my health, was surprised to find that this last had
become of no account at a mere word from M. de Norpois. Reposing the
unconquerable hopes of her rationalist spirit in the strict course of
fresh air and early hours which had been prescribed for me, she now
deplored, as something disastrous, this infringement that I was to
make of my rules, and in a tone of despair protested, "How easily led
you are!" to my father, who replied angrily "What! So it's you that
are not for letting him go, now. That is really too much, after your
telling us all day and every day that it would be so good for him."
    M. de Norpois had also brought about a change in my father's plans in
a matter of far greater importance to myself. My father had always
meant me to become a diplomat, and I could not endure the thought
that, even if I did have to stay for some years, first, at the
Ministry, I should run the risk of being sent, later on, as
Ambassador, to capitals in which no Gilberte dwelt. I should have
preferred to return to the literary career that I had planned for
myself, and had been abandoned, years before, in my wanderings along
the Guermantes way. But my father had steadily opposed my devoting
myself to literature, which he regarded as vastly inferior to
diplomacy, refusing even to dignify it with the title of career, until
the day when M. de Norpois, who had little love for the more recent
generations of diplomatic agents, assured him that it was quite
possible, by writing, to attract as much attention, to receive as much
consideration, to exercise as much influence, and at the same time to
preserve more independence than in the Embassies.
    "Well, well, I should never have believed it. Old Norpois doesn't at
all disapprove of your idea of taking up writing," my father had
reported. And as he had a certain amount of influence himself, he
imagined that there was nothing that could not be 'arranged,' no
problem for which a happy solution might not be found in the
conversation of people who 'counted.' "I shall bring him back to
dinner, one of these days, from the Commission. You must talk to him a
little, and let him see what he thinks of you. Write something good
that you can shew him; he is an intimate friend of the editor of the Deux–Mondes ; he will get you in there; he will arrange it all, the
cunning old fox; and, upon my soul, he seems to think that diplomacy,
nowadays——!"
    My happiness in the prospect of not being separated from Gilberte made
me desirous, but not capable, of writing something good which could be
shewn to M. de Norpois. After a few laboured pages, weariness made the
pen drop from my fingers; I cried with anger at the thought that I
should never have any talent, that I was not 'gifted,' that I could
not even take advantage of the chance that M. de Norpois's coming
visit was to offer me of spending the rest of my life in Paris. The
recollection that I was to be taken to hear Berma alone distracted me
from my grief. But just as I did not

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