Proust Marcel – Sodom and Gomorrah – In search of lost time 4: “The narrator surprises the love affair of the baron Charlus with Jupien the vest. A solid and lasting liaison will be established between the two men, Jupien becoming the protege of Charlus who makes it his private secretary. The narrator becomes one of the faithful of the salons of the high aristocracy of the Faubourg Saint Germain, fascinated by this society, its way of life, its excesses. He also frequents the Salon des Verdurins with diligence to the point of feeling perfectly at ease in this mundane and artificial environment. At the same time, he sometimes realizes that, dragged into a whirlwind of worldliness, he forgets the others and even his grandmother, who was not long ago one of the beings he cherished the most, but his remorse is short duration. Then the narrator, with his mother, a new stay in Balbec, which he rediscovered places with nostalgia. He finds Albertine and their often stormy relations. He questions his own feelings until the day he surprises her dancing equivocally with his friend Andrée. Is she attracted to women? Henceforth, tapped by doubt and jealousy, he often shows himself odious with Albertine who suffers from this attitude and reproaches him for his harshness. The narrator is divided between the pleasure of being with her and the sudden desire to end this bond to regain her freedom. After long procrastination, he announces brutally to his mother that he is going to marry Albertine. »(Proust, his characters)