proust.txt

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say I’m going to sleep. And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V.

This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

I would ask myself what o’clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home.

I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help.

I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle’s pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day–the dawn of a new era to me–on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle’s fingers; still, as a measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the world of dreams.

Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was on the point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating hers, would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. 

The rest of humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose company I had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her kiss, my body bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes happen, she had the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.

When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. 

Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier and in some far distant country. 

But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.

Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened that when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me through the darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name to the house in which it must be living. Its memory, the composite memory of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades offered it a whole series of rooms in which it had at one time or another slept; while the unseen walls kept changing, adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the darkness.

And even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they had looked like, had collected sufficient impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my body, would recall from each room in succession what the bed was like, where the doors were, how daylight came in at the windows, whether there was a passage outside, what I had had in my mind when I went to sleep, and had found there when I awoke. 

The stiffened side underneath my body would, for instance, in trying to fix its position, imagine itself to be lying, face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy; and at once I would say to myself, Why, I must have gone to sleep after all, and Mamma never came to say good night! for I was in the country with my grandfather, who died years ago; and my body, the side upon which I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt’s house, in those far distant days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly denned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly awake.

Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in another direction; I was in my room in Mme. 

de Saint-Loup’s house in the country; good heavens, it must be ten o’clock, they will have finished dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before dressing for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the Combray days, when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would still be in time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the panes of my bedroom window. 

It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of pleasure that I now derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from visiting by moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in the sunshine; while the bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep instead of dressing for dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return from our walk, with its lamp shining through the window, a solitary beacon in the night.

These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope. 

But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained cold–or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam–or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable.

Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last time and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding objects stand still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom, and had fixed, approximately in their right places in the uncertain light, my chest of drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window overlooking the street, and both the doors.

But it was no good my knowing that I was not in any of those houses of which, in the stupid moment of waking, if I had not caught sight exactly, I could still believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the rest; remembering again all the places and people that I had known, what I had actually seen of them, and what others had told me.

At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window.

But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. 

For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train, for the first time.

Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, his mind filled with an infamous design, issued from the little three-cornered forest which dyed dark-green the slope of a convenient hill, and advanced by leaps and bounds towards the castle of poor Geneviève de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by a curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the transparent ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through a slot in the lantern.

It was only the wing of a castle, and in front of it stretched a moor on which Geneviève stood, lost in contemplation, wearing a blue girdle. 

The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could tell their colour without waiting to see them, for before the slides made their appearance the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given me an unmistakable clue. Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to the little speech read aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly to understand, for he modified his attitude with a docility not devoid of a degree of majesty, so as to conform to the indications given in the text; then he rode away at the same jerky trot.

And nothing could arrest his slow progress. If the lantern were moved I could still distinguish Golo’s horse advancing across the window-curtains, swelling out with their curves and diving into their folds. The body of Golo himself, being of the same supernatural substance as his steed’s, overcame all material obstacles–everything that seemed to bar his way–by taking each as it might be a skeleton and embodying it in himself: the door-handle, for instance, over which, adapting itself at once, would float invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, never losing its nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign of trouble at such a transubstantiation.

And, indeed, I found plenty of charm in these bright projections, which seemed to have come straight out of a Merovingian past, and to shed around me the reflections of such ancient history. But I cannot express the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought no more of the room than of myself. 

The anaesthetic effect of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things. The door-handle of my room, which was different to me from all the other doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to open of its own accord and without my having to turn it, so unconscious had its manipulation become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body for Golo. 

And as soon as the dinner-bell rang I would run down to the dining-room, where the big hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard but well acquainted with my family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the same light as on every other evening; and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience.

But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my grandmother, who held that It is a pity to shut oneself indoors in the country, and used to carry on endless discussions with my father on the very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book instead of letting me stay out of doors. 

That is not the way to make him strong and active, she would say sadly, especially this little man, who needs all the strength and character that he can get. My father would shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an interest in meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb him, looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind.

But my grandmother, in all weathers, even when the rain was coming down in torrents and Françoise had rushed indoors with the precious wicker armchairs, so that they should not get soaked–you would see my grandmother pacing the deserted garden, lashed by the storm, pushing back her grey hair in disorder so that her brows might be more free to imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and rain.

She would say, At last one can breathe! and would run up and down the soaking paths–too straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing to the want of any feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father had been asking all morning if the weather were going to improve–with her keen, jerky little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon her soul by the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity of my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh despair.

When these walks of my grandmother’s took place after dinner there was one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if (at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her, moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her: Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy! For, simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my father’s family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops. My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow upon them passionate caresses. 

The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother’s vain entreaties, of her in her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass–all these were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor’s side with a. 

happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, tormenting; but in those days they filled me with such horror that I longed to strike my great-aunt.

And yet, as soon as I heard her Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy! in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window. 

Intended for a more special and a baser use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door Ï was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire.

Alas! I little knew that my own lack of will-power, my delicate health, and the consequent uncertainty as to my future weighed far more heavily on my grandmother’s mind than any little breach of the rules by her husband, during those endless perambulations, afternoon and evening, in which we used to see passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the heavens, her handsome face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with age had acquired almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn, covered, if she were walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon them either the cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying traces of an involuntary tear.

My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the keenest sorrow.

So much did I love that good night that I reached the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared. 

Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her Kiss me just once again, but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the custom of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was already crossing the threshold.

And to see her look displeased destroyed all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a moment before, when she bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host, for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of her real presence, and with it the power to sleep.

But those evenings on which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come at all. Our ’guests’ were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from a few passing strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the house at Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently since his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited.

On those evenings when, as we sat in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and noisy rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its ferruginous, interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who had put it out of action by coming in ’without ringing,’ but the double peal–timid, oval, gilded–of the visitors’ bell, everyone would at once exclaim A visitor! Who in the world can it be? but they knew quite well that it could only be M.

Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud voice, to set an example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound natural, would tell the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be more unpleasant for a stranger coming in, who would be led to think that people were saying things about him which he was not meant to hear; and then my grandmother would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find an excuse for an additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise to remove surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or two, so as to make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother might run her hand through her boy’s hair, after the barber had smoothed it down, to make it stick out properly round his head.

And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from my grandmother’s lips when she brought us back her report of the enemy, as though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of possible invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: I can hear Swann’s voice. And, indeed, one could tell him only by his voice, for it was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose and green eyes, under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red hair, dressed in the Bressant style, because in the garden we used as little light as possible, so as not to attract mosquitoes: and I would slip away as though not going for anything in particular, to tell them to bring out the syrups; for my grandmother made a great point, thinking it ’nicer/ of their not being allowed to seem anything out of the ordinary, which we kept for visitors only.

Although a far younger man, M. Swann was very much attached to my grandfather, who had been an intimate friend, in his time, of Swann’s father, an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts. Several times in the course of a year I would hear my grandfather tell at table the story, which never varied, of the behaviour of M.

Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns’ family property on the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M.

Swann seized my grandfather by the arm and cried, Oh, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be walking here together on such a charming day! Don’t you see how pretty they are, all these trees–my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which you have never congratulated me? You look as glum as a night-cap. Don’t you feel this little breeze? Ah! whatever you may say, it’s good to be alive all the same, my dear Amédée! And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead wife returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes, and wiped his glasses.

And he could never be consoled for the loss of his wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for which he survived her, It’s a funny thing, now; I very often think of my poor wife, but I cannot think of her very much at any one time. Often, but a little at a time, like poor old Swann, became one of my grandfather’s favourite phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of things.

And I should have assumed that this father of Swann’s had been a monster if my grandfather, whom I regarded as a better judge than myself, and whose word was my law and often led me in the long run to pardon offences which I should have been inclined to condemn, had not gone on to exclaim, But, after all, he had a heart of gold.

For many years, albeit–and especially before his marriage–M. Swann the younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and grandparents never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the kind of society which his family had frequented, or that, under the sort of incognito which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were harbouring–with the complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers who have in their midst some distinguished highwayman and never know it–one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in the world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a ’good’ marriage, could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior caste. M. Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so ’young Swann’ found himself immured for life in a caste where one’s fortune, as in a list of taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income.

We knew the people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew his own associates, the people with whom he was ’in a position to mix.’ If he knew other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on whom the old friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes all the more good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an orphan, still came most faithfully to see us; but we would have been ready to wager that the people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew were of the sort to whom he would not have dared to raise his hat, had he met them while he was walking with ourselves.

Had there been such a thing as a determination to apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar to himself, as distinct from all the other sons of other stockbrokers in his father’s position, his coefficient would have been rather lower than theirs, because, leading a very simple life, and having always had a craze for ’antiques’ and pictures, he now lived and piled up his collections in an old house which my grandmother longed to visit, but which stood on the Quai d’Orléans, a neighbourhood in which my great-aunt thought it most degrading to be quartered. Are you really a connoisseur, now? she would say to him; I ask for your own sake, as you are likely to have ’fakes’ palmed off on you by the dealers, for she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical faculty, and had no great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in conversation, would avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull preciseness, not only when he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most minute details, but even when my grandmother’s sisters were talking to him about art.

When challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to amuse us by telling us the story of his latest adventure–and he would have a fresh story for us on every occasion–with some one whom we ourselves knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our coachman. These stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but she could never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which Swann invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that he shewed in telling us of them. It is easy to see that you are a regular ’character,’ M. Swann!

As she was the only member of our family who could be described as a trifle ’common,’ she would always take care to remark to strangers, when Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have lived in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l’Opéra, and that he was the son of old M.

Swann who must have left four or five million francs, but that it was a fad of his. A fad which, moreover, she thought was bound to amuse other people so much that in Paris, when M. Swann called on New Year’s Day bringing her a little packet of marrons glacés, she never failed, if there were strangers in the room, to say to him: Well, M.

Swann, and do you still live next door to the Bonded Vaults, so as to be sure of not missing your train when you go to Lyons? and she would peep out of the corner of her eye, over her glasses, at the other visitors.

But if anyone had suggested to my aunt that this Swann, who, in his capacity as the son of old M. Swann, was ’fully qualified’ to be received by any of the ’upper middle class,’ the most respected barristers and solicitors of Paris (though he was perhaps a trifle inclined to let this hereditary privilege go into abeyance), had another almost secret existence of a wholly different kind: that when he left our house in Paris, saying that he must go home to bed, he would no sooner have turned the corner than he would stop, retrace his steps, and be off to some drawing-room on whose like no stockbroker or associate of stockbrokers had ever set eyes–that would have seemed to my aunt as extraordinary as, to a woman of wider reading, the thought of being herself on terms of intimacy with Aristaeus, of knowing that he would, when he had finished his conversation with her, plunge deep into the realms of Thetis, into an empire veiled from mortal eyes, in which Virgil depicts him as being received with open arms; or–to be content with an image more likely to have occurred to her, for she had seen it painted on the plates we used for biscuits at Combray–as the thought of having had to dinner Ali Baba, who, as soon as he found himself alone and unobserved, would make his way into the cave, resplendent with its unsuspected treasures.

And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
alone, as far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here
and wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested
upon myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray
of sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since
she remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to
notice the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course
of their play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was
impossible for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the
vagrancy of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.

I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before
I had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her
I should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red
cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so much precious,
authentic, unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now
that, whenever I brought my mind to bear upon that face--and
especially, perhaps, in my determination, that form of the instinct
of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in
ourselves, not to admit that I had been in any way deceived--I found
only beauty there; setting her once again (since they were one and the
same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes
whom, until then, I had been used to conjure into an imagined shape)
apart from and above that common run of humanity with which the sight,
pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
round me: She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat or than Mlle.
Vinteuil, as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
deliberately unfinished sketch: How lovely she is! What true nobility!
it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant,
that I have before me! And the care which I took to focus all my
attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all
those Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose
inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in
return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might
count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and
natural charm. And then, too, since she could not bring into play the
deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs,
in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but must allow her vague
thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light
which she was powerless to control, she was anxious not to distress in
any way, not to seem to be despising those humbler mortals over whom
that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere arrested. I can see
again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and buoyant, the gentle
astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without daring to
address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might enjoy his
share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady who seems to
be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom she loves.
This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to follow her with
my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had let fall upon me
during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated the
window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, Of course, she is thinking
about me. I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she
would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would,
perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account.
And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to
make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I supposed
Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever be ours,
it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as Mme. de
Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already. Her
eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind
a threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the
Square and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet
laid down for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly
advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness
in the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages
of _Lohengrin_, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand
how Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
'delicious.'

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the
special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they
appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something
which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which,
despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the
mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front
of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with
my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten
after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to
recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost
of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them
was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and
in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own
impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme
for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my
conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive
for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never
long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an
effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck
would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the
moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my
researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter
until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no
purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay
hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was
taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering,
beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days
when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my
basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once
in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my
mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had
gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me)
with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a
roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass
of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality
of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the
energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening,
Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set
on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because
the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked
us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them
by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the
distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.

In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes
of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at
once to contain and to conceal.

The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and
the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me
irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging
lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of
them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples
would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and
scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the
obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring
them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we
were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I
climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more,
at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse
at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for
conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged,
in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to
recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and
their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were
stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became
apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a
moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure
with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much
enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer
think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled
a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them
again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few
minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they
shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.

Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it
was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to
me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed,
in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to
satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since
discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and
there.

Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in
that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq,
was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and
yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like
three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in
the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper
distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by
the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could
see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in
approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse
before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having
turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung
themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop
before being dashed against the porch of the church.

We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and
the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already
disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight,
its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of
farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw,
so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road
changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots,
and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already
close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them
for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers
painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think,
too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over
which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a
gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some
awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close
to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing more,
now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and
resigned, and so vanishing in the night.

I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my
corner of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit
of placing, in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville
market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness,
felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the
steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I
myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top
of my voice.

All day long, during these walks, I had been able to muse upon the
pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de
Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the
Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in
such moments, than that it should consist always of a series of joyous
afternoons. But when, on our way home, I had caught sight of a farm, on
the left of the road, at some distance from two other farms which were
themselves close together, and from which, to return to Combray, we need
only turn down an avenue of oaks, bordered on one side by a series of
orchard-closes, each one planted at regular intervals with apple-trees
which cast upon the ground, when they were lighted by the setting sun,
the Japanese stencil of their shadows; then, sharply, my heart would
begin to beat, I would know that in half an hour we should be at
home, and that there, as was the rule on days when we had taken the
'Guermantes way' and dinner was, in consequence, served later than
usual, I should be sent to bed as soon as I had swallowed my soup, so
that my mother, kept at table, just as though there had been company to
dinner, would not come upstairs to say good night to me in bed. The zone
of melancholy which I then entered was totally distinct from that other
zone, in which I had been bounding for joy a moment earlier, just as
sometimes in the sky a band of pink is separated, as though by a line
invisibly ruled, from a band of green or black. You may see a bird
flying across the pink; it draws near the border-line, touches it,
enters and is lost upon the black. The longings by which I had just
now been absorbed, to go to Guermantes, to travel, to live a life of
happiness--I was now so remote from them that their fulfilment would
have afforded me no pleasure. How readily would I have sacrificed them
all, just to be able to cry, all night long, in the arms of Mamma!
Shuddering with emotion, I could not take my agonised eyes from my
mother's face, which was not to appear that evening in the bedroom where
I could see myself already lying, in imagination; and wished only that
I were lying dead. And this state would persist until the morrow, when,
the rays of morning leaning their bars of light, as the gardener might
lean his ladder, against the wall overgrown with nasturtiums, which
clambered up it as far as my window-sill, I would leap out of bed to run
down at once into the garden, with no thought of the fact that evening
must return, and with it the hour when I must leave my mother. And so
it was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to distinguish between
these states which reigned alternately in my mind, during certain
periods, going so far as to divide every day between them, each one
returning to dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever and
ague: contiguous, and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of means
of communication, that I could no longer understand, or even picture to
myself, in one state what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the
other.

So the 'Méséglise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked
with many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives
along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in
sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of
the mind. Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the
truths which have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have
opened new paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for
their discovery; but that preparation was unconscious; and for us
those truths date only from the day, from the minute when they became
apparent. The flowers which played then among the grass, the water
which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as
environment to their apparition lingers around the memory of them still
with its unconscious or unheeding air; and, certainly, when they were
slowly scrutinised by this humble passer-by, by this dreaming
child--as the face of a king is scrutinised by a petitioner lost in the
crowd--that scrap of nature, that corner of a garden could never suppose
that it would be thanks to him that they would be elected to survive in
all their most ephemeral details; and yet the scent of hawthorn which
strays plundering along the hedge from which, in a little while, the
dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of footsteps followed by no
echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the side of a waterplant by
the current, and formed only to burst--my exaltation of mind has borne
them with it, and has succeeded in making them traverse all these
successive years, while all around them the one-trodden ways have
vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and even the memory of
those who thronged those trodden ways, are dead. Sometimes the fragment
of landscape thus transported into the present will detach itself in
such isolation from all associations that it floats uncertainly upon my
mind, like a flowering isle of Delos, and I am unable to say from
what place, from what time--perhaps, quite simply, from which of my
dreams--it comes. But it is pre-eminently as the deepest layer of my
mental soil, as firm sites on which I still may build, that I regard
the Méséglise and Guermantes 'ways.' It is because I used to think of
certain things, of certain people, while I was roaming along them, that
the things, the people which they taught me to know, and these alone,
I still take seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith
which creates has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape
in the memory alone, the flowers that people shew me nowadays for the
first time never seem to me to be true flowers. The 'Méséglise way'
with its lilacs, its hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies, its
apple-trees, the 'Guermantes way' with its river full of tadpoles, its
water-lilies, and its buttercups have constituted for me for all time
the picture of the land in which I fain would pass my life, in which my
only requirements are that I may go out fishing, drift idly in a boat,
see the ruins of a gothic fortress in the grass, and find hidden among
the cornfields--as Saint-André-des-Champs lay hidden--an old church,
monumental, rustic, and yellow like a mill-stone; and the cornflowers,
the hawthorns, the apple-trees which I may happen, when I go walking, to
encounter in the fields, because they are situated at the same depth, on
the level of my past life, at once establish contact with my heart. And
yet, because there is an element of individuality in places, when I am
seized with a desire to see again the 'Guermantes way,' it would not
be satisfied were I led to the banks of a river in which were lilies
as fair, or even fairer than those in the Vivonne, any more than on my
return home in the evening, at the hour when there awakened in me that
anguish which, later on in life, transfers itself to the passion of
love, and may even become its inseparable companion, I should have
wished for any strange mother to come in and say good night to me,
though she were far more beautiful and more intelligent than my own. No:
just as the one thing necessary to send me to sleep contented (in that
untroubled peace which no mistress, in later years, has ever been able
to give me, since one has doubts of them at the moment when one believes
in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to receive, in her
kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or reservation,
unburdened by any liability save to myself) was that it should be my
mother who came, that she should incline towards me that face on which
there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it appears, a blemish,
and which I loved as much as all the rest--so what I want to see again
is the 'Guermantes way' as I knew it, with the farm that stood a little
apart from the two neighbouring farms, pressed so close together, at the
entrance to the oak avenue; those meadows upon whose surface, when it
is polished by the sun to the mirroring radiance of a lake, are outlined
the leaves of the apple-trees; that whole landscape whose individuality
sometimes, at night, in my dreams, binds me with a power that is almost
fantastic, of which I can discover no trace when I awake.

No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in
me groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had
made me feel several separate things at the same time, the Méséglise
and Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much
disillusionment, and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to
see a person again without realising that it was simply because that
person recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been
led to believe, and to make some one else believe in an aftermath of
affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel. But by
the same qualities, and by their persistence in those of my impressions,
to-day, to which they can find an attachment, the two 'ways' give to
those impressions a foundation, depth, a dimension lacking from the
rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a significance which is for
me alone. When, on a summer evening, the resounding sky growls like a
tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is along the
'Méséglise way' that my fancy strays alone in ecstasy, inhaling,
through the noise of falling rain, the odour of invisible and persistent
lilac-trees.

And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
taste--by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'---of a
cup of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many
years after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love
affair in which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that
accuracy of detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are
studying the lives of people who have been dead for centuries than when
we are trying to chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an
accuracy which it seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible
to speak from one town to another, before we learned of the contrivance
by which that impossibility has been overcome. All these memories,
following one after another, were condensed into a single substance,
but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the
three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others,
inspired more recently by a taste or 'perfume,' and those which were
actually the memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at
second hand--no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least
those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain
marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and formation.

It is true that, when morning drew near, I would long have settled the
brief uncertainty of my waking dream, I would know in what room I
was actually lying, would have reconstructed it round about me in
the darkness, and--fixing my orientation by memory alone, or with the
assistance of a feeble glimmer of light at the foot of which I placed
the curtains and the window--would have reconstructed it complete and
with its furniture, as an architect and an upholsterer might do, working
upon an original, discarded plan of the doors and windows; would have
replaced the mirrors and set the chest-of-drawers on its accustomed
site. 'But scarcely had daylight itself--and no longer the gleam from
a last, dying ember on a brass curtain-rod, which I had mistaken for
daylight--traced across the darkness, as with a stroke of chalk across
a blackboard, its first white correcting ray, when the window, with
its curtains, would leave the frame of the doorway, in which I had
erroneously placed it, while, to make room for it, the writing-table,
which my memory had clumsily fixed where the window ought to be, would
hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the mantelpiece, and
sweeping aside the wall of the passage; the well of the courtyard would
be enthroned on the spot where, a moment earlier, my dressing-room had
lain, and the dwelling-place which I had built up for myself in the
darkness would have gone to join all those other dwellings of which I
had caught glimpses from the whirlpool of awakening; put to flight
by that pale sign traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted
forefinger of day.






SWANN IN LOVE

To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little
clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was
indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose
articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under
her patronage that year, and of whom she said Really, it oughtn't to
be allowed, to play Wagner as well as that! left both Planté
and Rubinstein 'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant
diagnostician than Potain. Each 'new recruit' whom the Verdurins failed
to persuade that the evenings spent by other people, in other houses
than theirs, were as dull as ditch-water, saw himself banished
forthwith. Women being in this respect more rebellious than men, more
reluctant to lay aside all worldly curiosity and the desire to find out
for themselves whether other drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as
entertaining, and the Verdurins feeling, moreover, that this critical
spirit and this demon of frivolity might, by their contagion, prove
fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church, they had been obliged to
expel, one after another, all those of the 'faithful' who were of the
female sex.

Apart from the doctor's young wife, they were reduced almost exclusively
that season (for all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good'
woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich
and wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own
accord severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain
class,' a Mme. de Crécy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian
name, Odette, and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who
looked as though she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies
quite ignorant of the world, who in their social simplicity were so
easily led to believe that the Princesse de Sagan and the Duchesse
de Guermantes were obliged to pay large sums of money to other poor
wretches, in order to have anyone at their dinner-parties, that if
somebody had offered to procure them an invitation to the house of
either of those great dames, the old doorkeeper and the woman of 'easy
virtue' would have contemptuously declined.

The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment.
The young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one
was forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: We're all
friends here. Liberty Hall, you know!

If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the
Prelude to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
impression. Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know
quite well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm
in for. Tomorrow, when I want to get up--nothing doing! If he was not
going to play they talked, and one of the friends--usually the painter
who was in favour there that year--would spin, as M. Verdurin put
it, a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter, and
especially Mme. Verdurin, for whom--so strong was her habit of taking
literally the figurative accounts of her emotions--Dr. Cottard, who was
then just starting in general practice, would really have to come one
day and set her jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too much.

Evening dress was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't
want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the
plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom
as possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the
musician better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing
charades and having supper in fancy dress, and there was no need to
mingle any strange element with the little 'clan.'

But just as the 'good pals' came to take a more and more prominent place
in Mme. Verdurin's life, so the 'bores,' the 'nuisances' grew to include
everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her, that made
them sometimes plead 'previous engagements,' the mother of one, the
professional duties of another, the 'little place in the country' of a
third. If Dr. Cottard felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose
from table, so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill; I
don't know, Mme. Verdurin would say, I'm sure it will do him far more
good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening; he will have a
good night without you; to-morrow morning you can go round early and you
will find him cured. From the beginning of December it would make her
quite ill to think that the 'faithful' might fail her on Christmas and
New Year's Days. The pianist's aunt insisted that he must accompany her,
on the latter, to a family dinner at her mother's.

You don't suppose she'll die, your mother, exclaimed Mme. Verdurin
bitterly, if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day, like
people in the _provinces_!

Her uneasiness was kindled again in Holy Week: Now you, Doctor, you're
a sensible, broad-minded man; you'll come, of course, on Good Friday,
just like any other day? she said to Cottard in the first year of the
little 'nucleus,' in a loud and confident voice, as though there could
be no doubt of his answer. But she trembled as she waited for it, for if
he did not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone.

I shall come on Good Friday--to say good-bye to you, for we are going
to spend the holidays in Auvergne.

In Auvergne? To be eaten by fleas and all sorts of creatures! A fine
lot of good that will do you! And after a solemn pause: If you had
only told us, we would have tried to get up a party, and all gone there
together, comfortably.

And so, too, if one of the 'faithful' had a friend, or one of the ladies
a young man, who was liable, now and then, to make them miss an evening,
the Verdurins, who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a
lover, provided that she had him in their company, loved him in their
company and did not prefer him to their company, would say: Very well,
then, bring your friend along. And he would be put to the test, to see
whether he was willing to have no secrets from Mme. Verdurin, whether he
was susceptible of being enrolled in the 'little clan.' If he failed
to pass, the faithful one who had introduced him would be taken on one
side, and would be tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or
mistress. But if the test proved satisfactory, the newcomer would in
turn be numbered among the 'faithful.' And so when, in the course of
this same year, the courtesan told M. Verdurin that she had made the
acquaintance of such a charming gentleman, M. Swann, and hinted that
he would very much like to be allowed to come, M. Verdurin carried the
request at once to his wife. He never formed an opinion on any subject
until she had formed hers, his special duty being to carry out her
wishes and those of the 'faithful' generally, which he did with
boundless ingenuity.

My dear, Mme. de Crécy has something to say to you. She would like to
bring one of her friends here, a M. Swann. What do you say?

Why, as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of
perfection like that. Be quiet; no one asked your opinion. I tell you
that you are a piece of perfection.

Just as you like, replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went
on: You know I'm not fishing for compliments.

Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice.

Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would
have thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional
a position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But
Swann was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the
women of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was
to learn, he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a
patent of nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon
him, save as a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no
intrinsic value, which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in
some little hole in the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris,
where the good-looking daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken
his fancy. For at such times desire, or love itself, would revive in
him a feeling of vanity from which he was now quite free in his everyday
life, although it was, no doubt, the same feeling which had originally
prompted him towards that career as a man of fashion in which he had
squandered his intellectual gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had
made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society
ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses; and this
vanity it was which made him eager to shine, in the sight of any fair
unknown who had captivated him for the moment, with a brilliance which
the name of Swann by itself did not emit. And he was most eager when the
fair unknown was in humble circumstances. Just as it is not by other
men of intelligence that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought
a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders'
that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated.
Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social
falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
with a duchess, would tremble for fear of being despised, and would
instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.

Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them
above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will
remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the
end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre
distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there
with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the
women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom
he had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these were, as
often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for
the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without
reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women
painted or sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or
a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which
would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy
human flesh.

If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct
for him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his
eye, adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his
'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to
substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in
her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come
and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the
face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if,
instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in
his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself
in the solid structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so
as to be able to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman
might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers
carry about with them. Any part of it which was not portable or could
not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless,
however enviable it might appear to others. How often had his credit
with a duchess, built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to
do him some favour for which she had never found an opportunity, been
squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in an indiscreetly
worded message, for a recommendation by telegraph which would put him
in touch at once with one of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in
the country, just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a crust
of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he would laugh at himself for
it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by many rare refinements, an
element of clownishness. Then he belonged to that class of intelligent
men who have led a life of idleness, and who seek consolation and,
perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness offers to their
intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as any that could
be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life' contains situations
more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.
So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty in persuading the
more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world, notably the
Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the startling
adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a woman in the
train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering that she was
the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were gathered, at that
moment, all the threads of European politics, of which he found himself
kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in the complexity
of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the Conclave
was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover of
somebody's cook.

It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals
and academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs'
and using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest.
I used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to
take an interest in his character because of the similarities which, in
wholly different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to
write to my grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering,
for it was about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair'
began, and made a long interruption in his amatory practices) the
latter, recognising his friend's handwriting on the envelope, would
exclaim: Here is Swann asking for something; on guard! And, either
from distrust or from the unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us
to offer a thing only to those who do not want it, my grandparents would
meet with an obstinate refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers,
as when he begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with us
every Sunday, and whom they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her,
to pretend that they no longer saw, although they would be wondering,
all through the week, whom they could invite to meet her, and often
failed, in the end, to find anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who
would so gladly have accepted.

Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
grandmother, as he hummed the air of:


  What is this mystery?
  I cannot understand it;

or of:


  Vision fugitive...;
  In matters such as this
  'Tis best to close one's eyes.

A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend What
about Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever? the other's face
would lengthen: Never mention his name to me again!

But I thought that you were such friends...

He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins
of my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly,
and without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be
ill, and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had
left by accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he
was leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The
cook had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations
she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary
to inform.

But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular
that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for
her sake he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in
which she moved or into which he had drawn her. No good depending on
Swann for this evening, people would say; don't you remember, it's his
American's night at the Opera? He would secure invitations for her to
the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself
went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after
a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered
with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would
select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at
the house of one or other of the women of his circle; and then, thinking
of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk, whom he
always treated exactly as he pleased, would, when he met them there,
lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved, he would
find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown
weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by the
flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.

But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of
a face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on
his part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at
the theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Crécy by an old friend of
his own, who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom
he might very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out
to be harder of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be
conferring a special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann
not, certainly, as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style
of beauty which left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire,
which gave him, indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those
women of whom every man can name some, and each will name different
examples, who are the converse of the type which our senses demand. To
give him any pleasure her profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate,
her cheek-bones too prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes
were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own
weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell
or in an ill humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre
she had written to ask Swann whether she might see his collections,
which would interest her so much, she, an ignorant woman with a taste
for beautiful things, saying that she would know him better when
once she had seen him in his 'home,' where she imagined him to be so
comfortable with his tea and his books; although she had not concealed
her surprise at his being in that part of the town, which must be so
depressing, and was not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man.
And when he allowed her to come she had said to him as she left how
sorry she was to have stayed so short a time in a house into which she
was so glad to have found her way at last, speaking of him as though he
had meant something more to her than the rest of the people she knew,
and appearing to unite their two selves with a kind of romantic bond
which had made him smile. But at the time of life, tinged already with
disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a man can content
himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting
too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no longer, as in
early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity, tends, still
is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well
become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his younger
days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough
to make him fall in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would
appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part
in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify
it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we
recall and recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on
our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the
opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for
us to remember all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where
it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are
well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow
our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.

Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent,
and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he
felt at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in
the interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite
of her youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to
him, that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he
spontaneously admired. It must be remarked that Odette's face appeared
thinner and more prominent than it actually was, because her forehead
and the upper part of her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface,
were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that period,
drawn forward in a fringe, raised in crimped waves and falling in stray
locks over her ears; while as for her figure, and she was admirably
built, it was impossible to make out its continuity (on account of
the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her being one of the
best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting forwards in an
arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a sharp point,
beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts, gave a woman,
that year, the appearance of being composed of different sections badly
fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the flounces, the
inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled only by the
fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the line
which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of
vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the
architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her
own, found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely
buried.

But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with a smile of her
telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again;
he remembered the anxious, timid way in which she had once begged him
that it might not be very long, and the way in which she had looked at
him then, fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze, which gave her
a touching air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in
the front of her round bonnet of white straw, tied with strings of black
velvet. And won't you, she had ventured, come just once and take tea
with me? He had pleaded pressure of work, an essay--which, in reality,
he had abandoned years ago--on Vermeer of Delft. I know that I am quite
useless, she had replied, a little wild thing like me beside a learned
great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I
should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun
it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of
old papers! she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart
woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself
up, without fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such as
cooking the dinner, with her hands right in the dish itself. You will
only laugh at me, but this painter who stops you from seeing me, she
meant Vermeer, I have never even heard of him; is he alive still? Can I
see any of his things in Paris, so as to have some idea of what is going
on behind that great brow which works so hard, that head which I feel
sure is always puzzling away about things; just to be able to say
'There, that's what he's thinking about!' What a dream it would be to be
able to help you with your work.

He had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. You are afraid
of falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing
else, and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere! she
had said, so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had
been genuinely touched. Some woman must have made you suffer. And you
think that the rest are all like her. She can't have understood you: you
are so utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about
you when I first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody
else.

And then, besides, there's yourself---- he had continued, I know what
women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any
time to spare.

I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always
will be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may
suit you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted
to come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that
you had gone.

No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment
when a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have
had no influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de
Crécy came to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams
the memory of her could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily
imperfections would no longer be of the least importance, nor would the
conformity of her body, more or less than any other, to the requirements
of Swann's taste; since, having become the body of her whom he loved, it
must henceforth be the only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.

It so happened that my grandfather had known--which was more than could
be said of any other actual acquaintance--the family of these Verdurins.
But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called young
Verdurin, taking a general view of him as one who had fallen--though
without losing hold of his millions--among the riff-raff of Bohemia. One
day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could
put him in touch with the Verdurins. On guard! on guard! he exclaimed
as he read it, I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to finish up
like this. A nice lot of people! I cannot do what he asks, because, in
the first place, I no longer know the gentleman in question. Besides,
there must be a woman in it somewhere, and I don't mix myself up in such
matters. Ah, well, we shall see some fun if Swann begins running after
the little Verdurins.

And on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor, it was Odette herself
who had taken Swann to the house.

The Verdurins had had dining with them, on the day when Swann made his
first appearance, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt,
and the painter then in favour, while these were joined, in the course
of the evening, by several more of the 'faithful.'

Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to
reply to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or
in earnest. And so in any event he would embellish all his facial
expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose
expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a
simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been
facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he
never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features,
and you would see there a perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which
you might decipher the question that he never dared to ask: Do you
really mean that? He was no more confident of the manner in which he
ought to conduct himself in the street, or indeed in life generally,
than he was in a drawing-room; and he might be seen greeting passers-by,
carriages, and anything that occurred with a malicious smile which
absolved his subsequent behaviour of all impropriety, since it proved,
if it should turn out unsuited to the occasion, that he was well aware
of that, and that if he had assumed a smile, the jest was a secret of
his own.

On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to
be permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate
the wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
education.

So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.

As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion,
'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in
what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other
'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of
strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat
them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice
to furnish him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.

As the critical faculty, on the universal application of which he prided
himself, was, in reality, completely lacking, that refinement of good
breeding which consists in assuring some one whom you are obliging in
any way, without expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself
that is obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took everything that
he heard in its literal sense. However blind she may have been to his
faults, Mme. Verdurin was genuinely annoyed, though she still continued
to regard him as brilliantly clever, when, after she had invited him to
see and hear Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said politely:
It is very good of you to have come, Doctor, especially as I'm sure
you must often have heard Sarah Bernhardt; and besides, I'm afraid we're
rather too near the stage, the Doctor, who had come into the box with a
smile which waited before settling upon or vanishing from his face
until some one in authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the
spectacle, replied: To be sure, we are far too near the stage, and
one is getting sick of Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a wish that
I should come. For me, your wish is a command. I am only too glad to be
able to do you this little service. What would one not do to please you,
you are so good. And he went on, Sarah Bernhardt; that's what they
call the Voice of God, ain't it? You see, often, too, that she 'sets the
boards on fire.' That's an odd expression, ain't it? in the hope of an
enlightening commentary, which, however, was not forthcoming.

D'you know, Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, I believe we are
going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the
Doctor. He is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday
existence; he knows nothing himself of what things are worth, and he
accepts everything that we say as gospel.

I never dared to mention it, M. Verdurin had answered, but I've
noticed the same thing myself. And on the following New Year's Day,
instead of sending Dr. Cottard a ruby that cost three thousand francs,
and pretending that it was a mere trifle, M. Verdurin bought an
artificial stone for three hundred, and let it be understood that it was
something almost impossible to match.

When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they were to see M. Swann that
evening; Swann! the Doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal
by his astonishment, for the smallest piece of news would always take
utterly unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in
readiness for anything. And seeing that no one answered him, Swann! Who
on earth is Swann? he shouted, in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided
as soon as Mme. Verdurin had explained, Why, Odette's friend, whom she
told us about.

Ah, good, good; that's all right, then, answered the Doctor, at once
mollified. As for the painter, he was overjoyed at the prospect of
Swann's appearing at the Verdurins', because he supposed him to be in
love with Odette, and was always ready to assist at lovers' meetings.
Nothing amuses me more than match-making, he confided to Cottard; I
have been tremendously successful, even with women!

In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely 'smart,' Odette had
alarmed them with the prospect of another 'bore.' When he arrived,
however, he made an excellent impression, an indirect cause of which,
though they did not know it, was his familiarity with the best society.
He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who have lived and
moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and
refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they no longer
see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills
the imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature,
freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming
too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of
movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out
precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation
by the rest of his body. The simple and elementary gestures used by a
man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown
youth who is being introduced to him, and when he bows discreetly before
the Ambassador to whom he is being introduced, had gradually pervaded,
without his being conscious of it, the whole of Swann's social
deportment, so that in the company of people of a lower grade than his
own, such as the Verdurins and their friends, he instinctively shewed an
assiduity, and made overtures with which, by their account, any of their
'bores' would have dispensed. He chilled, though for a moment only,
on meeting Dr. Cottard; for seeing him close one eye with an ambiguous
smile, before they had yet spoken to one another (a grimace which
Cottard styled letting 'em all come), Swann supposed that the Doctor
recognised him from having met him already somewhere, probably in some
house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself very rarely visited,
never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love.
Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste, especially before Odette,
whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse, Swann
assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that the lady next to
the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a husband would
not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any allusion to
amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the Doctor's
expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The painter at
once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann found him
very pleasant. Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I have
been, Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait (for which she
had given the painter a commission). Take care, Master Biche, she
reminded the painter, whom it was a time-honoured pleasantry to address
as 'Master,' to catch that nice look in his eyes, that witty little
twinkle. You know, what I want to have most of all is his smile; that's
what I've asked you to paint--the portrait of his smile. And since the
phrase struck her as noteworthy, she repeated it very loud, so as to
make sure that as many as possible of her guests should hear it, and
even made use of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer
before she uttered it again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone,
even to an old friend of the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness,
simplicity and good-nature had deprived him of all the consideration due
to his skill in palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished
family to which he belonged. When he spoke, his words came with
a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it
indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul,
as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never
wholly outgrown. All the consonants which he did not manage to pronounce
seemed like harsh utterances of which his gentle lips were incapable. By
asking to be made known to M. Saniette, Swann made M. Verdurin reverse
the usual form of introduction (saying, in fact, with emphasis on the
distinction: M. Swann, pray let me present to you our friend Saniette)
but he aroused in Saniette himself a warmth of gratitude, which,
however, the Verdurins never disclosed to Swann, since Saniette rather
annoyed them, and they did not feel bound to provide him with friends.
On the other hand the Verdurins were extremely touched by Swann's next
request, for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the pianist's
aunt. She wore a black dress, as was her invariable custom, for she
believed that a woman always looked well in black, and that nothing
could be more distinguished; but her face was exceedingly red, as
it always was for some time after a meal. She bowed to Swann with
deference, but drew herself up again with great dignity. As she was
entirely uneducated, and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and
pronunciation, she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling
manner, thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in
the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had
actually made it or not; with the result that her talk was a sort of
continuous, blurred expectoration, out of which would emerge, at rare
intervals, those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive.
Swann supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in
conversation with M. Verdurin, who, however, was not at all amused.

She is such an excellent woman! he rejoined. I grant you that she
is not exactly brilliant; but I assure you that she can talk most
charmingly when you are alone with her.

I am sure she can, Swann hastened to conciliate him. All I meant was
that she hardly struck me as 'distinguished,' he went on, isolating
the epithet in the inverted commas of his tone, and, after all, that is
something of a compliment.

Wait a moment, said M. Verdurin, now, this will surprise you; she
writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is
admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something,
M. Swann?

I should count myself most fortunate... Swann was beginning, a trifle
pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it
said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis
and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a
solemn word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just
now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately
pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in
what he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be
in current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole
thing was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the
quotation, which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended
to introduce at that point, although in reality it had never entered his
mind.

Most fortunate for France! he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms
with great vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.

What are all those good people laughing at over there? There's no sign
of brooding melancholy down in your corner, shouted Mme. Verdurin. You
don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on
the stool of repentance, she went on peevishly, like a spoiled child.

Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood,
which a violinist from that country had given her, and which she kept in
her drawing-room, although in appearance it suggested a school 'form,'
and 'swore,' as the saying is, at the really good antique furniture
which she had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the
presents which her 'faithful' were in the habit of making her from time
to time, so that the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there
when they came to the house. She tried to persuade them to confine
their tributes to flowers and sweets, which had at least the merit of
mortality; but she was never successful, and the house was gradually
filled with a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens,
barometers and vases, a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity
of useless but indestructible objects.

From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the
conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but,
since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in
real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that
she was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any
of the circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle
who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'--and to the utter despair
of M. Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily
amused as his wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,'
was out of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished
by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity--she would utter a
shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning
to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only
just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow,
burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and
prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be
struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give
way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate. So, stupefied with
the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship, scandal and
asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a cage-bird
whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft and sob
with fellow-feeling.

Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light
his pipe (No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!), went and
begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.

Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be
tormented, cried Mme. Verdurin. I won't have him tormented.

But why on earth should it bother him? rejoined M. Verdurin. I'm sure
M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he
is going to play us the pianoforte arrangement.

No, no, no, not my sonata! she screamed, I don't want to be made to
cry until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like
last time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance;
you are all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of
you will have to stay in bed, for a week.

This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist
sat down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though
each of them were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the
seductive originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the
acute sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would
attract the attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at
the other end of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as
in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was
being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had
been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the
'little scene' had never been so amusingly done.

Well, all right, then, said M. Verdurin, he can play just the
andante.

Just the _andante_! How you do go on, cried his wife. As if it
weren't 'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The
'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he
said 'we need only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the
_Meistersinger_.

The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play,
not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised
the existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common
to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.

You won't be ill this time, you'll find, he told her, seeking at the
same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. And, if you
are ill, we will cure you.

Will you, really? Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a
favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate.
Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had
worked herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it
was all only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely,
from an invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that
invalids grow weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend
always on their own prudence in avoiding them, and like to let
themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most
enjoy doing, although they are always ill after doing it, provided only
that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority which,
without putting them to the least inconvenience, can and will, by
uttering a word or by administering a tabloid, set them once again upon
their feet.

Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
to Mme. Verdurin, I have my own little corner, haven't I?

And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get
up. You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette;
you can make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?

What charming Beauvais! said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.

I am glad you appreciate my sofa, replied Mme. Verdurin, and I warn
you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well
abandon the idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these
little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a
moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the
subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you combine amusement
with instruction when you look at them;--I can promise you a delightful
time, I assure you. Just look at the little border around the edges;
here, look, the little vine on a red background in this one, the Bear
and the Grapes. Isn't it well drawn? What do you say? I think they knew
a thing or two about design! Doesn't it make your mouth water, this
vine? My husband makes out that I am not fond of fruit, because I eat
less than he does. But not a bit of it, I am greedier than any of you,
but I have no need to fill my mouth with them when I can feed on them
with my eyes. What are you all laughing at now, pray? Ask the Doctor;
he will tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge. Some
people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my own little Beauvais cure
here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without feeling the little
bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite surface? No, no,
not with your whole hand like that; feel them properly!

If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes,
said the painter, we shan't get any music to-night.

Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women, she went on, are
forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in
the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour
of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say
that you never have been jealous!

But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
you as a witness; did I utter a word?

Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
like to stop.

Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to
be caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the
young gentleman who will take charge of that.

After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:

The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music
played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the
material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it
had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the
violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole,
he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a
flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent,
level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of
the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at
a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline,
or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had
tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he
knew not which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded
his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist
air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was
owing to his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so
confused an impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only
purely musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original,
and irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order,
vanishing in an instant, is, so to speak, an impression _sine materia_.
Presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out
before our eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their
pitch and volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation
of breadth or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves
have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to
escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous
notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception
would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the _motifs_ which now
and then emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and
drown; recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they
instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;--if
our memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm
foundations beneath the tumult of the waves, did not, by fashioning for
us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to
contrast them with those that follow. And so, hardly had the delicious
sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory
had furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true,
and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while
the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression
suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture
to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the
strength of its expression; he had before him that definite object which
was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought,
and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had
distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
strange desire.

With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly
indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which
he was prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it
changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform,
melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista
of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing,
that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though
without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure
less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he
was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment
passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and
enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether
he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows
nothing of her, not even her name.

Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few
months, to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of
rejuvenation. He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards
any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe
in (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had
grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations,
which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance.
Just as he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have
done better by not going into society, knowing very well that if he
had accepted an invitation he must put in an appearance, and that
afterwards, if he did not actually call, he must at least leave cards
upon his hostess; so in his conversation he took care never to express
with any warmth a personal opinion about a thing, but instead would
supply facts and details which had a value of a sort in themselves, and
excused him from shewing how much he really knew. He would be extremely
precise about the recipe for a dish, the dates of a painter's birth and
death, and the titles of his works. Sometimes, in spite of himself, he
would let himself go so far as to utter a criticism of a work of art, or
of some one's interpretation of life, but then he would cloak his words
in a tone of irony, as though he did not altogether associate himself
with what he was saying. But now, like a confirmed invalid whom, all
of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings, or a new course of
treatment, or, as sometimes happens, an organic change in himself,
spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have so far recovered from his
malady that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto beyond
all hope, of starting to lead--and better late than never--a wholly
different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase that
he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play
over to him, to see whether he might not, perhaps, discover his phrase
among them, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which
he had ceased to believe, but to which, as though the music had had upon
the moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative
influence, he was conscious once again of a desire, almost, indeed, of
the power to consecrate his life. But, never having managed to find out
whose work it was that he had heard played that evening, he had been
unable to procure a copy, and finally had forgotten the quest. He had
indeed, in the course of the next few days, encountered several of the
people who had been at the party with him, and had questioned them;
but most of them had either arrived after or left before the piece was
played; some had indeed been in the house, but had gone into another
room to talk, and those who had stayed to listen had no clearer
impression than the rest. As for his hosts, they knew that it was a
recently published work which the musicians whom they had engaged for
the evening had asked to be allowed to play; but, as these last were now
on tour somewhere, Swann could learn nothing further. He had, of
course, a number of musical friends, but, vividly as he could recall the
exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little phrase had given
him, and could see, still, before his eyes the forms that it had traced
in outline, he was quite incapable of humming over to them the air. And
so, at last, he ceased to think of it.

But to-night, at Mme. Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun
to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole
bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that
resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain
of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth--and recognised, secret,
whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved.
And it was so peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which
nothing else could have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met,
in a friend's drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once,
in the street, and had despaired of ever seeing her again. Finally the
phrase withdrew and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the
wandering currents of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a
reflection of its smile. But now, at last, he could ask the name of
his fair unknown (and was told that it was the _andante_ movement of
Vinteuil's sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could
have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its
language and acquire its secret.

And so, when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and
thanked him with a vivacity which delighted Mme. Verdurin.

Isn't he charming? she asked Swann, doesn't he just understand it,
his sonata, the little wretch? You never dreamed, did you, that a piano
could be made to express all that? Upon my word, there's everything in
it except the piano! I'm caught out every time I hear it; I think
I'm listening to an orchestra. Though it's better, really, than an
orchestra, more complete.

The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining
each of his words as though he were making an epigram: You are most
generous to me.

And while Mme. Verdurin was saying to her husband, Run and fetch him a
glass of orangeade; it's well earned! Swann began to tell Odette how he
had fallen in love with that little phrase. When their hostess, who was
a little way off, called out, Well! It looks to me as though some one
was saying nice things to you, Odette! she replied, Yes, very
nice, and he found her simplicity delightful. Then he asked for some
information about this Vinteuil; what else he had done, and at what
period in his life he had composed the sonata;--what meaning the little
phrase could have had for him, that was what Swann wanted most to know.

But none of these people who professed to admire this musician (when
Swann had said that the sonata was really charming Mme. Verdurin had
exclaimed, I quite believe it! Charming, indeed! But you don't dare to
confess that you don't know Vinteuil's sonata; you have no right not to
know it!--and the painter had gone on with, Ah, yes, it's a very fine
bit of work, isn't it? Not, of course, if you want something 'obvious,'
something 'popular,' but, I mean to say, it makes a very great
impression on us artists.), none of them seemed ever to have asked
himself these questions, for none of them was able to reply.

Even to one or two particular remarks made by Swann on his favourite
phrase, D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may
as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through
a microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we
don't waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not
a habit of ours, that's all, Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard
gazed at her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to
follow her as she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another
of her stock of ready-made phrases. Both he, however, and Mme. Cottard,
with a kind of common sense which is shared by many people of humble
origin, would always take care not to express an opinion, or to pretend
to admire a piece of music which they would confess to each other, once
they were safely at home, that they no more understood than they could
understand the art of 'Master' Biche. Inasmuch as the public cannot
recognise the charm, the beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the
stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated,
while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so
M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were
incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil's sonata or in Biche's
portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in
painting. It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as
though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which
bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were
accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colours haphazard upon
his canvas. When, on one of these, they were able to distinguish a human
form, they always found it coarsened and vulgarised (that is to say
lacking all the elegance of the school of painting through whose
spectacles they themselves were in the habit of seeing the people--real,
living people, who passed them in the streets) and devoid of truth, as
though M. Biche had not known how the human shoulder was constructed, or
that a woman's hair was not, ordinarily, purple.

And yet, when the 'faithful' were scattered out of earshot, the Doctor
felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on:
Yes, indeed; he's what they call a musician _di primo cartello_! he
exclaimed, with a sudden determination.

Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.

I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil, said Swann, thinking of
the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.

Perhaps that's the man! cried Mme. Verdurin.

Oh, no! Swann burst out laughing. If you had ever seen him for a
moment you wouldn't put the question.

Then to put the question is to solve the problem? the Doctor
suggested.

But it may well be some relative, Swann went on. That would be bad
enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have
a cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear
there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to
get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata;
starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which would be
ghastly.

The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment,
and that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.

What! cried Mme. Verdurin, Do people still call in Potain?

Ah! Mme. Verdurin, Cottard simpered, you forget that you are speaking
of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters.

The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the
loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected
in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike Swann as
ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work
contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion
of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so
insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
these.

Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as
he does! Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who
has the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to
anyone who disagrees with her. Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!

But, Madame, he is in the Academy. The Doctor smiled with bitter
irony. If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the
Princes of Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I
have Potain.'

Oh, indeed! More smart, is it? said Mme. Verdurin. So there are
fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh,
you do make me laugh! she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her
hands. And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never
seeing that you were pulling my leg.

As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope
to keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of
mirth.

D'you know; we like your friend so very much, said Mme. Verdurin,
later, when Odette was bidding her good night. He is so unaffected,
quite charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring
here, by all means bring them.

M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
the pianist's aunt.

I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man, suggested Mme.
Verdurin. You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first
time he comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now
for years. The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and
finding out things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us
to-morrow at the Châtelet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring
him. No, he doesn't want that.

Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
last moment.

Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
without thinking: I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in
time for the _Danicheff_ revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect
of Police to-morrow, as it happens, at the Elysée.

What's that? The Elysée? Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.

Yes, at M. Grévy's, replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
effect which his announcement had produced.

Are you often taken like that? the painter asked Cottard, with
mock-seriousness.

As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: Ah,
good, good; that's all right, then, after which he would shew not the
least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point
his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself
was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no
honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head
of the State.

What's that you say? M. Grévy? Do you know M. Grévy? he demanded of
Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of
the Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of
the police infirmary.

I know him slightly; we have some friends in common (Swann dared not
add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). Anyhow, he is
very free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties
are not the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you
know; never more than eight at table, he went on, trying desperately
to cut out everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the
President in a light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.

Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from
M. Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into
the highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at
all surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at
the Elysée'; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to
luncheon-parties which, he himself admitted, were a bore.

Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then, he said, in the tone of
a customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
journey without troubling to examine your luggage.

I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
it's very good of you to go to them! said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded
the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded,
since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion,
which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them
'fail.' It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers.

Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there. A
note of pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the
number--only eight at table--Are these luncheons what you would
describe as 'intimate'? he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle
curiosity as in his linguistic zeal.

But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann
nor the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first
impression, and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without
asking anxiously, D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening?
He is a personal friend of M. Grévy's. I suppose that means he's what
you'd call a 'gentleman'? He even went to the length of offering Swann
a card of invitation to the Dental Exhibition.

This will let you in, and anyone you take with you, he explained, but
dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because
some friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there
was the devil to pay.

As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect
upon his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of
whom he had never spoken.

If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the
Verdurins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but
he never appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever
accept their invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.

I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather, she suggested.

But what about Mme. Verdurin?

Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
that my cab came late. There is always some excuse.

How charming of you.

But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other
pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire
that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of
satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty
that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom
he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the
first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see
Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to
call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins'. The little
girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Rémi, his
coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him
in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins'. He would enter
the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses
which he had sent her that morning, said: I am furious with you! and
sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist
would play to them--for their two selves, and for no one else--that
little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from the violin
part, which, for several bars, was unaccompanied, and filled all the
foreground; until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside, and--just as in
those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where the subject is set back a
long way through the narrow framework of a half-opened door--infinitely
remote, in colour quite different, velvety with the radiance of some
intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral,
interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It passed, with
simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of
its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now
discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how
hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace
there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an
outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked
upon the sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had,
in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or
Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and
would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
to come--than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
which he still knew no more than this one passage. Why do you want the
rest? she had asked him. Our little bit; that's all we need. He went
farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
a 'lass unparalleled.'

It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La Pérouse, behind the
Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
spirit, after he had left her for the night.

And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
and murmured Till to-morrow, then! she turned impulsively from him,
plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
the drive home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it
away, like something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.

He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her
life--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those
short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses,
self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and
there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once
an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the
district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the
garden-beds or clung to the branches of the trees, the careless disarray
of the season, the assertion, in this man-made city, of a state of
nature, had all combined to add an element of mystery to the warmth, the
flowers, the luxury which he had found inside.

Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of
Turkish beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord
from the ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not
have to complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of
Western civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two
drawing-rooms, large and small. These were entered through a narrow
lobby, the wall of which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden
trellis such as you see on garden walls, only gilded, was lined from
end to end by a long rectangular box in which bloomed, as though in a
hothouse, a row of large chrysanthemums, at that time still
uncommon, though by no means so large as the mammoth blossoms which
horticulturists have since succeeded in making grow. Swann was
irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these flowers, which had then been
'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it had pleased him, on this
occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby shot with rays of pink
and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these ephemeral stars,
which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of winter
afternoons. Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk, which
left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in one
of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing
out of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, You're
not comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you, and
with a titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that
some little invention of her own was being brought into play, she
had installed behind his head and beneath his feet great cushions of
Japanese silk, which she pummelled and buffeted as though determined to
lavish on him all her riches, and regardless of their value. But when
her footman began to come into the room, bringing, one after another,
the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases)
burned singly or in pairs upon the different pieces of furniture as upon
so many altars, rekindling in the twilight, already almost nocturnal, of
this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate,
more human--filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of
some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a
standstill before the mystery of the human presence which those lighted
windows at once revealed and screened from sight--she had kept an eye
sharply fixed on the servant, to see whether he set each of the lamps
down in the place appointed it. She felt that, if he were to put
even one of them where it ought not to be, the general effect of her
drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her portrait, which rested
upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not catch the light. And
so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's clumsy movements,
scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair of beaupots,
which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the plants
should be knocked over--and went across to them now to make sure that he
had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something 'quaint' in
the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her orchids, the
cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite
flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least
like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps of silk
or satin. It looks just as though it had been cut out of the lining
of my cloak, she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a shade of
respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this distinguished,
unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon her, so far
removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so delicate, so
refined, so much more worthy than many real women of admission to
her drawing-room. As she drew his attention, now to the fiery-tongued
dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen, now to a
fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid silver-work with
ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved
in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the
monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency
of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across
and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these
affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of her
attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing
to it unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired Lemon
or cream? and, on his answering Cream, please, went on, smiling, A
cloud! And as he pronounced it excellent, You see, I know just how you
like it. This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to
her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some
justification for itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures
which, on the contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must
cease with its passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go
and dress for the evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in
his brougham, unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon's
adventure had filled him, he kept on repeating to himself: What fun
it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could
always be certain of finding, what one never can be certain of finding,
a really good cup of tea. An hour or so later he received a note from
Odette, and at once recognised that florid handwriting, in which an
affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its
shapeless characters, significant, perhaps, to less intimate eyes
than his, of an untidiness of mind, a fragmentary education, a want of
sincerity and decision. Swann had left his cigarette-case at her house.
Why, she wrote, did you not forget your heart also? I should never
have let you have that back.

More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid her, a little
later. On his way to the house, as always when he knew that they were to
meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he
was to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and
rosy protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of
those cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when
they were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute
depression, as proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and
one's actual happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which
she had asked to see. She was not very well; she received him, wearing
a wrapper of mauve _crêpe de Chine_, which draped her bosom, like a
mantle, with a richly embroidered web. As she stood there beside him,
brushing his cheek with the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one
knee in what was almost a dancer's pose, so that she could lean without
tiring herself over the picture, at which she was gazing, with bended
head, out of those great eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when
there was nothing to animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to
the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one
of the Sistine frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination
in tracing in the paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general
characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but
rather what seems least susceptible of generalisation, the individual
features of men and women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust
of the Doge Loredan by Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the
slanting eyebrows, in short, a speaking likeness to his own coachman
Rémi; in the colouring of a Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy; in a
portrait by Tintoretto, the invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an
outcrop of whisker, the broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen
eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon. Perhaps because he had always regretted,
in his heart, that he had confined his attention to the social side of
life, had talked, always, rather than acted, he felt that he might find
a sort of indulgence bestowed upon him by those great artists, in his
perception of the fact that they also had regarded with pleasure and had
admitted into the canon of their works such types of physiognomy as give
those works the strongest possible certificate of reality and trueness
to life; a modern, almost a topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far
succumbed to the prevailing frivolity of the world of fashion that he
felt the necessity of finding in an old masterpiece some such obvious
and refreshing allusion to a person about whom jokes could be made and
repeated and enjoyed to-day. Perhaps, on the other hand, he had
retained enough of the artistic temperament to be able to find a genuine
satisfaction in watching these individual features take on a more
general significance when he saw them, uprooted and disembodied, in the
abstract idea of similarity between an historic portrait and a modern
original, whom it was not intended to represent. However that might be,
and perhaps because the abundance of impressions which he, for some time
past, had been receiving--though, indeed, they had come to him rather
through the channel of his appreciation of music--had enriched his
appetite for painting as well, it was with an unusual intensity
of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his
character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the
Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one shrinks from giving
his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli' suggests not so much the
actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which
has of late obtained common currency. He no longer based his estimate
of the merit of Odette's face on the more or less good quality of her
cheeks, and the softness and sweetness--as of carnation-petals--which,
he supposed, would greet his lips there, should he ever hazard an
embrace, but regarded it rather as a skein of subtle and lovely silken
threads, which his gazing eyes collected and wound together, following
the curving line from the skein to the ball, where he mingled the
cadence of her neck with the spring of her hair and the droop of her
eyelids, as though from a portrait of herself, in which her type was
made clearly intelligible.

He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in
her face and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to
recapture, both when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking
of her in her absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine
masterpiece was probably based upon his discovery that it had been
reproduced in her, the similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered
her more precious in his sight. Swann reproached himself with his
failure, hitherto, to estimate at her true worth a creature whom the
great Sandro would have adored, and counted himself fortunate that his
pleasure in the contemplation of Odette found a justification in his own
system of aesthetic. He told himself that, in choosing the thought of
Odette as the inspiration of his dreams of ideal happiness, he was not,
as he had until then supposed, falling back, merely, upon an expedient
of doubtful and certainly inadequate value, since she contained in
herself what satisfied the utmost refinement of his taste in art. He
failed to observe that this quality would not naturally avail to bring
Odette into the category of women whom he found desirable, simply
because his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic taste. The
words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to Swann. They enabled him
(gave him, as it were, a legal title) to introduce the image of Odette
into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been
debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler form. And
whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually reviving his
misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the whole of her
beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings were swept
away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his estimate of
her on the sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while the kiss,
the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but moderately
attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat withered
flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his
adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as
exquisite as they would be supernatural.

And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past, he had done
nothing but visit Odette, he would assure himself that he was
not unreasonable in giving up much of his time to the study of an
inestimably precious work of art, cast for once in a new, a different,
an especially charming metal, in an unmatched exemplar which he would
contemplate at one moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind
of an artist, at another with the pride, the selfishness, the sensual
thrill of a collector.

On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a
photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would
gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the
imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair
that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt
to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman,
he converted it into a series of physical merits which he congratulated
himself on finding assembled in the person of one whom he might,
ultimately, possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a
spectator to a work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh
and blood, of Jethro's Daughter, became a desire which more than
compensated, thenceforward, for that with which Odette's physical charms
had at first failed to inspire him. When he had sat for a long time
gazing at the Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli,
who seemed all the lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him
the photograph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette
against his heart.

It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains
to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that,
since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer
to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid
lest the manner--at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly
unalterable--which she now adopted when they were together should
ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that a day might come when
she would make avowal of her passion, by which hope alone he had become
and would remain her lover. And so to alter, to give a fresh moral
aspect to that Odette, of whose unchanging mood he was afraid of growing
weary, he wrote, suddenly, a letter full of hinted discoveries and
feigned indignation, which he sent off so that it should reach her
before dinner-time. He knew that she would be frightened, and that she
would reply, and he hoped that, when the fear of losing him clutched at
her heart, it would force from her words such as he had never yet heard
her utter: and he was right--by repeating this device he had won from
her the most affectionate letters that she had, so far, written him, one
of them (which she had sent to him at midday by a special messenger from
the Maison Dorée--it was the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête given for
the victims of the recent floods in Murcia) beginning My dear, my hand
trembles so that I can scarcely write----; and these letters he had
kept in the same drawer as the withered chrysanthemum. Or else, if she
had not had time to write, when he arrived at the Verdurins' she would
come running up to him with an I've something to say to you! and he
would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face and speech of what
she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart.

Even as he drew near to the Verdurins' door, and caught sight of the
great lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows, whose shutters were
never closed, he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming
creature whom he would see, as he entered the room, basking in that
golden light. Here and there the figures of the guests stood out, sharp
and black, between lamp and window, shutting off the light, like those
little pictures which one sees sometimes pasted here and there upon a
glass screen, whose other panes are mere transparencies. He would try
to make out Odette. And then, when he was once inside, without thinking,
his eyes sparkled suddenly with such radiant happiness that M. Verdurin
said to the painter: H'm. Seems to be getting warm. Indeed, her
presence gave the house what none other of the houses that he visited
seemed to possess: a sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which
ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his
heart.

And so the simple and regular manifestations of a social organism,
namely the 'little clan,' were transformed for Swann into a series of
daily encounters with Odette, and enabled him to feign indifference to
the prospect of seeing her, or even a desire not to see her; in doing
which he incurred no very great risk since, even although he had written
to her during the day, he would of necessity see her in the evening and
accompany her home.

But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark
drive together, he had taken his other 'little girl' all the way to the
Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at
the Verdurins', he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing
that he did not intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare
of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the
sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began
then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that
certainty of finding it whenever he would, which (as in the case of
all our pleasures) reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its
dimensions.

Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here? M.
Verdurin asked his wife. I think we may say that he's hooked.

The face he pulled? exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house
for a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and
did not know whom they were discussing.

D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep--the loveliest of
Swanns?

No. M. Swann has been here?

Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated.
In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left.

You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she
has 'burned her boats'? inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the
meaning of his phrases.

Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
silly little fool, which she is, incidentally.

Come, come, come! said M. Verdurin, How on earth do you know that
there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?

She would have told me, answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. I may
say that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I
told her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't;
she admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's
always shy with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she
doesn't care for him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love,
'Platonic,' you know; she's afraid of rubbing the bloom off--oh, I don't
know half the things she says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the
sort of man she wants.

I beg to differ from you, M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. I am
only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'

Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which
she might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable
word which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose'
in her house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who
'mattered more' than herself.

Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted
to Odette, but really--to expound theories of aesthetic to her--the man
must be a prize idiot.

Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette, broke in
Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. She is charming.

There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
virtue or intellect. After all, he turned to the painter, does it
matter so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she
might be a great deal less charming if she were.

On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she
would probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prévost's on her
way home. Swann set off at once for Prévost's, but every few yards
his carriage was held up by others, or by people crossing the street,
loathsome obstacles each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath
his wheels, were it not that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would
delay him even longer than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He
counted the minutes feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to
be quite certain that he had not given himself short measure, and so,
possibly, exaggerated whatever chance there might actually be of his
arriving at Prévost's in time, and of finding her still there. And then,
in a moment of illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep
and is conscious of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his
mind has been wandering without any clear distinction between himself
and them, Swann suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the
thoughts which he had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard
at the Verdurins' that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from
which he was suffering, but of which he was only now conscious, as
though he had just woken up. What! all this disturbance simply because
he would not see Odette, now, till to-morrow, exactly what he had been
hoping, not an hour before, as he drove toward Mme. Verdurin's. He was
obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same carriage and
drove to Prévost's, he was no longer the same man, was no longer alone
even--but that a new personality was there beside him, adhering to him,
amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable
to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some such
stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during
this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality
was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, more
interesting.

It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
Prévost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so
bare the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea,
not one memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take
shelter and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be
much the same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every
other evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to
cast furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to
withdraw his eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of
desire and believe no more in his indifference, he would cease to
be able even to think of her, so busy would he be in the search for
pretexts which would enable him not to leave her immediately, and to
assure himself, without betraying his concern, that he would find her
again, next evening, at the Verdurins'; pretexts, that is to say, which
would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day
more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come
to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet
never dared embrace.

She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
direction, he sent in the other his coachman Rémi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting
at the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and
Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching
moment, as one in which Rémi would say to him: Sir, the lady is there,
or as one in which Rémi would say to him: Sir, the lady was not in
any of the cafés. And so he saw himself faced by the close of his
evening--a thing uniform, and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident
which would either put an end to his agony by discovering Odette, or
would oblige him to abandon any hope of finding her that night, to
accept the necessity of returning home without having seen her.

The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked,
not Did you find the lady? but Remind me, to-morrow, to order in
some more firewood. I am sure we must be running short. Perhaps he had
persuaded himself that, if Rémi had at last found Odette in some café,
where she was waiting for him still, then his night of misery was
already obliterated by the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a
night of joy, and that there was no need for him to hasten towards the
attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place,
which would not escape his grasp again. But it was also by the force of
inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be
seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid
a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to
perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the
saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position,
as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength
and motion. And probably, if the coachman had interrupted him with,
I have found the lady, he would have answered, Oh, yes, of course;
that's what I told you to do. I had quite forgotten, and would have
continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so as to hide from his
servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give himself time to break
away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon himself to pleasure.

The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, I
think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home.

But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when
Rémi uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a
cast-off cloak when he saw Rémi attempt to make him abandon hope and
retire from the quest.

Certainly not! he exclaimed. We must find the lady. It is most
important. She would be extremely put out--it's a business matter--and
vexed with me if she didn't see me.

But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir, answered Rémi, since
it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
going to Prévost's, and then wasn't there.

Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go
out. Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people
strolling to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness.
Now and then the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few
words in his ear, asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering.
Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though
among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been
searching for a lost Eurydice.

Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the
human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking
amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided,
that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not
necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or
even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her
should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in
the moment when she has failed to meet us--for the pleasure which
we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly
substituted an anxious torturing desire, whose object is the creature
herself, an irrational, absurd desire, which the laws of civilised
society make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage--the
insensate, agonising desire to possess her.

Swann made Rémi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated
so calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon
their meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman,
as though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce
his own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming
that she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in
some restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
Maison Dorée, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching
sight of her, was emerging from the Café Anglais, striding with haggard
gaze towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of
the Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
been no room at Prévost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
Maison Dorée, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.

She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed
it possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered
even more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his
reason had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least,
to be realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever
before; for he himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating
probabilities,--it remained integral and external to himself; there
was no need for him to draw on his own resources to endow it with
truth--'twas from itself that there emanated, 'twas itself that
projected towards him that truth whose glorious rays melted and
scattered like the cloud of a dream the sense of loneliness which had
lowered over him, that truth upon which he had supported, nay founded,
albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So will a traveller, who has
come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the Mediterranean shore, and
is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands which he has left, let
his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward glance, by the radiance
streaming towards him from the luminous and unfading azure at his feet.

He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
ordered his own to follow.

She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath
the film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers
fastened to a swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a
flowing gown of black velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a
large triangular patch of her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,'
also of white silk, in the cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were
fastened a few more cattleyas. She had scarcely recovered from the shock
which the sight of Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the
horse start to one side. They were thrown forward from their seats; she
uttered a cry, and fell back quivering and breathless.

It's all right, he assured her, don't be frightened. And he slipped
his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then
went on: Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes
or no, or you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the
flowers straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid
of their dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more
securely.

She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
smiled as she answered: No, not at all; I don't mind in the least.

But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little--I think it must be
pollen, spilt over your dress,--may I brush it off with my hand? That's
not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a
little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a
little farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if
I just sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I
don't believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now.

Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who
should say, You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it.

He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her
eyes on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women
of the old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type
of hers; swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes,
large and finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from
her face and rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her
neck, as all their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as
well as in the scriptural. And although her attitude was, doubtless,
habitual and instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such
moments, and was careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all
her strength to hold her face back, as though some invisible force
were drawing it down towards Swann's. And Swann it was who, before she
allowed her face, as though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips,
held it back for a moment longer, at a little distance between his
hands. He had intended to leave time for her mind to overtake her body's
movements, to recognise the dream which she had so long cherished and to
assist at its realisation, like a mother invited as a spectator when
a prize is given to the child whom she has reared and loves. Perhaps,
moreover, Swann himself was fixing upon these features of an Odette not
yet possessed, not even kissed by him, on whom he was looking now for
the last time, that comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his
departure, a traveller strives to bear away with him in memory the view
of a country to which he may never return.

But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which
had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete
surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or from reluctance to
appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked
the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which
could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first
occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If
she had any cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: It is most
unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've
not been disturbed as they were the other night; I think, though, that
this one isn't quite straight. May I see if they have more scent than
the others? Or else, if she had none: Oh! no cattleyas this evening;
then there's nothing for me to arrange. So that for some time there
was no change from the procedure which he had followed on that first
evening, when he had started by touching her throat, with his fingers
first and then with his lips, but their caresses began invariably with
this modest exploration. And long afterwards, when the arrangement (or,
rather, the ritual pretence of an arrangement) of her cattleyas had
quite fallen into desuetude, the metaphor Do a cattleya, transmuted
into a simple verb which they would employ without a thought of its
original meaning when they wished to refer to the act of physical
possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor possesses nothing),
survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long forgotten custom
from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular manner of saying
to make love had not the precise significance of its synonyms.
However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may regard
the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure
if the women concerned be--or be thought to be--so difficult as to
oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our
relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the
cattleyas. He trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told
himself, if she were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his
intention) that it was the possession of this woman that would emerge
for him from their large and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure
which he already felt, and which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps
only because she was not yet aware of it herself, seemed to him for that
reason--as it might have seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid
the flowers of the earthly paradise--a pleasure which had never before
existed, which he was striving now to create, a pleasure--and the
special name which he was to give to it preserved its identity--entirely
individual and new.

The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
the eyes of his coachman, saying: What on earth does it matter what
people see? And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
elsewhere), when--more and more rarely--he went into society, she would
beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might be. The
season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away from
an evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his knees,
tell the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who insisted on
his going home with them, that he could not, that he was not going
in their direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot
without further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His
friends would be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was
no longer the same man. No one ever received a letter from him now
demanding an introduction to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention
to women, and kept away from the places in which they were ordinarily to
be met. In a restaurant, or in the country, his manner was deliberately
and directly the opposite of that by which, only a few days earlier,
his friends would have recognised him, that manner which had seemed
permanently and unalterably his own. To such an extent does passion
manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not
only takes the place of our normal character but actually obliterates
the signs by which that character has hitherto been discernible. On the
other hand, there was one thing that was, now, invariable, namely that
wherever Swann might be spending the evening, he never failed to go on
afterwards to Odette. The interval of space separating her from him
was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an
irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself. To be frank,
as often as not, when he had stayed late at a party, he would have
preferred to return home at once, without going so far out of his way,
and to postpone their meeting until the morrow; but the very fact of his
putting himself to such inconvenience at an abnormal hour in order to
visit her, while he guessed that his friends, as he left them, were
saying to one another: He is tied hand and foot; there must certainly
be a woman somewhere who insists on his going to her at all hours,
made him feel that he was leading the life of the class of men whose
existence is coloured by a love-affair, and in whom the perpetual
sacrifice which they are making of their comfort and of their practical
interests has engendered a spiritual charm. Then, though he may not
consciously have taken this into consideration, the certainty that she
was waiting for him, that she was not anywhere or with anyone else, that
he would see her before he went home, drew the sting from that anguish,
forgotten, it is true, but latent and ever ready to be reawakened, which
he had felt on the evening when Odette had left the Verdurins' before
his arrival, an anguish the actual cessation of which was so agreeable
that it might even be called a state of happiness. Perhaps it was to
that hour of anguish that there must be attributed the importance which
Odette had since assumed in his life. Other people are, as a rule, so
immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the
power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person
seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with
poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on
which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact. Swann
could not without anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him
in the years that were to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his
victoria on those fine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the
dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he
would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the
moon's, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since
then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it
bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants
to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of her little garden,
he would go round first into the other street, over which, at the
ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but darkened) of
the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of her room.
He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer,
before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open on the
piano, some of her favourite music, the _Valse des Roses_, the _Pauvre
Fou_ of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her
will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead,
to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that
Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains in
our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble
of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The
little phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for
Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were
no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by
any but himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such
as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in
her company. And often, when the cold government of reason stood
unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his
intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the
little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power to liberate
in him the room that was needed to contain it; the proportions of
Swann's soul were altered; a margin was left for a form of enjoyment
which corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external
object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely
individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior to that
of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the little
phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him any
definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts
of Swann's soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care
for material interests, those human considerations which affect all men
alike, were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to
inscribe the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette's affection might
seem ever so little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would
come to supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence.
Watching Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have
said that he was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe
more deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him, which was
shortly to create in him a real longing, was in fact closely akin,
at such moments, to the pleasure which he would have derived from
experimenting with perfumes, from entering into contract with a world
for which we men were not created, which appears to lack form because
our eyes cannot perceive it, to lack significance because it escapes
our intelligence, to which we may attain by way of one sense only. Deep
repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann,--for him whose eyes, although
delicate interpreters of painting, whose mind, although an acute
observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible imprint of the
barrenness of his life,--to feel himself transformed into a creature
foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical faculty, almost
a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature conscious of the world
through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought in the
little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend,
with what a strange frenzy of intoxication must he strip bare his
innermost soul of the whole armour of reason, and make it pass,
unattended, through the straining vessel, down into the dark filter of
sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps even how
much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the phrase;
and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the phrase
repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so strong!
He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it
stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened
his sense of his own happiness. He would make Odette play him the phrase
again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, while she played, she
must never cease to kiss him. Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those
earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How
closely, in their abundance, are they pressed one against another; until
lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour,
as to count the flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to
stop, saying: How do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me?
I can't do everything at once. Make up your mind what you want; am I to
play the phrase or do you want to play with me? Then he would become
annoyed, and she would burst out with a laugh which, was transformed, as
it left her lips, and descended upon him in a shower of kisses. Or else
she would look at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy
to figure in Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there,
giving to Odette's neck the necessary inclination; and when he had
finished her portrait in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the
wall of the Sixtine, the idea that she was, none the less, in the room
with him still, by the piano, at that very moment, ready to be kissed
and won, the idea of her material existence, of her being alive, would
sweep over him with so violent an intoxication that, with eyes starting
from his head and jaws that parted as though to devour her, he would
fling himself upon this Botticelli maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks.
And then, as soon as he had left the house, not without returning to
kiss her once again, because he had forgotten to take away with him, in
memory, some detail of her fragrance or of her features, while he drove
home in his victoria, blessing the name of Odette who allowed him to pay
her these daily visits, which, although they could not, he felt, bring
any great happiness to her, still, by keeping him immune from the fever
of jealousy--by removing from him every possibility of a fresh outbreak
of the heart-sickness which had manifested itself in him that evening,
when he had failed to find her at the Verdurins'--might help him to
arrive, without any recurrence of those crises, of which the first had
been so distressing that it must also be the last, at the termination of
this strange series of hours in his life, hours almost enchanted, in the
same manner as these other, following hours, in which he drove through a
deserted Paris by the light of the moon: noticing as he drove home that
the satellite had now changed its position, relatively to his own,
and was almost touching the horizon; feeling that his love, also, was
obedient to these immutable laws of nature, he asked himself whether
this period, upon which he had entered, was to last much longer, whether
presently his mind's eye would cease to behold that dear countenance,
save as occupying a distant and diminished position, and on the verge of
ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its charm. For Swann was finding
in things once more, since he had fallen in love, the charm that he had
found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied himself an artist; with
this difference, that what charm lay in them now was conferred by Odette
alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the inspirations of his
boyhood, which had been dissipated among the frivolities of his later
life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the stamp of a particular
being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure
in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit, he became
gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.

He went to her only in the evenings, and knew nothing of how she spent
her time during the day, any more than he knew of her past; so little,
indeed, that he had not even the tiny, initial clue which, by allowing
us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.
And so he never asked himself what she might be doing, or what her life
had been. Only he smiled sometimes at the thought of how, some years
earlier, when he still did not know her, some one had spoken to him of a
woman who, if he remembered rightly, must certainly have been Odette,
as of a 'tart,' a 'kept' woman, one of those women to whom he still
attributed (having lived but little in their company) the entire set of
characteristics, fundamentally perverse, with which they had been, for
many years, endowed by the imagination of certain novelists. He would
say to himself that one has, as often as not, only to take the exact
counterpart of the reputation created by the world in order to judge a
person fairly, when with such a character he contrasted that of Odette,
so good, so simple, so enthusiastic in the pursuit of ideals, so nearly
incapable of not telling the truth that, when he had once begged her, so
that they might dine together alone, to write to Mme. Verdurin, saying
that she was unwell, the next day he had seen her, face to face
with Mme. Verdurin, who asked whether she had recovered, blushing,
stammering, and, in spite of herself, revealing in every feature how
painful, what a torture it was to her to act a lie; and, while in her
answer she multiplied the fictitious details of an imaginary illness,
seeming to ask pardon, by her suppliant look and her stricken accents,
for the obvious falsehood of her words.

On certain days, however, though these came seldom, she would call upon
him in the afternoon, to interrupt his musings or the essay on Vermeer
to which he had latterly returned. His servant would come in to say that
Mme. de Crécy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in search of
her, and, when he opened the door, on Odette's blushing countenance, as
soon as she caught sight of Swann, would appear--changing the curve
of her lips, the look in her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks--an
all-absorbing smile. Once he was left alone he would see again that
smile, and her smile of the day before, another with which she had
greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her answer, in the
carriage that night, when he had asked her whether she objected to his
rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of Odette at all other times,
since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and
colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon
which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all directions,
traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable smiles. But,
once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which Swann
still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it was
not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it,
some friend who knew them both, and suspecting that they were in love,
had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least
importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that
very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape trimmed
with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her
bosom. This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling
him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not
wholly subordinated to his own; he burned to know whom she had been
seeking to fascinate by this costume in which he had never seen her; he
registered a vow to insist upon her telling him where she had been going
at that intercepted moment, as though, in all the colourless life--a
life almost nonexistent, since she was then invisible to him--of his
mistress, there had been but a single incident apart from all those
smiles directed towards himself; namely, her walking abroad beneath a
Rembrandt hat, with a bunch of violets in her bosom.

Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the
_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get
to know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the
Vicomte de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she
asked whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman
that had inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she
had lost all interest in that painter. She would often say: I'm sure,
poetry; well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true,
if the poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not
you'll find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I
know something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with
a poet of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and
heaven, and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than
three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished. If,
then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
cease to listen, saying: Yes... I never thought it would be like that.
And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
with a brisk, More in it? What?... Do tell me!, but he did not tell
her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.

With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
she had supposed. You're always so reserved; I can't make you out. She
marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy
to everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens,
often enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or
artist, when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom
he lives, that the feeling in them which proves that they have been
convinced of the superiority of his intellect is created not by any
admiration for his ideas--for those are entirely beyond them--but by
their respect for what they term his good qualities. There was also the
respect with which Odette was inspired by the thought of Swann's social
position, although she had no desire that he should attempt to secure
invitations for herself. Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be
bound to fail; perhaps, indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of
her to his friends, he should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind.
The fact remains that she had consistently held him to his promise never
to mention her name. Her reason for not wishing to go into society was,
she had told him, a quarrel which she had had, long ago, with another
girl, who had avenged herself by saying nasty things about her. But,
Swann objected, surely, people don't all know your friend. Yes,
don't you see, it's like a spot of oil; people are so horrid. Swann was
unable, frankly, to appreciate this point; on the other hand, he knew
that such generalisations as People are so horrid, and A word of
scandal spreads like a spot of oil, were generally accepted as true;
there must, therefore, be cases to which they were literally applicable.
Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased himself with the
question, though not for long, for he too was subject to that mental
oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he was faced
by a difficult problem. In any event, that world of society which
concealed such terrors for Odette inspired her, probably, with no very
great longing to enter it, since it was too far removed from the world
which she already knew for her to be able to form any clear conception
of it. At the same time, while in certain respects she had retained a
genuine simplicity (she had, for instance, kept up a friendship with a
little dressmaker, now retired from business, up whose steep and dark
and fetid staircase she clambered almost every day), she still thirsted
to be in the fashion, though her idea of it was not altogether that held
by fashionable people. For the latter, fashion is a thing that emanates
from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one
is nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening
circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names
form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by
heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they
have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of
the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had
been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner
had been, just as a man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can
estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one
of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable
world may think, and to be found in every section of society) who do
not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be something of quite
another kind, which assumes different aspects according to the circle to
which they themselves belong, but has the special characteristic--common
alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to that before
which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being directly accessible to all. The other
kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,' is, it must be admitted,
accessible also; but there are inevitable delays. Odette would say of
some one: He never goes to any place that isn't really smart.

And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
with a touch of contempt, Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy,
at your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What
do you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
l'Impératrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays
the Eden-Théâtre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the
balls...

What balls?

Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.
Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of
the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears
such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with
that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave
a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there.
I should have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the
door, and I couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad,
now, that I didn't go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen
nothing. Still, just to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball.
You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the
people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am
surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you.

Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting
it to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased
to take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except
when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at
race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would
continue to cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to
regard them as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise
de Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet
with strings.

But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me
a lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like
that!

Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
Quai d'Orléans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
unworthy of him.

It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to
assume a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved
to spend the whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for
'bric-à-brac,' and things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point
of honour, to which she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old
family custom, that she should never answer any questions, never give
any account of what she did during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once
about a friend to whose house she had been invited, and had found that
everything in it was 'of the period.' Swann could not get her to tell
him what 'period' it was. Only after thinking the matter over she
replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by which she meant that the walls were
panelled. Some time later she spoke to him again of her friend, and
added, in the hesitating but confident tone in which one refers to a
person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the night before, of whom
one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts seemed to regard as
some one so celebrated and important that one hopes that one's listener
will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly impressed: Her
dining-room... is... eighteenth century! Incidentally, she had thought
it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still unfinished; women
looked frightful in it, and it would never become the fashion. She
mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a card with the
name and address of the man who had designed the dining-room, and whom
she wanted to send for, when she had enough money, to see whether he
could not do one for her too; not one like that, of course, but one
of the sort she used to dream of, one which, unfortunately, her little
house would not be large enough to contain, with tall sideboards,
Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Château at Blois. It was
on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really thought of
his abode on the Quai d'Orléans; he having ventured the criticism that
her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for, he went on,
although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made charming,
but in the 'Sham-Antique.'

You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
and threadbare carpets! she exclaimed, the innate respectability of
the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'

People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour
and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
humanity. There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided
one talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he
loved to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the
old furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in
this commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether,
she would come home saying: Why, he's an adorable creature; so
sensitive! I had no idea, and she would conceive for him a strong and
sudden friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had
these tastes but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged,
of course, to admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she
would add, pouting: It's not the same thing, you see, with him,
and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the
practice of disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.

Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy
in his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad
taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same
he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her,
which even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities
of the woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a
happy mood because she was going to see the _Reine Topaze_, or when her
eyes grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the
flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and
toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular
attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's
certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at
times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a
portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so
distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her
face that he could not refrain from going across and welcoming it
with his lips. Oh, then, so little Odette wants us to take her to the
flower-show, does she? she wants to be admired, does she? very well, we
will take her there, we can but obey her wishes. As Swann's sight was
beginning to fail, he had to resign himself to a pair of spectacles,
which he wore at home, when working, while to face the world he adopted
a single eyeglass, as being less disfiguring. The first time that she
saw it in his eye, she could not contain herself for joy: I really do
think--for a man, that is to say--it is tremendously smart! How nice you
look with it! Every inch a gentleman. All you want now is a title! she
concluded, with a tinge of regret in her voice. He liked Odette to say
these things, just as, if he had been in love with a Breton girl, he
would have enjoyed seeing her in her coif and hearing her say that she
believed in ghosts. Always until then, as is common among men whose
taste for the fine arts develops independently of their sensuality, a
grotesque disparity had existed between the satisfactions which he would
accord to either taste simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of
works of art which grew more and more subtle as the women in whose
company he enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would take a
little servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where there was some
decadent piece which he had wished to see performed, or to an exhibition
of impressionist painting, with the conviction, moreover, that an
educated, 'society' woman would have understood them no better, but
would not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But, now
that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share her
sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit was a task so
attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in the things that she
liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in copying her habits but in
adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those habits
and opinions sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they suggested
to him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had preferred
them to his own. If he went again to _Serge Panine_, if he looked out
for opportunities of going to watch Olivier Métra conducting, it was for
the pleasure of being initiated into every one of the ideas in Odette's
mind, of feeling that he had an equal share in all her tastes. This
charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and
pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than
the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appealed
to him by their beauty, but without recalling her. Besides, having
allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his
scepticism, as a finished 'man of the world,' had gradually penetrated
them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had
fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have
no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of
dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar
of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most
refined. And as he had decided that the importance which Odette attached
to receiving cards tot a private view was not in itself any more
ridiculous than the pleasure which he himself had at one time felt in
going to luncheon with the Prince of Wales, so he did not think that the
admiration which she professed for Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any
more unreasonable than his own liking for Holland (which she imagined
as ugly) and for Versailles (which bored her to tears). And so he denied
himself the pleasure of visiting those places, consoling himself with
the reflection that it was for her sake that he wished to feel, to like
nothing that was not equally felt and liked by her.

Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was
no more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her
more often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since,
at the heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings,
games, suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre
parties, even the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained
'bores,' there were the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette,
conversation with Odette, an inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by
inviting him to their house, bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the
little 'nucleus' than anywhere else, and tried to find some genuine
merit in each of its members, imagining that his tastes would lead him
to frequent their society for the rest of his life. Never daring to
whisper to himself, lest he should doubt the truth of the suggestion,
that he would always be in love with Odette, at least when he tried to
suppose that he would always go to the Verdurins' (a proposition
which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of his
intelligence), he saw himself for the future continuing to meet Odette
every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite to the same thing as
his being permanently in love with her, but for the moment while he was
in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day, cease to see her
was all that he could ask. What a charming atmosphere! he said to
himself. How entirely genuine life is to these people! They are far
more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one knows.
Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are rather
absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion for
works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about
some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their ideas
about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no great
intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy talking
to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as for
the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them.

And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of
the Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial
reflection of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by
his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound,
more vital, as that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann,
now and then, what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an
evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to
one of the party than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would
not take the initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme.
Verdurin brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
exclamation: Odette! You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?; since,
when the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily
whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still
be able to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them
both to spend the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously
allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and
to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin
was a great and noble soul. Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the
Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist,
I'd a hundred times rather, he would reply, have the Verdurins. And,
with a solemnity of diction which was new in him: They are magnanimous
creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters,
the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there
are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have
reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all
whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes,
and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to
leave them again as long as one lives. Very well! he went on, with the
slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of
what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because
he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words
as though they came from some one else, The die is now cast; I have
elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an
atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really
intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility
of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly
attain--how could they?--without a corresponding loftiness of mind.
Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is
not, perhaps, in that that she is most admirable; every little action,
ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she has performed for my sake,
every friendly attention, simple little things, quite domestic and yet
quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension of existence than
all your textbooks of philosophy.

* * *

He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various
old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins,
companions of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew
other 'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had
cast his vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had
entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and,
if they had known her, would never have thought of introducing her to
him.

And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments,
he had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too
particular an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take
Mme. Verdurin daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion
with which he availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining,
often, from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never
suspected, and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part
not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or
other; doubtless, also, and despite all the precautions which he had
taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were
making of his brilliant position in society--doubtless all these things
contributed to their general annoyance with Swann. But the real, the
fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they
had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable
chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the
Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were
not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his
friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they
had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, of
entirely converting him to their faith, the like of which they had never
come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven his going to the
houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he
infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their little 'nucleus') had
he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those 'bores'
in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was an abjuration which, as
they well knew, they were powerless to extort.

What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them
to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on
whom they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It
turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of
Saniette, a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement:
the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always
supposed him to be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and
had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively
aristocratic family.) Of course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,'
which Swann was not or had quite ceased to be; of course, he would never
dream of placing, as Swann now placed, the Verdurin circle above any
other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from
associating himself with the criticisms (too obviously false to be worth
his notice) that Mme. Verdurin levelled at people whom he knew. As for
the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged,
the bag-man's pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard,--whereas
Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
the disgrace of Swann.

There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
because the folds of the gown still clung.

Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
pains with her toilet, observed to her: Quite original, that white
dress, the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a de, and was
on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile? then, without moving his head, shot
a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the
whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to
smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn
at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of
the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity
of which had charmed Mme. Verdurin.

What are you to say of a scientist like that? she asked Forcheville.
You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the
sort of thing you tell them at your hospital? she went on, turning to
the Doctor. They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's
the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!

I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame? Brichot
appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes
tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between
which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream.

Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the
reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_...
I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how
infinitely Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of
that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed! he repeated in his ringing voice,
which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest
by M. Verdurin. The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of
its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that
point. No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising
proletariat than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the
sort; for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased.

Who is that gentleman? Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. He seems to
speak with great authority.

What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
celebrated all over Europe.

Oh, that's Bréchot, is it? exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
caught the name. You must tell me all about him; he went on, fastening
a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. It's always interesting to
meet well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select
parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure.

Well, you know what it is really, said Mme. Verdurin modestly.
They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
words out of him, he's even boring.

That's strange, remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.

A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life,
for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the
intelligence of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might
easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed
witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into
him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained
to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social
existence which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of
intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not see anything
in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they were merely pedantic, vulgar,
and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to
good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone which this
student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally,
perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he watched Mme.
Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this Forcheville
fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the
house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had asked
him on her arrival: What do you think of my guest?

And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom
he had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a
good specimen of a man, had retorted: Beastly! He had, certainly,
no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as
usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche
of Castile's mother, who, according to him, had been with Henry
Plantagenet for years before they were married, tried to prompt Swann
to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting Isn't that so, M.
Swann? in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
his earlier exhibitions.