In a word, this anonymous letter proved
that he himself knew a human being capable of the most infamous conduct,
but he could see no reason why that infamy should lurk in the
depths--which no strange eye might explore--of the warm heart rather than
the cold, the artist's rather than the business-man's, the noble's rather
than the flunkey's. What criterion ought one to adopt, in order to judge
one's fellows? After all, there was not a single one of the people whom he
knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful
action. Must he then cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he
passed his hands two or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses
with his handkerchief, and remembering that, after all, men who were as
good as himself frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des
Laumes and the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that
they were incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity
in human life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of
people who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he continued
to shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the purely
formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seeking to
drive him to despair.
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