* * *

[To Lucien Daudet]

[end of December 1903]

"Dear Lucien

What madness, or rather what an ado. In any case it was stupid of me, had I known that you would be leaving the Empress's so late I would not have had you telephoned. It was because I was longing to see you etc. - all too complicated to explain by letter. Weary of seeing me choking, Mamma returned shortly after you because she wanted to see you, to thank you as she is so filled with gratitude and your little letter about the cemetery moved her infinitely. She left shortly after you, two minutes later I went to rejoin her shortly after you and I met her coming back, bringing up the paper. In the end all this makes me wretched because of the remorse you make me feel through my sadism for having let you come for nothing when you don't like to do so twice running. So I don't know what to think. Don't come again in the evenings after the Continentale because I now go to bed at half past eleven or eleven o'clock (apart from this evening because of having my clothes dried, hair cut etc.). As for tomorrow at six o'clock, if my attacks have passed, in all probability you will find me only I fear that Ullman or Peter vaguely expect you, and as I spent a long time with Albu yesterday and today I don't think he will come tomorrow, and I think that of all my real friends he is the only one who doesn't irritate you. You who are so kind to me say that in the timeless existence I lead I let the 16th of December pass by without noticing. But it seems to me as though time has stood still since the day they brought Papa back home. My thoughts are permanently fixed, except in the moments when I see you and I try to speak to you a little about it all, about two or three things which I found out all about, I don't really know the length of time or the number of days afterwards. Forgive me. Madame Lemaire came this evening and was asking about you a great deal. I would so like to write to you at length but it is so late. If I hadn't all these absurd letters to write I should really like to write you a proper letter where you can say the things that you can't say face to face."

* * *

[To Dr Ladsilas Landowski] (Mme Proust's doctor)

45, rue de Courcelles 

 [after 26 May 1904] 

"Dear Sir,

I never stop thinking about you with infinite sadness since you have suffered such misfortune... All those who have no recollection of your sister must seem as strangers to you now. And yet I who knew her so little think about her often. With her wonderful grace it seemed as though one could divine from it all of her intelligence, all of her spirit... I can no longer think about you other than with great sadness, with a feeling of outrage, that such an élite being as yourself who has never done anything but good and spared those around him from suffering, should be afflicted in this awful way. Believe me, my dear sir, that I have never stopped thinking about you since that dreadful day and that your pain will find a profound echo in my own heart. I cannot separate you from my thoughts about those I love..."

* * *

[To his mother]

[Monday evening 19 June 1905]

"My dear little Mama,

I managed marvellously in the evening, the heat having completely cured me. Then I caught a bit of a chill in Papa's study searching for a Molière but that came on again, when I had to spend a few moments in the kitchen where the window had been left wide open. The night was cool, which brought on my cough etc. I had to have a fire made up, the coffee remade etc. The coffee was so strong and I had so much of it that I am worried about being rabid in my bed tomorrow, as you put it. In spite of all that, in spite of my desire to profit from the time to go out I doubt I will go after lunchtime to that concert..."

He goes on to describe a visit by Robert de Billy, Louis d'Albuferra and Georges de Lauris

"...who only stayed an hour in the morning."

He ends with a brief allusion to the resignation of Delcasse as minister for foreign affairs and takes his leave of his mother with Billy's fears of

"...being dismissed by Rouvier."

* * *

[To Elisabeth Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre]

[after 25 July 1905]

"...But an unknown person is not necessarily an indifferent person. And if I allow myself today to come and disturb your grief it is simply to tell you that I associate myself with it in the deepest reaches of my heart..."

* * * 

Marcel Proust. Unpublished (?) letter.