Back to Balbec, and the stations on the little train.

The Baron de Charlus is berating Charlie Morel, having ascertained that he has him under obligation. In doing so the narrator gives some excellent words on the theme of jealousy:
"I know that in so doing,” he went on, in order not to let it appear how deeply certain scenes had humiliated him, “you are guilty merely of having let yourself be carried away by the jealousy of others. But how is it that at your age you are childish enough (and a child ill-bred enough) not to have seen at once that your election by myself and all the advantages that must result for you from it were bound to excite jealousies, that all your comrades while they egged you on to quarrel with me were plotting to take your place? I have not thought it necessary to tell you of the letters that I have received in that connexion from all the people in whom you place most confidence. I scorn the overtures of those flunkeys as I scorn their ineffective mockery. The only person for whom I care is yourself, since I am fond of you, but affection has its limits and you ought to have guessed as much.” Harsh as the word flunkey might sound in the ears of Morel, whose father had been one, but precisely because his father had been one, the explanation of all social misadventures by ‘jealousy,’ an explanation fatuous and absurd, but of inexhaustible value, which with a certain class never fails to ‘catch on’ as infallibly as the old tricks of the stage with a theatrical audience or the threat of the clerical peril in a parliament, found in him an adherence hardly less solid than in Françoise, or the servants of Mme. de Guermantes, for whom jealousy was the sole cause of the misfortunes that beset humanity. "