my articles from the Figaro are not yet collected in books and it is perhaps this that would most have interested you.9 But I will be able meanwhile to present you with the rest. I implore your help for Monday the 19th the day after tomorrow. I must make the great effort to try to go out in the evening and as I have attacks of asthma all night long, if in the morning there is hammering above me it’s all over for the whole day for resting, my attack will not stop and my evening out is impossible.
Please accept, Monsieur, the expression of my highest regards.
MARCEL PROUST
[December 17, 1909]
Friday
Marcel Proust begs Madame Williams to be so kind as to accept his respectful and enchanted thanks, for the beautiful and artistic letter which she has had the grace and has done him the honour of writing to him. He would be most grateful to her if she would be his spokeswoman with the Doctor to request that there not be too much noise tomorrow Saturday, since he has to go out for a while in the evening. He will not fail as soon as his friend Mr Hahn is back from Aix la Chapelle where he has gone to conduct Prométhée to communicate to him the gracious praise.10
[October 1914?]
Madame,
It is always a very great pleasure for me to receive a letter from you. The latest was particularly sweet for me in these terrible times in which one trembles for all those one loves, and I do not mean by that only those one knows. It is however permitted without being too selfish to have exceptional worries, and the fate of my brother who is operating in the line of fire, has had his hospital bombed, the shells falling even on the operating table so that he has been obliged to take his wounded down into the cellars, is particularly close to my heart. Happily he has been completely safe up to now and has been mentioned in the army’s ordre du jour.11 I hope that you too have good news of your family. As for me I will imminently be going before the military service review board. I don’t know if I will be taken or not. I had wanted to write you last summer to hear your news. But even well before the War I was overwhelmed with worries. First, I was more or less completely ruined, which I found extremely painful. But shortly afterwards my poor secretary was drowned by falling from an aeroplane into the sea.12
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