CÉLESTE   Plans, monsieur?

PROUST   You could go out. A café perhaps?

CÉLESTE   I’m a married woman, monsieur. Paris is full of soldiers.

PROUST   Yes. Still, the war is not without its blessings. I have had a letter to say Monsieur Rivière is reading my novel in his prison camp.
Céleste follows Proust into the lift and closes the door.

INT./EXT. ENTRY TO 102 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN. LATE AFTERNOON.

The concierge brings the chair which she has been sitting on into the hallway. Proust sits in it.

A child comes and stares at Proust.

Céleste tries to shoo him away.

A chauffeur appears.

Proust gets up and follows him out to the car.

Céleste accompanies Proust to the front door and returns, passing the child.

CÉLESTE   Have you never seen a gentleman before?

INT. PROUST’S BEDROOM. DAY.

The shutters are open so that the early-evening light fills the room and we see it fully for the first time.

Céleste begins to tidy and reset the room.

INT. CONCERT HALL. NIGHT.

Proust in the audience, listening intently and watching the players.

It is a young quartet, all the players in their twenties: Gaston Poulet (cello), Victor Gentil (first violin), Amable Massis (viola), Louis Ruyssen (second violin).

Poulet and Gentil are both twenty. Ruyssen, the second violin, the drollest of the quartet, is short and fat. Massis is pale and handsome, a stick by his chair.

They are playing the Franck Quartet in D.

INT. CONCERT ROUGE FOYER. NIGHT.

The quartet comes out: Poulet, and next Massis, who has a limp. Proust intercepts Massis.

PROUST   Forgive me, monsieur, if I detain you a moment. It is to tell you how greatly I enjoyed your performance. Though ‘enjoyed’ is hardly the word for music which both moved and excited me. And in particular, if I may single it out, your superb rendering of the César Franck, which seemed to me …

MASSIS   Forgive me, monsieur, but you must excuse me if I sit down.
Massis takes a seat near a display of flowers.
Proust reluctantly follows him, taking out his handkerchief as he does so.

PROUST   You are ill? Your leg?

MASSIS   I was wounded at the front. I am on sick leave still.

PROUST   You are a soldier!

MASSIS   But you are pale, monsieur. Are you ill? Please –
He indicates the chair beside him.

PROUST   How kind. No. I must be brief on account of these terrible lilies. I have a favour I wish to ask of you. It is also a business proposition.
Proust’s chauffeur has come inside the foyer and observes this conversation at a distance – the two men talking, Proust at one point putting his hand on Massis’s knee.
The chauffeur is impassive.
Massis writes his address on Proust’s programme.

PROUST   A wounded soldier. The pain was in the playing. And now I must flee in the face of my particular enemy.