to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on
whom they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It
turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of
Saniette, a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement:
the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always
supposed him to be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and
had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively
aristocratic family.) Of course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,'
which Swann was not or had quite ceased to be; of course, he would never
dream of placing, as Swann now placed, the Verdurin circle above any
other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from
associating himself with the criticisms (too obviously false to be worth
his notice) that Mme. Verdurin levelled at people whom he knew. As for
the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged,
the bag-man's pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard,--whereas
Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
the disgrace of Swann.
There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
because the folds of the gown still clung.
Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was
on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
"_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot
a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the
whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to
smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn
at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of
the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity
of which had charmed Mme. Verdurin.
"What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
"You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the
sort of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to
the Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's
the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
"I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes
tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between
which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream.
"Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the
reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_...
I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how
infinitely Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of
that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest
by M. Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of
its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that
point. No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising
proletariat than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the
sort; for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
"Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
speak with great authority."
"What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
celebrated all over Europe."
"Oh, that's Bréchot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening
a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to
meet well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select
parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
"Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly.
"They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
words out of him, he's even boring."
"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life,
for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the
intelligence of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might
easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed
witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into
him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained
to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social
existence which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of
intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not see anything
in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they were merely pedantic, vulgar,
and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to
good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone which this
student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally,
perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he watched Mme.
Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this Forcheville
fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the
house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had asked
him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom
he had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a
good specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly,
no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as
usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche
of Castile's mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry
Plantagenet for years before they were married," tried to prompt Swann
to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M.
Swann?" in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
his earlier exhibitions.
"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
smile.
"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard,
raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out
laughing.
"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he
comes with a joke."
But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a
laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead
of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would
probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the
easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of
their dead friend.
"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether
it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
leaven, with excrem..."
"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late,
for no one saw the point of his interruption.
"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
oath it isn't."
Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their
compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be
satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had
been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting:
"It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your
breath; you feel ticklish all over--and not the faintest clue to how
it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's
a miracle," bursting outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then
stopping, solemnly raising his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass
note which he struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's
so loyal!"
Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of
the universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at
the word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance
round the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his
lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party
(save Swann) had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the
painter.
"I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried
Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the
table-talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that
Forcheville was dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she
turned to her husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping
like a great animal? You know, though, don't you," she apologised
for him to the painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses;
anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you.
If you had only seen him while you were speaking; he was just drinking
it all in. And to-morrow he will tell us everything you said, without
missing a word."
"No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling
your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and
then you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything
you like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
"But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only
want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche
some more sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry;
you're dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't
serve the salad just yet."
Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
uttered, to pass unchallenged.
"It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards
Odette.
And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness
and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so
unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by
Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but
so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it.
"Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
"No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
dinner on Friday."
"You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous _Francillon_
that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now,
he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the
evening with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in
spending money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play
already. Of course an evening at the Théâtre-Français is never wasted,
really; the acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice
friends," (Mme. Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but
restricted herself to "some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as
being more 'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all
the importance of a person who need give names only when she chooses)
"who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the
new pieces that are worth going to, and so I'm certain to see this
_Francillon_ sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I
do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a
call anywhere, I find everybody talking--it's only natural--about that
wretched Japanese salad. Really and truly, one's beginning to get just a
little tired of hearing about it," she went on, seeing that Swann seemed
less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. "I must admit,
though, that it's sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it:
I've got a friend, now, who is most original, though she's really a
beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells
me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting
in everything that young M. Dumas says you're to put in, in the play.
Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among
the favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her
next 'day'; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh
till we cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way she told it," Mme.
Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by
_Francillon_: "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after
all. I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Crécy worships,
_Serge Panine_. There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you
think! But just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the
Théâtre-Français! Now, _Serge Panine_--! But then, it's like everything
that comes from the pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I
wonder if you know the _Maître des Forges_, which I like even better
than _Serge Panine_."
"Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that
my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those
masterpieces."
"Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about
them? Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little
too sad. Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about
plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what
may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing _Francillon_, Forcheville
had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called
the "little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of
language, such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had
come to a standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a
first-rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and
M. Bréchot you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so
sure that, simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the
Professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a
book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are
a bit realistic, and all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays;
anyhow, it's not often I've seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as
that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we used to say in the regiment, where, by
the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of. You could take anything
you liked--I don't know what--this glass, say; and he'd talk away about
it for hours; no, not this glass; that's a silly thing to say, I'm
sorry; but something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo, or
anything of that sort, he'd tell you things you simply wouldn't believe.
Why, Swann was in the regiment then; he must have known him."
"Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
"Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to
take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable
friends, but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of
good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann
upon some undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see
anything of you, do I?--But then, where on earth is one to see him? The
creature spends all his time shut up with the La Trémoïlles, with the
Laumes and all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any
time, and was all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had
given up going to almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere
names of families whom the Verdurins did not know were received by them
in a reproachful silence. M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression
which the mention of these 'bores,' especially when flung at her in this
tactless fashion, and in front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to
make on his wife, cast a covert glance at her, instinct with anxious
solicitude. He saw then that in her fixed resolution to take no notice,
to have escaped contact, altogether, with the news which had just been
addressed to her, not merely to remain dumb but to have been deaf
as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who has been in the wrong
attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse which we should
appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it without
protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that
her silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the
unconscious silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly
emptied her face of all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was
nothing, now, but an exquisite study in high relief, which the name of
those La Trémoïlles, with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed
to penetrate; her nose, just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to
view two dark cavities that were, surely, modelled from life. You would
have said that her half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was
all no more, however, than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's
design for a monument, a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry,
where the public would most certainly gather in front of it and marvel
to see how the sculptor, in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of
the Verdurins, as opposed to that of the La Trémoïlles or Laumes, whose
equals (if not, indeed, their betters) they were, and the equals and
betters of all other 'bores' upon the face of the earth, had managed to
invest with a majesty that was almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity
of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be
understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that
house, since the woman was always tipsy and the husband so uneducated
that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
"You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down
on Swann.
She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed:
"To think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody
to go near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful.
How can people be so common as to go running after them?"
But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann
merely smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could
not, of course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin,
who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife,
could see with regret, and could understand only too well that she was
now inflamed with the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed
in stamping out a heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round
to a retractation (for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of
calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
"Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
it to them, you may be sure."
To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the
Duchess (if it is of the La Trémoïlles that you're speaking). I can
assure you that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as
to say that she's at all 'deep'--" he pronounced the word as if it meant
something ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental
habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated
by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard,
so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable
warmth--"but I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent,
while her husband is positively a bookworm. They are charming people."