felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on:
"Yes, indeed; he's what they call a musician _di primo cartello_!" he
exclaimed, with a sudden determination.
Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
"I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil," said Swann, thinking of
the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.
"Perhaps that's the man!" cried Mme. Verdurin.
"Oh, no!" Swann burst out laughing. "If you had ever seen him for a
moment you wouldn't put the question."
"Then to put the question is to solve the problem?" the Doctor
suggested.
"But it may well be some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad
enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have
a cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear
there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to
get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata;
starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which would be
ghastly."
The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment,
and that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
"What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
"Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters."
The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the
loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected
in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike Swann as
ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work
contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion
of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so
insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
these.
"Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as
he does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who
has the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to
anyone who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
"But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter
irony. "If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the
Princes of Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I
have Potain.'"
"Oh, indeed! More smart, is it?" said Mme. Verdurin. "So there are
fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh,
you do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her
hands. "And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never
seeing that you were pulling my leg."
As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope
to keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of
mirth.
"D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin,
later, when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected,
quite charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring
here, by all means bring them."
M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
the pianist's aunt.
"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme.
Verdurin. "You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first
time he comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now
for years. The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and
finding out things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us
to-morrow at the Châtelet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring
him."
"No, he doesn't want that."
"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
last moment."
Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in
time for the _Danicheff_ revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect
of Police to-morrow, as it happens, at the Elysée."
"What's that? The Elysée?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
"Yes, at M. Grévy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
effect which his announcement had produced.
"Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
mock-seriousness.
As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point
his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself
was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no
honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head
of the State.
"What's that you say? M. Grévy? Do you know M. Grévy?" he demanded of
Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of
the Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of
the police infirmary.
"I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not
add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is
very free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties
are not the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you
know; never more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately
to cut out everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the
President in a light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from
M. Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into
the highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at
all surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at
the Elysée'; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to
luncheon-parties which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
"Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of
a customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
"I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded
the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded,
since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion,
which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them
'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
"Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A
note of pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the
number--only eight at table--"Are these luncheons what you would
describe as 'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle
curiosity as in his linguistic zeal.
But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann
nor the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first
impression, and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without
asking anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening?
He is a personal friend of M. Grévy's. I suppose that means he's what
you'd call a 'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann
a card of invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
"This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because
some friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there
was the devil to pay."
As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect
upon his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of
whom he had never spoken.
If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the
Verdurins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but
he never appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever
accept their invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
"I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
"But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
"Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
"How charming of you."
But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other
pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire
that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of
satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty
that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom
he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the
first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see
Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to
call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins'. The little
girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Rémi, his
coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him
in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins'. He would enter
the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses
which he had sent her that morning, said: "I am furious with you!" and
sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist
would play to them--for their two selves, and for no one else--that
little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from the violin
part, which, for several bars, was unaccompanied, and filled all the
foreground; until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside, and--just as in
those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where the subject is set back a
long way through the narrow framework of a half-opened door--infinitely
remote, in colour quite different, velvety with the radiance of some
intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral,
interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It passed, with
simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of
its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now
discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how
hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace
there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an
outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked
upon the sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had,
in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or
Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and
would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
to come--than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the
rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went
farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
a 'lass unparalleled.'
It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La Pérouse, behind the
Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
spirit, after he had left her for the night.
And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
and murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him,
plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
the drive home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it
away, like something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her
life--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those
short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses,
self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and
there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once
an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the
district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the
garden-beds or clung to the branches of the trees, the careless disarray
of the season, the assertion, in this man-made city, of a state of
nature, had all combined to add an element of mystery to the warmth, the
flowers, the luxury which he had found inside.
Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of
Turkish beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord
from the ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not
have to complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of
Western civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two
drawing-rooms, large and small. These were entered through a narrow
lobby, the wall of which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden
trellis such as you see on garden walls, only gilded, was lined from
end to end by a long rectangular box in which bloomed, as though in a
hothouse, a row of large chrysanthemums, at that time still
uncommon, though by no means so large as the mammoth blossoms which
horticulturists have since succeeded in making grow. Swann was
irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these flowers, which had then been
'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it had pleased him, on this
occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby shot with rays of pink
and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these ephemeral stars,
which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of winter
afternoons. Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk, which
left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in one
of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing
out of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, "You're
not comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you," and
with a titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that
some little invention of her own was being brought into play, she
had installed behind his head and beneath his feet great cushions of
Japanese silk, which she pummelled and buffeted as though determined to
lavish on him all her riches, and regardless of their value. But when
her footman began to come into the room, bringing, one after another,
the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases)
burned singly or in pairs upon the different pieces of furniture as upon
so many altars, rekindling in the twilight, already almost nocturnal, of
this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate,
more human--filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of
some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a
standstill before the mystery of the human presence which those lighted
windows at once revealed and screened from sight--she had kept an eye
sharply fixed on the servant, to see whether he set each of the lamps
down in the place appointed it. She felt that, if he were to put
even one of them where it ought not to be, the general effect of her
drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her portrait, which rested
upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not catch the light. And
so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's clumsy movements,
scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair of beaupots,
which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the plants
should be knocked over--and went across to them now to make sure that he
had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something 'quaint' in
the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her orchids, the
cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite
flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least
like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps of silk
or satin. "It looks just as though it had been cut out of the lining
of my cloak," she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a shade of
respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this distinguished,
unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon her, so far
removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so delicate, so
refined, so much more worthy than many real women of admission to
her drawing-room. As she drew his attention, now to the fiery-tongued
dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen, now to a
fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid silver-work with
ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved
in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the
monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency
of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across
and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these
affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of her
attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing
to it unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon
or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A
cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you
like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to
her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some
justification for itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures
which, on the contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must
cease with its passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go
and dress for the evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in
his brougham, unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon's
adventure had filled him, he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun
it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could
always be certain of finding, what one never can be certain of finding,
a really good cup of tea." An hour or so later he received a note from
Odette, and at once recognised that florid handwriting, in which an
affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its
shapeless characters, significant, perhaps, to less intimate eyes
than his, of an untidiness of mind, a fragmentary education, a want of
sincerity and decision. Swann had left his cigarette-case at her house.
"Why," she wrote, "did you not forget your heart also? I should never
have let you have that back."