Michaelmas

Michaelmas is the Feast of Saint Michael, observed on 29 September. In the novel it enters social conversation through M. de Charlus’s wish to remain by the sea until the feast and make amends to his patron saint by spending the day at the Abbey on the Mount. His explanation turns a calendar date into both a personal religious commitment and a revealing display of taste and rank.

The Feast and M. de Charlus’s Plans

Asked how long he intended to stay, M. de Charlus said he hoped to remain until the end of September. Madame Verdurin associated that period with the splendid storms at sea, but he clarified that the weather was not his reason: he had neglected the Archangel Michael, his patron saint, and wanted to observe the feast at the Abbey on the Mount.

Devotion and Social Friction

Madame Verdurin asked whether M. de Charlus took an interest in such matters. His reply, that she might be afflicted with intermittent deafness because he had already named Saint Michael among his glorious patrons, treated her question as an affront. He then described the Offertory, when Michael stands at the altar in a white robe and swings a censer, presenting the rite as a scene of striking beauty and sacred fragrance.

Madame Verdurin suggested that the group might make the journey together, despite her evident discomfort with the clergy. M. de Charlus did not take up the interruption. Instead, he continued imagining the ceremony: Morel might perform music there, and the abbot would be delighted. He cast the performance as a public homage to his patron saint, joining religious observance to music and social spectacle.

Significance

Michaelmas gives M. de Charlus a concrete reason to extend his stay, but the conversation also shows how readily he turns a personal preference into a declaration of identity. His insistence on Saint Michael as a patron, and his elaborate vision of the Offertory, stand in comic contrast with Madame Verdurin’s anti-clerical unease and her concern that a lengthy excursion might take the Baron and the violinist away from the circle. The feast thus brings devotion, aesthetic enthusiasm, and salon politics into the same exchange.