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 re-
cognise the charm, the beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the ste-
reotyped 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 consti-
tuted 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)
203
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 ri-
diculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work con-
tains 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 insan-
ity 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 wo-
man 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!"
204
"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 appreci-
ate the pianist's aunt.
"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme. Verdur-in. "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 wait-
ing 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 snob-
bish, 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
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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 deman-
ded 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 Presid-
ent 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 in-
terpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from M.
Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into the high-
ways 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
206
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 num-
ber—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 Re-
public in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann nor
the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first impres-
sion, 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, be-
cause 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 Ver-
durins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but he nev-
er 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 con-
senting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other pleasures
207
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 simul-
taneously 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 reas-
on, 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 morn-
ing, 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 sus-
tained tremolo from the violin part, which, for several bars, was unac-
companied, 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 com-
plete 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, ex-
pressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or Odette, any-
where 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 208
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 sen-
tence because they are not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleet-
ing 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 es-
sential 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 car-
riage; 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 re-
pute), 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
209
this man-made city, of a state of nature, had all combined to add an ele-
ment 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 bed-
room, 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 rect-
angular 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 suc-
ceeded 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 atmo-
sphere 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 cush-
ions of Japanese silk, which she pummelled and buffeted as though de-
termined 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 nocturn-
al, of this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more
210
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, unexpec-
ted sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon her, so far re-
moved 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 inde-
cency 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
211
her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some justifica-
tion 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