Duke Giapienti

The Prince de Guermantes is a socially prominent visitor to the Verdurins’ circle at Balbec whose secret pursuit of Morel becomes entangled with M. de Charlus’s jealousy. The episode turns on mistaken identity: the Prince seeks a private meeting, but Morel, seeing M. de Charlus’s photograph in the villa, believes he has been lured into a test and runs away. The Prince never understands what caused the encounter to fail, while M. de Charlus is unwittingly spared the infidelity he feared.

Identity and Social Position

During the seaside season, the Prince approaches La Raspelière, the Verdurins’ residence, at a time when introductions carry less risk of lasting social obligations than they would in Paris. The narrator explains that his enthusiasm for Dreyfusism helps propel him up the social ascent to the house. He arrives on a day when Madame Verdurin is absent, so she does not meet him herself.

Madame Verdurin is unsure whether the Prince and M. de Charlus belong to the same social world. Although M. de Charlus has said the Duke de Guermantes is his brother, she suspects this might be an adventurer’s boast and hesitates to invite the Baron to meet the Prince. The Prince’s position in this social network is therefore secure enough to attract the Verdurins’ interest, but not enough to remove their anxiety about rank and propriety.

Connection to Morel

The Prince comes down to the coast for a few days to visit the Princesse de Luxembourg. During this stay, he meets Morel without knowing who the violinist is, and Morel likewise does not recognize him. The Prince offers Morel fifty francs to spend the night with him at a brothel in Maineville. The arrangement gives Morel both money and the opportunity to enjoy the company of the women there; the Prince’s identity remains concealed from him.

M. de Charlus learns what happened and where the meeting was arranged, but does not discover the Prince’s name. Jealous and intent on identifying Morel’s prospective companion, he telegraphs to Jupien. When Morel later says he will be absent again, M. de Charlus asks Jupien to arrange a concealed place from which they can watch what takes place. The Prince’s private pursuit thus becomes the occasion for the Baron’s attempt to investigate Morel.

The Maineville Surveillance

The plan to observe Morel goes wrong: Morel is informed that two men have paid to spy on him. The Prince is removed from the scene before M. de Charlus can identify him, while Morel is left frightened and unable to respond. M. de Charlus understands that the meeting has been exposed, but the Prince’s identity remains unknown to him.

The following day, the Prince asks Morel to meet him at a small villa he has rented. Although his stay there is to be brief, he has furnished the villa with family keepsakes to make himself feel at home. He instructs his valet not to call him Prince, apparently to prevent Morel from becoming suspicious. Morel arrives believing that he has escaped M. de Charlus’s surveillance, but when he is alone in the sitting room he notices photographs of the Princesse de Guermantes, the Duchesse de Luxembourg, and Mme de Villeparisis. Then he sees M. de Charlus’s photograph, set a little behind the others.

Morel interprets the photograph as proof that the meeting is a trap arranged by M. de Charlus to test his fidelity. He rushes out of the villa before the Prince returns. The Prince, who has expected him to wait, finds the room empty; he and his valet search the house and garden, even fearing a burglary, but cannot find him. Neither the Prince nor his household understands why Morel has disappeared.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The Prince encounters Morel several more times during the following week, but Morel flees from him, convinced that he is dangerous. The misunderstanding persists even in Paris, where merely seeing the Prince is enough to send Morel running. The Prince never learns that his own photographs caused the flight or that M. de Charlus was behind the surveillance.

The unintended result is that M. de Charlus is protected from the infidelity that had filled him with despair, without realizing either that he has been spared or how. The Prince’s role in the episode is consequently defined less by deliberate power than by his concealed identity and the consequences of a coincidence: his family mementos, placed in the villa for personal comfort, become the evidence that sends Morel away. The narrator marks the shift from this remembered story back to the railway journey, making the episode one of the recollections that surface and recede as the train proceeds from station to station.