that our servants, living in a situation inferior to our own, adding to our
fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and vices for which they at
339
once envied and despised us, should not find themselves led by fate to
act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own class? He also suspected
my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann had asked him to do
him any service, had he not invariably declined? Besides, with his ideas
of middle-class respectability, he might have thought that he was acting
for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn, Bergotte, the painter, the Ver-
durins; paused for a moment to admire once again the wisdom of people
in society, who refused to mix in the artistic circles in which such things
were possible, were, perhaps, even openly avowed, as excellent jokes;
but then he recalled the marks of honesty that were to be observed in
those Bohemians, and contrasted them with the life of expedients, often
bordering on fraudulence, to which the want of money, the craving for
luxury, the corrupting influence of their pleasures often drove members
of the aristocracy. In a word, this anonymous letter proved that he him-
self knew a human being capable of the most infamous conduct, but he
could see no reason why that infamy should lurk in the depths—which
no strange eye might explore—of the warm heart rather than the cold,
the artist's rather than the business-man's, the noble's rather than the
flunkey's. What criterion ought one to adopt, in order to judge one's fel-
lows? After all, there was not a single one of the people whom he knew
who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful ac-
tion. Must he then cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he
passed his hands two or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses
with his handkerchief, and remembering that, after all, men who were as
good as himself frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des
Laumes and the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that
they were incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity in
human life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of
people who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he contin-
ued to shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the
purely formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seek-
ing to drive him to despair. As for the actual contents of the letter, they
did not disturb him; for in not one of the charges which it formulated
against Odette could he see the least vestige of fact. Like many other
men, Swann had a naturally lazy mind, and was slow in invention. He
knew quite well as a general truth, that human life is full of contrasts, but
in the case of any one human being he imagined all that part of his or her
life with which he was not familiar as being identical with the part with
which he was. He imagined what was kept secret from him in the light
of what was revealed. At such times as he spent with Odette, if their
340
conversation turned upon an indelicate act committed, or an indelicate
sentiment expressed by some third person, she would ruthlessly con-
demn the culprit by virtue of the same moral principles which Swann
had always heard expressed by his own parents, and to which he himself
had remained loyal; and then, she would arrange her flowers, would sip
her tea, would shew an interest in his work. So Swann extended those
habits to fill the rest of her life, he reconstructed those actions when he
wished to form a picture of the moments in which he and she were apart.
If anyone had portrayed her to him as she was, or rather as she had been
for so long with himself, but had substituted some other man, he would
have been distressed, for such a portrait would have struck him as life-
like. But to suppose that she went to bad houses, that she abandoned
herself to orgies with other women, that she led the crapulous existence
of the most abject, the most contemptible of mortals—would be an in-
sane wandering of the mind, for the realisation of which, thank heaven,
the chrysanthemums that he could imagine, the daily cups of tea, the vir-
tuous indignation left neither time nor place. Only, now and again, he
gave Odette to understand that people maliciously kept him informed of
everything that she did; and making opportune use of some de-
tail—insignificant but true—which he had accidentally learned, as
though it were the sole fragment which he would allow, in spite of him-
self, to pass his lips, out of the numberless other fragments of that com-
plete reconstruction of her daily life which he carried secretly in his
mind, he led her to suppose that he was perfectly informed upon mat-
ters, which, in reality, he neither knew nor suspected, for if he often ad-
jured Odette never to swerve from or make alteration of the truth, that
was only, whether he realised it or no, in order that Odette should tell
him everything that she did. No doubt, as he used to assure Odette, he
loved sincerity, but only as he might love a pander who could keep him
in touch with the daily life of his mistress. Moreover, his love of sincer-
ity, not being disinterested, had not improved his character. The truth
which he cherished was that which Odette would tell him; but he him-
self, in order to extract that truth from her, was not afraid to have re-
course to falsehood, that very falsehood which he never ceased to depict
to Odette as leading every human creature down to utter degradation. In
a word, he lied as much as did Odette, because, while more unhappy
than she, he was no less egotistical. And she, when she heard him repeat-
ing thus to her the things that she had done, would stare at him with a
look of distrust and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to appear to
be humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions. One day, after the
341
longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to exist
without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy, he had accepted an in-
vitation to spend the evening at the theatre with the Princesse des
Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to find out what was being
played, the sight of the title— Les Filles de Marbre, by Théodore Bar-
rière,—struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively from it
and turned his head away. Illuminated, as though by a row of footlights,
in the new surroundings in which it now appeared, that word 'marble,'
which he had lost the power to distinguish, so often had it passed, in
print, beneath his eyes, had suddenly become visible once again, and
had at once brought back to his mind the story which Odette had told
him, long ago, of a visit which she had paid to the Salon at the Palais
d'Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, who had said to her, "Take care, now! I
know how to melt you, all right. You're not made of marble." Odette had
assured him that it was only a joke, and he had not attached any import-
ance to it at the time. But he had had more confidence in her then than he
had now. And the anonymous letter referred explicitly to relations of
that sort. Without daring to lift his eyes to the newspaper, he opened it,
turned the page so as not to see again the words, Filles de Marbre, and began to read mechanically the news from the provinces. There had been
a storm in the Channel, and damage was reported from Dieppe, Ca-
bourg, Beuzeval… . Suddenly he recoiled again in horror.
The name of Beuzeval had suggested to him that of another place in
the same district, Beuzeville, which carried also, bound to it by a hyphen,
a second name, to wit Bréauté, which he had often seen on maps, but
without ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that
borne by his friend M. de Bréauté, whom the anonymous letter accused
of having been Odette's lover. After all, when it came to M. de Bréauté,
there was nothing improbable in the charge; but so far as Mme. Verdurin
was concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette
did occasionally tell a lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never, by
any chance, told the truth, and in these bantering conversations with
Mme. Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann, he could re-
cognize those meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which, in their in-
experience of life and ignorance of vice, women often utter (thereby cer-
tifying their own innocence), who—as, for instance, Odette,—would be
the last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one another.
Whereas, on the other hand, the indignation with which she had
scattered the suspicions which she had unintentionally brought into be-
ing, for a moment, in his mind by her story, fitted in with everything that
342
he knew of the tastes, the temperament of his mistress. But at that mo-
ment, by an inspiration of jealousy, analogous to the inspiration which
reveals to a poet or a philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but an odd
pair of rhymes or a detached observation, the idea or the natural law
which will give power, mastery to his work, Swann recalled for the first
time a remark which Odette had made to him, at least two years before:
"Oh, Mme. Verdurin, she won't hear of anything just now but me. I'm a
'love,' if you please, and she kisses me, and wants me to go with her
everywhere, and call her by her Christian name." So far from seeing in
these expressions any connection with the absurd insinuations, intended
to create an atmosphere of vice, which Odette had since repeated to him,
he had welcomed them as a proof of Mme. Verdurin's warm-hearted and
generous friendship. But now this old memory of her affection for
Odette had coalesced suddenly with his more recent memory of her un-
seemly conversation. He could no longer separate them in his mind, and
he saw them blended in reality, the affection imparting a certain serious-
ness and importance to the pleasantries which, in return, spoiled the af-
fection of its innocence. He went to see Odette. He sat down, keeping at
a distance from her. He did not dare to embrace her, not knowing wheth-
er in her, in himself, it would be affection or anger that a kiss would pro-
voke. He sat there silent, watching their love expire. Suddenly he made
up his mind.
"Odette, my darling," he began, "I know, I am being simply odious, but I must ask you a few questions. You remember what I once thought
about you and Mme. Verdurin? Tell me, was it true? Have you, with her
or anyone else, ever?"
She shook her head, pursing her lips together; a sign which people
commonly employ to signify that they are not going, because it would
bore them to go, when some one has asked, "Are you coming to watch
the procession go by?", or "Will you be at the review?". But this shake of the head, which is thus commonly used to decline participation in an
event that has yet to come, imparts for that reason an element of uncer-
tainty to the denial of participation in an event that is past. Furthermore,
it suggests reasons of personal convenience, rather than any definite re-
pudiation, any moral impossibility. When he saw Odette thus make him
a sign that the insinuation was false, he realised that it was quite possibly
true.
"I have told you, I never did; you know quite well," she added, seem-
ing angry and uncomfortable.
343
"Yes, I know all that; but are you quite sure? Don't say to me, 'You
know quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
woman.'"
She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though
she hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that
sort with any woman."
"Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"
Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.
"Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body as though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have
you nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have
made up your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you!
Look, I was anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice
time together, like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"
However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who
waits for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need
not make him abandon it.
"You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
"I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know
a great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confes-
sion what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only
by other people. My anger with you is never due to your actions—I can
and do forgive you everything because I love you—but to your untruth-
fulness, the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in deny-
ing things which I know to be true. How can you expect that I shall con-
tinue to love you, when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to me
a thing which I know to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment
which is torturing us both. If you are willing to end it at once, you shall
be free of it for ever. Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no, whether you
have ever done those things."
"How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so long ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three
times."
Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must, there-
fore, be something which bears no relation to possibilities, any more than
the stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual movement of the
clouds overhead, since those words "two or three times" carved, as it were, a cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A strange thing, indeed,
that those words, "two or three times," nothing more than a few words, 344
words uttered in the air, at a distance, could so lacerate a man's heart, as
if they had actually pierced it, could sicken a man, like a poison that he
had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of the remark that he had heard
at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never seen anything to beat it since
the table-turning." The agony that he now suffered in no way resembled
what he had supposed. Not only because, in the hours when he most en-
tirely mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined such a culmination of evil,
but because, even when he did imagine that offence, it remained vague,
uncertain, was not clothed in the particular horror which had escaped
with the words "perhaps two or three times," was not armed with that
specific cruelty, as different from anything that he had known as a new
malady by which one is attacked for the first time. And yet this Odette,
from whom all this evil sprang, was no less dear to him, was, on the con-
trary, more precious, as if, in proportion as his sufferings increased, there
increased at the same time the price of the sedative, of the antidote which
this woman alone possessed. He wished to pay her more attention, as
one attends to a disease which one discovers, suddenly, to have grown
more serious. He wished that the horrible thing which, she had told him,
she had done "two or three times" might be prevented from occurring
again. To ensure that, he must watch over Odette. People often say that,
by pointing out to a man the faults of his mistress, you succeed only in
strengthening his attachment to her, because he does not believe you; yet
how much more so if he does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he
manage to protect her? He might perhaps be able to preserve her from
the contamination of any one woman, but there were hundreds of other
women; and he realised how insane had been his ambition when he had
begun (on the evening when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdur-
ins') to desire the possession—as if that were ever possible—of another
person. Happily for Swann, beneath the mass of suffering which had in-
vaded his soul like a conquering horde of barbarians, there lay a natural
foundation, older, more placid, and silently laborious, like the cells of an
injured organ which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or
the muscles of a paralysed limb which tend to recover their former
movements. These older, these autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul ab-
sorbed all Swann's strength, for a while, in that obscure task of repara-
tion which gives one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence, or
after an operation. This time it was not so much—as it ordinarily
was—in Swann's brain that the slackening of tension due to exhaustion
took effect, it was rather in his heart. But all the things in life that have
once existed tend to recur, and, like a dying animal that is once more
345
stirred by the throes of a convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon
Swann's heart, spared for a moment only, the same agony returned of its
own accord to trace the same cross again. He remembered those moonlit
evenings, when, leaning back in the victoria that was taking him to the
Rue La Pérouse, he would cultivate with voluptuous enjoyment the emo-
tions of a man in love, ignorant of the poisoned fruit that such emotions
must inevitably bear. But all those thoughts lasted for no more than a
second, the time that it took him to raise his hand to his heart, to draw
breath again and to contrive to smile, so as to dissemble his torment.
Already he had begun to put further questions. For his jealousy, which
had taken an amount of trouble, such as no enemy would have incurred,
to strike him this mortal blow, to make him forcibly acquainted with the
most cruel pain that he had ever known, his jealousy was not satisfied
that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to expose his bosom to an
even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy was inspiring
Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction. It was not his fault,
but Odette's alone, if at first his punishment was not more severe.
"My darling," he began again, "it's all over now; was it with anyone I know?"
"No, I swear it wasn't; besides, I think I exaggerated, I never really
went as far as that."
He smiled, and resumed with: "Just as you like. It doesn't really mat-
ter, but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name. If I were able to
form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking of her
again. I say it for your own sake, because then I shouldn't bother you any
more about it. It's so soothing to be able to form a clear picture of things
in one's mind. What is really terrible is what one cannot imagine. But
you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire you. I do thank you, with
all my heart, for all the good that you have done me. I've quite finished
now. Only one word more: how many times?"
"Oh, Charles! can't you see, you're killing me? It's all ever so long ago.
I've never given it a thought. Anyone would say that you were positively
trying to put those ideas into my head again. And then you'd be a lot
better off!" she concluded, with unconscious stupidity but with inten-
tional malice.
"I only wished to know whether it had been since I knew you. It's only
natural. Did it happen here, ever? You can't give me any particular even-
ing, so that I can remind myself what I was doing at the time? You un-
derstand, surely, that it's not possible that you don't remember with
whom, Odette, my love."
346
"But I don't know; really, I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with the
Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him with
an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next table there was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to me,
'Come along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight on
the water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired, and I'm
quite happy where I am, thank you.' She swore there'd never been any-
thing like it in the way of moonlight. 'I've heard that tale before,' I said to her; you see, I knew quite well what she was after." Odette narrated this
episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it appeared to her to be
quite natural, or because she thought that she was thereby minimising its
importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed. But, catching sight of
Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
"You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than
the first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hid-
den from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well re-
membered, which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had
supposed himself to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive know-
ledge, and which now assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning
and deceit and cruelty. In the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping
chasm, that moment on the Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without be-
ing intelligent, Odette had the charm of being natural. She had recoun-
ted, she had acted the little scene with so much simplicity that Swann, as
he gasped for breath, could vividly see it: Odette yawning, the "rock
there,"… He could hear her answer—alas, how lightheartedly—"I've
heard that tale before!" He felt that she would tell him nothing more that evening, that no further revelation was to be expected for the present. He
was silent for a time, then said to her:
"My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."
But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did
not know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in
his memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-
wound, by the news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moon-
light, while he was dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so
far acquired the habit of finding life interesting—of marvelling at the
347
strange discoveries that there were to be made in it—that even while he
was suffering so acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such
agony for any length of time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed astonishing, and holds some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far more
common than one has been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom I
had absolute confidence, who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any
case, even allowing that her morals are not strict, seemed quite normal
and healthy in her tastes and inclinations. I receive a most improbable
accusation, I question her, and the little that she admits reveals far more
than I could ever have suspected." But he could not confine himself to
these detached observations. He sought to form an exact estimate of the
importance of what she had just told him, so as to know whether he
might conclude that she had done these things often, and was likely to
do them again. He repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well
what she was after." "Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before."
But they did not reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a
knife with which it stabbed him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man
who cannot restrain himself from attempting, every minute, to make the
movement that, he knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to him-
self: "I'm quite happy where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before," but the pain was so intense that he was obliged to stop. He was
amazed to find that actions which he had always, hitherto, judged so
lightly, had dismissed, indeed, with a laugh, should have become as seri-
ous to him as a disease which might easily prove fatal. He knew any
number of women whom he could ask to keep an eye on Odette, but
how was he to expect them to adjust themselves to his new point of
view, and not to remain at that which for so long had been his own,
which had always guided him in his voluptuous existence; not to say to
him with a smile: "You jealous monster,