PROUST   (murmuring to himself as he reads) People who are not in love themselves feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such persons as are worthwhile. This is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the common bacillus.
Céleste comes in.

PROUST   I shall have some things to paste in later. Céleste.
She is going.

PROUST   Céleste.
She turns.

PROUST   No one has called?

CÉLESTE   No, monsieur.
Céleste leaves, closing the door behind her.

INT. PROUST’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

A glue pot, the manuscript of the novel, and long inserts waiting to be pasted in.

They have been pasting in various additions.

PROUST   Read it back to me.

CÉLESTE   (with some hesitations) ‘Sometimes when we have made a rough sketch of a painful passage in our writing and can advance no further a new affection and a new suffering come our way which enable us to complete it, to give it substance. And on the score of these great but useful unhappinesses we have little ground for complaint; they are plentiful and we seldom have to wait long for one.’

INT. LARUE’S RESTAURANT. NIGHT.

Proust is dining with Morand and Princess Soutzo.

PROUST   I find it extremely interesting to see how people’s faces grow older. That woman over there. I thought she was the mother of someone I once knew. Certainly she could have been this woman’s daughter. But I see now mother and daughter are the same woman. She is the woman I once knew.

PRINCESS   Is she in your book?

PROUST   People are apt to think of a book as a sort of cube, one side of which has been removed so that the author may ‘put in’ the people he meets.

MORAND   How is your quartet? Any more private performances?

PROUST   Not lately, alas.

PRINCESS   I can’t imagine anything more romantic, music in one’s bedroom.

PROUST   Would you like to hear them?

PRINCESS   Not in the middle of the night.

PROUST   No. Here. Now. I’ll go and fetch them.

MORAND   Marcel.

PROUST   Please, I insist.
The Head Waiter comes over as Proust starts to leave.

HEAD WAITER   Going so soon, Monsieur Proust? I hope you’re not ill.

PROUST   Not at all. We thought we’d have a little concert. I’m just off to round up some musicians.

HEAD WAITER   A concert? But there’s a war on, Monsieur Proust.
But Proust has gone.

INT. RUE DE HERRAN. LIFT/HALLWAY/POULET’S APARTMENT. NIGHT.

Proust comes out of the lift and crosses the hallway to Poulet’s apartment.

He rings the bell.

The sound of a bolt being drawn.

Poulet appears in his pyjamas. He is carrying a baby.

PROUST   Monsieur Poulet. How can I apologise? Don’t bother to deny it. I have woken you up.

POULET   I am woken up already.