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and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a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.