earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured
and protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication
in which he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which,
even when disseminated through the medium of other persons, could
have come to him from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really
existed) which he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless,
if they had not invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to
unstop the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.'
Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it
refused to utter those words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their
circle, and of joy at his having shaken himself free of it, save in an
artificial and rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts. The latter, in
fact, while he abandoned himself to invective, were probably, though he
did not know it, occupied with a wholly different matter, for once he
had reached his house, no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him
than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the
door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in a voice which,
this time, was quite natural; "I believe I have found a way of getting
invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!" But it must have been a
bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been
summoned to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from appearing at
Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he sat down to table
at their house:
"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth
which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was
supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous
emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied:
"Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his
forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the
whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk of Swann
at the Verdurins'.
And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to
him, as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet,
anyhow, to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins',"
but "We sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a
supper-party at the Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her
to the Opéra-Comique, to see _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_, and Swann could
read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go, which,
but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting
with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but which now
exasperated him. "Yet I'm not really angry," he assured himself, "when I
see how she longs to run away and scratch from maggots in that
dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed; not for myself, but for her;
disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in
daily contact with myself, she has not been capable of improving her
mind even to the point of spontaneously eradicating from it a taste for
Victor Massé! More than that, to find that she has not arrived at the
stage of understanding that there are evenings on which anyone with
the least shade of refinement of feeling should be willing to forego
an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to have the sense to
say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy, since it is by what
she answers now that the quality of her soul will be determined once and
for all." And having persuaded himself that it was solely, after all,
in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate of Odette's
spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him that evening
instead of going to the Opéra-Comique, he adopted the same line of
reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
"I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a
selfish man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have
a thousand other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have
been tricked and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if,
after all, you tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my
pleasures are not everything; I must think of you also. A day may come
when, seeing me irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to
reproach me with not having warned you at the decisive hour in which
I felt that I was going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern
judgments which love cannot long resist. You see, your _Nuit de
Cléopâtre_ (what a title!) has no bearing on the point. What I must know
is whether you are indeed one of those creatures in the lowest grade of
mentality and even of charm, one of those contemptible creatures who are
incapable of foregoing a pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone
love you, for you are not even a person, a definite, imperfect, but at
least perceptible entity. You are a formless water that will trickle
down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable
of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to
dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always
mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your answer will have the
effect--I do not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive to my
eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you are beneath
everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise yourself
one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you, as
though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
_Nuit de Cléopâtre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject
a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since
I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue
depend upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
warning."
Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it
was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes
which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying
any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not
make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in
love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in
love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost
tranquillity had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if
he went on speaking for any length of time she would "never" as she told
him with a fond smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in
time for the Overture."
On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which,
more than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her
refusal to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of
coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much
of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to
her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have
succeeded in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette
had no such system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished
Swann to remain in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not
telling him of it. So that a lie was, to her, something to be used only
as a special expedient; and the one thing that could make her decide
whether she should avail herself of a lie or not was a reason which,
too, was of a special and contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's
discovering that she had not told him the truth.
Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was
growing stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised,
wistful expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished
with her first youth, with the result that she became most precious to
Swann at the very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking.
He would gaze at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm
which he had once seen in her and could not find again. And yet the
knowledge that, within this new and strange chrysalis, it was still
Odette that lurked, still the same volatile temperament, artful and
evasive, was enough to keep Swann seeking, with as much passion as ever,
to captivate her. Then he would look at photographs of her, taken two
years before, and would remember how exquisite she had been. And that
would console him, a little, for all the sufferings that he voluntarily
endured on her account.
When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose
to remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme.
Verdurin would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist,
whose aunt had remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid
of you for a day. How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows
you're with us? Anyhow, I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the
blame on me."
If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until
he came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after
first finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must
warn. But Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message
for anyone, for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could
not possibly send messages to him, before all those people, without
compromising herself. Sometimes she would be absent for several days
on end, when the Verdurins took her to see the tombs at Dreux, or to
Compiègne, on the painter's advice, to watch the sun setting through the
forest--after which they went on to the Château of Pierrefonds.
"To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who
have spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly
bombarded, by people who really count, to take them over Beauvais or
Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of
that she trundles off with the lowest, the most brutally degraded
of creatures, to go into ecstasies over the petrified excretions of
Louis-Philippe and Viollet-le-Duc! One hardly needs much knowledge
of art, I should say, to do that; though, surely, even without any
particularly refined sense of smell, one would not deliberately choose
to spend a holiday in the latrines, so as to be within range of their
fragrant exhalations."
But when she had set off for Dreux or Pierrefonds--alas, without
allowing him to appear there, as though by accident, at her side, for,
as she said, that would "create a dreadful impression,"--he would plunge
into the most intoxicating romance in the lover's library, the railway
timetable, from which he learned the ways of joining her there in the
afternoon, in the evening, even in the morning. The ways? More than
that, the authority, the right to join her. For, after all, the
time-table, and the trains themselves, were not meant for dogs. If the
public were carefully informed, by means of printed advertisements, that
at eight o'clock in the morning a train started for Pierrefonds which
arrived there at ten, that could only be because going to Pierrefonds
was a lawful act, for which permission from Odette would be superfluous;
an act, moreover, which might be performed from a motive altogether
different from the desire to see Odette, since persons who had never
even heard of her performed it daily, and in such numbers as justified
the labour and expense of stoking the engines.
So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from going to
Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was precisely what he found
that he did choose to do, and would at that moment be doing were he,
like the travelling public, not acquainted with Odette. For a long
time past he had wanted to form a more definite impression of
Viollet-le-Duc's work as a restorer. And the weather being what it was,
he felt an overwhelming desire to spend the day roaming in the forest of
Compiègne.
It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden him access
to the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day! Why, if he went down
there, in defiance of her prohibition, he would be able to see her that
very day! But then, whereas, if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one
who did not matter, she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure:
"What, you here?" and would have invited him to come and see her at the
hotel where she was staying with the Verdurins, if, on the other hand,
it was himself, Swann, that she encountered there, she would be annoyed,
would complain that she was being followed, would love him less in
consequence, might even turn away in anger when she caught sight of him.
"So, then, I am not to be allowed to go away for a day anywhere!" she
would reproach him on her return, whereas in fact it was he himself who
was not allowed to go.
He had had the sudden idea, so as to contrive to visit Compiègne and
Pierrefonds without letting it be supposed that his object was to meet
Odette, of securing an invitation from one of his friends, the Marquis
de Forestelle, who had a country house in that neighbourhood. This
friend, to whom Swann suggested the plan without disclosing its
ulterior purpose, was beside himself with joy; he did not conceal his
astonishment at Swann's consenting at last, after fifteen years, to come
down and visit his property, and since he did not (he told him) wish
to stay there, promised to spend some days, at least, in taking him for
walks and excursions in the district. Swann imagined himself down there
already with M. de Forestelle. Even before he saw Odette, even if he did
not succeed in seeing her there, what a joy it would be to set foot on
that soil where, not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she
was to be found, he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility
of her suddenly appearing: in the courtyard of the Château, now
beautiful in his eyes since it was on her account that he had gone to
visit it; in all the streets of the town, which struck him as romantic;
down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of
sunset;--innumerable and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly
simultaneously for refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his
happy, vagabond and divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he
would warn M. de Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I
have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One
has plenty of time to see them in Paris; it would hardly be worth while
coming down here if one couldn't go a yard without meeting them." And
his host would fail to understand why, once they had reached the place,
Swann would change his plans twenty times in an hour, inspect the
dining-rooms of all the hotels in Compiègne without being able to make
up his mind to settle down in any of them, although he had found no
trace anywhere of the Verdurins, seeming to be in search of what he had
claimed to be most anxious to avoid, and would in fact avoid, the moment
he found it, for if he had come upon the little 'group,' he would have
hastened away at once with studied indifference, satisfied that he had
seen Odette and she him, especially that she had seen him when he was
not, apparently, thinking about her. But no; she would guess at
once that it was for her sake that he had come there. And when M. de
Forestelle came to fetch him, and it was time to start, he excused
himself: "No, I'm afraid not; I can't go to Pierrefonds to-day. You see,
Odette is there." And Swann was happy in spite of everything in feeling
that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right to go to Pierrefonds
that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette, some one who
differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that restriction
which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel freely
where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery, that
love which was so dear to him. Decidedly, it was better not to risk a
quarrel with her, to be patient, to wait for her return. He spent his
days in poring over a map of the forest of Compiègne, as though it
had been that of the 'Pays du Tendre'; he surrounded himself with
photographs of the Château of Pierrefonds. When the day dawned on which
it was possible that she might return, he opened the time-table
again, calculated what train she must have taken, and, should she have
postponed her departure, what trains were still left for her to take. He
did not leave the house, for fear of missing a telegram, he did not go
to bed, in case, having come by the last train, she decided to surprise
him with a midnight visit. Yes! The front-door bell rang. There seemed
some delay in opening the door, he wanted to awaken the porter, he
leaned out of the window to shout to Odette, if it was Odette, for
in spite of the orders which he had gone downstairs a dozen times to
deliver in person, they were quite capable of telling her that he was
not at home. It was only a servant coming in. He noticed the incessant
rumble of passing carriages, to which he had never before paid any
attention. He could hear them, one after another, a long way off, coming
nearer, passing his door without stopping, and bearing away into the
distance a message which was not for him. He waited all night, to no
purpose, for the Verdurins had returned unexpectedly, and Odette had
been in Paris since midday; it had not occurred to her to tell him; not
knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening alone at a
theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was peacefully asleep.
As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments
as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value
to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For
in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards,
at Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings
that would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them
without Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty
a woman to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a
case filled with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he
would scowl furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many
pickpockets. But their faces--a collective and formless mass--escaped
the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his
jealousy. The effort exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand
over his eyes, he cried out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing
themselves into an intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the
problem of the reality of the external world, or that of the immortality
of the soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning
act of faith. But the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly,
indissolubly blended with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily
life--when he took his meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or
to bed--by the fact of his regret at having to perform those actions
without her; like those initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the
church of Brou, because of her grief, her longing for him, Margaret of
Austria intertwined everywhere with her own. On some days, instead of
staying at home, he would go for luncheon to a restaurant not far off,
to which he had been attracted, some time before, by the excellence of
its cookery, but to which he now went only for one of those reasons,
at once mystical and absurd, which people call 'romantic'; because this
restaurant (which, by the way, still exists) bore the same name as the
street in which Odette lived: the Lapérouse. Sometimes, when she had
been away on a short visit somewhere, several days would elapse before
she thought of letting him know that she had returned to Paris. And
then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she would once have
taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs, with a little
fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that very
moment, arrived by the morning train. What she said was a falsehood;
at least for Odette it was a falsehood, inconsistent, lacking (what it
would have had, if true) the support of her memory of her actual arrival
at the station; she was even prevented from forming a mental picture of
what she was saying, while she said it, by the contradictory picture, in
her mind, of whatever quite different thing she had indeed been doing at
the moment when she pretended to have been alighting from the train. In
Swann's mind, however, these words, meeting no opposition, settled
and hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a truth so
indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell him that he had
come by the same train and had not seen Odette, Swann would have been
convinced that it was his friend who had made a mistake as to the day or
hour, since his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette.
These words had never appeared to him false except when, before hearing
them, he had suspected that they were going to be. For him to believe
that she was lying, an anticipatory suspicion was indispensable. It was
also, however, sufficient. Given that, everything that Odette might say
appeared to him suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that
of one of her lovers; once this supposition had taken shape, he would
spend weeks in tormenting himself; on one occasion he even approached a
firm of 'inquiry agents' to find out the address and the occupation of
the unknown rival who would give him no peace until he could be proved
to have gone abroad, and who (he ultimately learned) was an uncle of
Odette, and had been dead for twenty years.