The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust by Joachim Neugroschel

will scan your sensual and melancholy
     wait for a long time; though I tell time, I understand nothing about life; the sad
     hours follow the joyous minutes, as indistinguishable for me as bees in a hive. . . .
    (The bell rings; a servant goes to open the door.)
    The Good Fairy: Remember to obey me and remember that the eternity of your love depends
     on it.
    (The clock ticks feverishly, the fragrances of the roses waft uneasily, and the tormented
     orchids lean anxiously toward Honoré; one orchid looks wicked. Honoré’s inert pen
     gazes at him, sad that it cannot move. The books do not interrupt their grave murmuring.
     Everything tells Honoré: Obey the fairy and remember that the eternity of your love
     depends on that. . . .)
    Honoré (without hesitating): Of course I will obey, how can you doubt me?
    (The beloved enters; the roses, the orchids, the maidenhair ferns, the pen and the
     paper, the Dresden clock, and a breathless Honoré all quiver as if in harmony with
     her.)
    Honoré flings himself upon her lips, shouting: “I love you!
    Epilogue: It was as if he had blown out the flame of his beloved’s desire. Pretending
     to be shocked by the impropriety of his action, she fled, and if ever he saw her after
     that, she would torture him with a severe and indifferent glance. . . .
The Fan
    Madame, I have painted this fan for you.
    May it, as you wish in your retirement, evoke the vain and enchanting figures that
     peopled your salon, which was so rich with graceful life and is now closed forever.
    The chandeliers, whose branches all bear large, pallid flowers, illuminate objets
     d’art of all eras and all countries. I was thinking about the spirit of our time as
     my brush led the curious gazes of those chandeliers across the diversity of your knick-knacks.
     Like them the spirit of our time has contemplated samples of thought or life from
     all centuries all over the world. It has inordinately widened the circle of its excursions.
     Out of pleasure, out of boredom, it has varied them as we vary our strolls; and now,
     deterred from finding not even the destination but just the right path, feeling its
     strength dwindling and its courage deserting it, the spirit of our time has lain down
     with its face on the earth to avoid seeing anything, like a brutish beast.
    Nevertheless I have painted the rays of your chandeliers delicately; with amorous
     melancholy these rays have caressed so many things and so many people, and now they
     are snuffed forever. Despite the small format of this picture, you may recognize the
     foreground figures, all of whom the impartial artist has highlighted identically,
     just like your equal sympathies: great lords, beautiful women, and talented men. A
     bold reconciliation in the eyes of the world, though inadequate and unjust according
     to reason; yet it turned your society into a small universe that was less divided
     and more harmonious than that other world, a small world that was full of life and
     that we will never see again.
    I therefore would not want my fan to be viewed by an indifferent person, who has never
     frequented salons like yours and who would be astonished to see “politesse” unite
     dukes without arrogance and novelists without pretentiousness. Nor might he, that
     stranger, comprehend the vices of this rapprochement, which, if excessive, will soon
     facilitate only one exchange: that of ridiculous things. He would, no doubt, find
     a pessimistic realism in the spectacle of the bergère on the right, where a great
     author, to all appearances a snob, is listening to a great lord, who, dipping into
     a book, seems to beholding forth about a poem, and whose expression, if I have managed to make it foolish
     enough, shows quite well that he understands nothing.
    Near the fireplace you will recognize C.
    He is uncorking a scent bottle and explaining to the woman next to him that he has
     concentrated the most pungent and most exotic perfumes in this