CP 03189/en

Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser Tuesday evening[29 August 1916]

(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)

Tuesday evening

My dear Lionel

I have just this moment received your letter but as I am having a lot of pain in my eyes I shall provisionally limit myself to a very incomplete reply. If the three young men (not all that young, rather I myself, alas, am very old - and in any case considerably their elder) are the ones I think they are, I won’t hide from you that for a long time, long before my financial losses, I had advised one of them to place his money with you. But here’s the difficulty, which doesn’t make the plan impossible but very awkward. You know that Israel is often at the source of the fortunes and that that is most often forgotten about. But if d’Albufera is due to inherit a considerable fortune from his parents the most evident of what he currently has comes from his wife, the daughter of Princesse d’Essling, that is to say the grand-daughter of Mme Furtado Heine. But that fortune is deposited with the Heine Bank and I don’t even know if the testamentary arrangements won’t make it very difficult to withdraw; I vaguely remember that a similar obstacle came up when d’Albufera wanted to deposit some money in Brussels with M. Lambert.

On first appearances Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld seems to have no connection with d’Albufera. But his wealth (currently at least) came from his marriage with the daughter of the Princesse of Monaco, herself the daughter of the other Heines, not Furtado but relations and extremely rich, but bankers. Finally, Guiche owes his wealth to the fact that his mother, the Duchesse de Gramont, was born a Rothschild (same bank). It is true that one day his wife Mlle Greffulhe will be worth more than him, but at present the parents of the said lady are in perfect health. These explanations which are of little interest to you are to demonstrate that it is not through any lack of desire for something I have thought about a great deal (and I must stress in the interests of the depositors rather than yours) (the word depositors is not quite correct but you understand what I mean) even if I have done nothing about it yet. But the fact that I haven’t seen any of these people for so many years is also a consideration. But now I know that the idea is not disagreeable to you, as soon as I am able to receive anybody I shall convene the ones who haven’t been mobilized and if I can convince them I believe I will be doing them a very great service. But however agreeable it might be for me to do them a very great service, it doesn’t quite seem like a disinterested way of showing you my gratitude. So, getting back to my little lambs, it would be a great satisfaction to me if you raised your derisory brokerage fee to a satisfactory sum. On the day I succeed in establishing with you two or three multimillionaires imploring you for advice, that is the day I will consent to you once again charging me at the current going rate. But until then I beg you to be mindful of my entreaty and believe in my affectionate gratitude.

Marcel Proust

For the Crédit Industriel I think that you told me some time ago that I should have been in credit to the sum of approximately 2,000 francs. As I haven’t requested any money (cheques) from them for eight months, seeing that those 2,000 francs have evaporated (I’m not talking about the fall of the Mexico which was before then) I had assumed that they had calculated the interests after the reimbursement. Since that never happened I have no claim to make against them.