de Duras is enough to give you the reputation of an amateur. And among artists, don’t you know, well I, you can ask yourself whether I know them, when I have been moving among them for forty years, launching them, taking an interest in them; very well, when they say that somebody is an amateur, that finishes it. And people were beginning to say it of you. Indeed, at times I have been obliged to take up the cudgels, to assure them that you would not play in some absurd drawing-room! Do you know what the answer was: ‘But he will be forced to go, Charlus won’t even consult him, he never asks him for his opinion.’ Somebody thought he would pay him a compliment and said: ‘We greatly admire your friend Morel.’ Can you guess what answer he made, with that insolent air which you know? ‘But what do you mean by calling him my friend, we are not of the same class, say rather that he is my creature, my protégé.’ ” At this moment there stirred beneath the convex brows of the musical deity the one thing that certain people cannot keep to themselves, a saying which it is not merely abject but imprudent to repeat. But the need to repeat it is stronger than honour, than prudence.