Читать книгу Letters to the Lady Upstairs - Marcel Proust, Marcel Proust - Страница 9

[end of 1908 – beginning of 1909?]

1 a.m.

Madame,

I thank you with all my heart for your beautiful and good letter and come to ask you on the contrary to allow all possible noise to be made starting now. I had in fact not anticipated a shortness of breath so severe that it prevents me from trying to sleep. Noise will therefore not bother me in the least (and will be all the more relief for me on a day on which I could rest).⁵ It saddens me very much to learn that you are ill. If bed does not bore you too much I believe that in itself it exerts a very sedative effect on the kidneys. But perhaps you are bored (though it seems to me [word skipped: difficult?] to be bored with you). Couldn’t I send you some books. Tell me what would distract you, I would be so pleased. Don’t speak of annoying neighbours, but of neighbours so charming (an association of words contradictory in principle since Montesquiou claims that most horrible of all are 1st neighbours 2nd the smell of post offices) that they leave the constant tantalizing regret that one cannot take advantage of their neighbourliness.⁶

Be so good Madame as to recall me to the Doctor and accept my respectful and grateful greetings.

MARCEL PROUST

Despite the gloomy days, would some flowers please you. And ‘which’ as Verlaine says?