« Du baron Hulot au baron de Charlus, en passant par Samuel Beckett »

This paper focuses on the affinities between Baron Hulot, one of the protagonists of Balzac's novel La Cousine Bette, and one of the main characters of À la recherche du temps perdu, Baron de Charlus, created by Marcel Proust. A first similarity between them had been noticed, in an allusive way, by Samuel Beckett, who in a letter to his friend McGreevy wrote: "I think that Charlus' elaboration owes a lot to Hulot". On the basis of this allusion, we aim, in particular, to analyse the process of physical and moral degradation that the two characters undergo throughout their lives; this process is motivated by the sexual obsession that characterizes them, and which leads them to commit morally reprehensible actions and to endanger their social position