this one state of unbelief would prevent her 'little nucleus' from ever
attaining to complete unanimity, and was unable to restrain herself, in
her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish
his words were causing her, but cried aloud, from the depths of her
tortured heart, "You may think so if you wish, but at least you need not
say so to us."
"It all depends upon what you call intelligence." Forcheville felt that
it was his turn to be brilliant. "Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean
by intelligence."
"There," cried Odette, "that's one of the big things I beg him to tell
me about, and he never will."
"Oh, but..." protested Swann.
"Oh, but nonsense!" said Odette.
"A water-butt?" asked the Doctor.
"To you," pursued Forcheville, "does intelligence mean what they call
clever talk; you know, the sort of people who worm their way into
society?"
"Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away!" said Mme.
Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped
eating. And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, "It doesn't
matter; take your time about it; there's no hurry; I only reminded you
because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back."
"There is," began Brichot, with a resonant smack upon every syllable, "a
rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist
Fénelon..."
"Just listen to this!" Mme. Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the Doctor.
"He's going to give us Fénelon's definition of intelligence. That's
interesting. It's not often you get a chance of hearing that!"
But Brichot was keeping Fénelon's definition until Swann should
have given his own. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of
recreancy, spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme.
Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
"You see, it's just the same as with me!" Odette was peevish. "I'm not
at all sorry to see that I'm not the only one he doesn't find quite up
to his level."
"These de La Trémouailles whom Mme. Verdurin has exhibited to us as so
little to be desired," inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, "are
they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old
snob, Sévigné, said she was delighted to know, because it was so good
for her peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her
case probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart,
and always on the look-out for 'copy.' And, in the journal which she
used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de La Trémouaille,
kept well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the
foreign politics."
"Oh dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family," said Mme.
Verdurin desperately.
Saniette who, ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the
butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally
to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined
with the Duc de La Trémoïlle, the point of which was that the Duke
did not know that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann,
who really liked Saniette, felt bound to supply him with a few facts
illustrative of the Duke's culture, which would prove that such
ignorance on his part was literally impossible; but suddenly he stopped
short; he had realised, as he was speaking, that Saniette needed no
proof, but knew already that the story was untrue for the simple reason
that he had at that moment invented it. The worthy man suffered acutely
from the Verdurins' always finding him so dull; and as he was conscious
of having been more than ordinarily morose this evening, he had made up
his mind that he would succeed in being amusing, at least once, before
the end of dinner. He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the
sight of his castle in ruins, and replied in so craven a tone to Swann,
appealing to him not to persist in a refutation which was already
superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow, even if I have made a
mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann longed to be able
to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and
exquisitely funny. The Doctor, who had been listening, had an idea that
it was the right moment to interject "_Se non è vero_," but he was not
quite certain of the words, and was afraid of being caught out.
After dinner, Forcheville went up to the Doctor. "She can't have been
at all bad looking, Mme. Verdurin; anyhow, she's a woman you can really
talk to; that's all I want. Of course she's getting a bit broad in the
beam. But Mme. de Crécy! There's a little woman who knows what's what,
all right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got
the American eye, that girl has. We are speaking of Mme. de Crécy," he
explained, as M. Verdurin joined them, his pipe in his mouth. "I should
say that, as a specimen of the female form--"
"I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder!" the words came
tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain until
Forcheville should pause for breath, so that he might get in his hoary
old joke, a chance for which might not, he feared, come again, if the
conversation should take a different turn; and he produced it now with
that excessive spontaneity and confidence which may often be noticed
attempting to cover up the coldness, and the slight flutter of emotion,
inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forcheville knew and saw the
joke, and was thoroughly amused. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing
of his merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by
a symbol, different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious.
Scarcely had he begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man
who was 'shaking with laughter' than he would begin also to cough, as
though, in laughing too violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke
from his pipe. And by keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth he could
prolong indefinitely the dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he
and Mme. Verdurin (who, at the other side of the room, where the painter
was telling her a story, was shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging
her face into her hands) resembled two masks in a theatre, each
representing Comedy, but in a different way.
M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of
his mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated
now whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and
see the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough
began all over again.
"Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll
choke if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.
"What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."
"M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.
"Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner
out of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet
little dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will
be quite delightful....
"Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing
wit and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'
"M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room. And he,
still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the
size of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis;
she's a charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."
Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with
Mme. Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with:
"He's an interesting man, too; you can see that he knows some good
people. Gad! but they get to know a lot of things, those doctors."
"D'you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann?" asked
the pianist.
"What the devil's that? Not the sonata-snake, I hope!" shouted M. de
Forcheville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cottard, who had
never heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that M. de
Forcheville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it: "No,
no. The word isn't _serpent-à-sonates_, it's _serpent-à-sonnettes_!" he
explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient, and triumphant.
Forcheville explained the joke to him. The Doctor blushed.
"You'll admit it's not bad, eh, Doctor?"
"Oh! I've known it for ages."
Then they were silenced; heralded by the waving tremolo of the
violin-part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound two octaves
above it--and as in a mountainous country, against the seeming
immobility of a vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two
hundred feet below, the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley--the
little phrase had just appeared, distant but graceful, protected by
the long, gradual unfurling of its transparent, incessant and sonorous
curtain. And Swann, in his heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as
to a confidant in the secret of his love, as to a friend of Odette who
would assure him that he need pay no attention to this Forcheville.
"Ah! you've come too late!" Mme. Verdurin greeted one of the 'faithful,'
whose invitation had been only 'to look in after dinner,' "we've been
having a simply incomparable Brichot! You never heard such eloquence!
But he's gone. Isn't that so, M. Swann? I believe it's the first time
you've met him," she went on, to emphasize the fact that it was to her
that Swann owed the introduction. "Isn't that so; wasn't he delicious,
our Brichot?"
Swann bowed politely.
"No? You weren't interested?" she asked dryly.
"Oh, but I assure you, I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little
too peremptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see
him a little less confident at times, a little more tolerant, but one
feels that he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound
fellow."
The party broke up very late. Cottard's first words to his wife were: "I
have rarely seen Mme. Verdurin in such form as she was to-night."
"What exactly is your Mme. Verdurin? A bit of a bad hat, eh?" said
Forcheville to the painter, to whom he had offered a 'lift.' Odette
watched his departure with regret; she dared not refuse to let Swann
take her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage, and,
when he asked whether he might come in, replied, "I suppose so," with an
impatient shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Mme. Verdurin
said to her husband: "Did you notice the way Swann laughed, such an
idiotic laugh, when we spoke about Mme. La Trémoïlle?"
She had remarked, more than once, how Swann and Forcheville suppressed
the particle 'de' before that lady's name. Never doubting that it was
done on purpose, to shew that they were not afraid of a title, she had
made up her mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite
grasped what grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural
corruptness of her speech overcoming her implacable republicanism,
she still said instinctively "the de La Trémoïlles," or, rather (by
an abbreviation sanctified by the usage of music-hall singers and the
writers of the 'captions' beneath caricatures, who elide the 'de'),
"the d'La Trémoïlles," but she corrected herself at once to "Madame La
Trémoïlle.--The _Duchess_, as Swann calls her," she added ironically,
with a smile which proved that she was merely quoting, and would not,
herself, accept the least responsibility for a classification so puerile
and absurd.
"I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid."
M. Verdurin took it up. "He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer,
always hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to
run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between
him and Forcheville. There, at least, you have a man who tells you
straight out what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't.
Not like the other fellow, who's never definitely fish or fowl. Did you
notice, by the way, that Odette seemed all out for Forcheville, and I
don't blame her, either. And then, after all, if Swann tries to come
the man of fashion over us, the champion of distressed Duchesses, at any
rate the other man has got a title; he's always Comte de Forcheville!"
he let the words slip delicately from his lips, as though, familiar with
every page of the history of that dignity, he were making a scrupulously
exact estimate of its value, in relation to others of the sort.
"I don't mind saying," Mme. Verdurin went on, "that he saw fit to utter
some most venomous, and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot.
Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a
way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the
dear, good friend of the family, who pulls you all to pieces on the
stairs as he's going away."
"Didn't I say so?" retorted her husband. "He's simply a failure; a poor
little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's
at all big."
Had the truth been known, there was not one of the 'faithful' who was
not infinitely more malicious than Swann; but the others would all take
the precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with
little sparks of emotion and cordiality; while the least indication of
reserve on Swann's part, undraped in any such conventional formula
as "Of course, I don't want to say anything--" to which he would have
scorned to descend, appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery.
There are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least
'freedom of speech' is thought revolting because they have not begun
by flattering the public taste, and serving up to it the commonplace
expressions to which it is used; it was by the same process that Swann
infuriated M. Verdurin. In his case as in theirs it was the novelty
of his language which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his
designs.
Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the
Verdurins', and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most
rosy light, through the admiring eyes of love.
As a rule he made no appointments with Odette except for the evenings;
he was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the
day as well; at the same time he was reluctant to forfeit, even for
an hour, the place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly
looking out for an opportunity of claiming her attention, in any way
that would not be displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweller's
window, a plant or an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think
of sending them to Odette, imagining that the pleasure which the casual
sight of them had given him would instinctively be felt, also, by her,
and would increase her affection for himself; and he would order them to
be taken at once to the Rue La pérouse, so as to accelerate the moment
in which, as she received an offering from him, he might feel himself,
in a sense, transported into her presence. He was particularly anxious,
always, that she should receive these presents before she went out
for the evening, so that her sense of gratitude towards him might give
additional tenderness to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurins',
might even--for all he knew--if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a
letter from her before dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep,
come on a little extraordinary visit of thanks. As in an earlier phase,
when he had experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt
upon her character, he sought now by that of gratification to elicit
from her fresh particles of her intimate feelings, which she had never
yet revealed.
Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from
a creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this, as he
enjoyed everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself,
or merely with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might
make of him. Probably if anyone had said to him, at the beginning, "It's
your position that attracts her," or at this stage, "It's your money
that she's really in love with," he would not have believed the
suggestion, nor would he have been greatly distressed by the thought
that people supposed her to be attached to him, that people felt them
to be united by any ties so binding as those of snobbishness or wealth.
But even if he had accepted the possibility, it might not have caused
him any suffering to discover that Odette's love for him was based on a
foundation more lasting than mere affection, or any attractive qualities
which she might have found in him; on a sound, commercial interest; an
interest which would postpone for ever the fatal day on which she might
be tempted to bring their relations to an end. For the moment, while
he lavished presents upon her, and performed all manner of services,
he could rely on advantages not contained in his person, or in his
intellect, could forego the endless, killing effort to make himself
attractive. And this delight in being a lover, in living by love alone,
of the reality of which he was inclined to be doubtful, the price which,
in the long run, he must pay for it, as a dilettante in immaterial
sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes--as one sees people who are
doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are
really enjoyable, become convinced that they are, as also of the rare
quality and absolute detachment of their own taste, when they have
agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in an hotel, from which
that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.
One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to
the memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of
a 'kept' woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with
contrasting that strange personification, the 'kept' woman--an
iridescent mixture of unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered,
as in some fantasy of Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers,
interwoven with precious jewels--with that Odette upon whose face he
had watched the passage of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer,
resentment of an act of injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness,
which he had seen, in earlier days, on his own mother's face, and on
the faces of friends; that Odette, whose conversation had so frequently
turned on the things that he himself knew better than anyone, his
collections, his room, his old servant, his banker, who kept all his
title-deeds and bonds;--the thought of the banker reminded him that he
must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And indeed, if, during the
current month, he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in
her financial difficulties than in the month before, when he had given
her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering her a diamond
necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her admiration for
his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made him so happy,
and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love
for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself
diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not
precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact, that
idea of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all mysterious
nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life,
such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn
in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying
the household accounts and the rent, had locked up in a drawer in
the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with four
others, to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to Odette,
since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that she
could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title,
which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He
could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental
lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential,
happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his
brain, as instantaneously as, at a later period, when electric lighting
had been everywhere installed, it became possible, merely by fingering
a switch, to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind
fumbled, for a moment, in the darkness, he took off his spectacles,
wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light
until he found himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the
realisation that he must endeavour, in the coming month, to send Odette
six or seven thousand-franc notes instead of five, simply as a surprise
for her and to give her pleasure.