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 so, 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.