gatherings, saying that people would talk, it happened occasionally
that, at an evening party to which he and she had each been invited--at
Forcheville's, at the painter's, or at a charity ball given in one of
the Ministries--he found himself in the same room with her. He could
see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be
spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures
which--while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed,
as anxiously as I myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the
evenings when he came to dine with us at Combray--seemed illimitable to
him since he had not been able to see their end. And, once or twice,
he derived from such evenings that kind of happiness which one would be
inclined (did it not originate in so violent a reaction from an anxiety
abruptly terminated) to call peaceful, since it consists in a pacifying
of the mind: he had looked in for a moment at a revel in the painter's
studio, and was getting ready to go home; he was leaving behind him
Odette, transformed into a brilliant stranger, surrounded by men to whom
her glances and her gaiety, which were not for him, seemed to hint at
some voluptuous pleasure to be enjoyed there or elsewhere (possibly at
the Bal des Incohérents, to which he trembled to think that she might be
going on afterwards) which made Swann more jealous than the thought of
their actual physical union, since it was more difficult to imagine; he
was opening the door to go, when he heard himself called back in these
words (which, by cutting off from the party that possible ending which
had so appalled him, made the party itself seem innocent in retrospect,
made Odette's return home a thing no longer inconceivable and terrible,
but tender and familiar, a thing that kept close to his side, like
a part of his own daily life, in his carriage; a thing that stripped
Odette herself of the excess of brilliance and gaiety in her appearance,
shewed that it was only a disguise which she had assumed for a moment,
for his sake and not in view of any mysterious pleasures, a disguise of
which she had already wearied)--in these words, which Odette flung out
after him as he was crossing the threshold: "Can't you wait a minute for
me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together and you can drop me." It
was true that on one occasion Forcheville had asked to be driven home at
the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's gate, he had begged to be
allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a finger pointed at Swann:
"Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask him. Very well, you
may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you mustn't stay
long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with me, and
he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if you
only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's no
one that really knows you, is there, except me?"
And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I
feel sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with
them on Sunday. You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at
least be polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so
that you can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm
going to make you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept
herself in touch with his social engagements and his literary work, that
they had indeed a life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a
smile which he interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.
And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as
when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting
all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows
which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object
itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of
Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there
before his eyes. He had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in
Odette's house, in the lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an
artificial hour, invented for his special use (with the object of
concealing that frightening and delicious thing which was incessantly
in his thoughts without his ever being able to form a satisfactory
impression of it, an hour of Odette's real life, of her life when he was
not there, looking on) with theatrical properties and pasteboard fruits,
but was perhaps a genuine hour of Odette's life; that, if he himself
had not been there, she would have pulled forward the same armchair for
Forcheville, would have poured out for him, not any unknown brew, but
precisely that orangeade which she was now offering to them both; that
the world inhabited by Odette was not that other world, fearful and
supernatural, in which he spent his time in placing her--and which
existed, perhaps, only in his imagination, but the real universe,
exhaling no special atmosphere of gloom, comprising that table at which
he might sit down, presently, and write, and this drink which he was
being permitted, now, to taste; all the objects which he contemplated
with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for if, in absorbing
his dreams, they had delivered him from an obsession, they themselves
were, in turn, enriched by the absorption; they shewed him the palpable
realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind; they took
shape and grew solid before his eyes, and at the same time they soothed
his troubled heart. Ah! had fate but allowed him to share a single
dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own; if,
when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been
Odette's bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when
Odette wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du
Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he
had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she
was too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at
home, and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to
do what she asked; then how completely would all the trivial details
of Swann's life, which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they
would, at the same time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have
taken on--like that lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had
absorbed so much of his dreams, which materialised so much of his
longing,--a sort of superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.
And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so much
longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have created an atmosphere
favourable to his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature
always absent, regretted, imagined; when the feeling that he had for her
was no longer the same mysterious disturbance that was wrought in him by
the phrase from the sonata, but constant affection and gratitude, when
those normal relations were established between them which would put an
end to his melancholy madness; then, no doubt, the actions of Odette's
daily life would appear to him as being of but little intrinsic
interest--as he had several times, already, felt that they might be,
on the day, for instance, when he had read, through its envelope, her
letter to Forcheville. Examining his complaint with as much scientific
detachment as if he had inoculated himself with it in order to study
its effects, he told himself that, when he was cured of it, what Odette
might or might not do would be indifferent to him. But in his morbid
state, to tell the truth, he feared death itself no more than such a
recovery, which would, in fact, amount to the death of all that he then
was.
After these quiet evenings, Swann's suspicions would be temporarily
lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning,
would order the most attractive jewels to be sent to her, because her
kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the
desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had
need of some such outlet.
But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine
that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat
watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on
the evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited,
while he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face
which even his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then
turned away, solitary, crushed,--she must have employed, to draw
Forcheville's attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him,
storming!" the same glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as
on the evening when Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
At such times Swann detested her. "But I've been a fool, too," he would
argue. "I'm paying for other men's pleasures with my money. All the
same, she'd better take care, and not pull the string too often, for
I might very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we'd
better knock off supplementary favours for the time being. To think
that, only yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth
for the season, I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those jolly
little places the King of Bavaria has there, for the two of us. However
she didn't seem particularly keen; she hasn't said yes or no yet. Let's
hope that she'll refuse. Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a
fortnight on end with her, who takes about as much interest in music as
a fish does in little apples; it will be fun!" And his hatred, like
his love, needing to manifest itself in action, he amused himself with
urging his evil imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the
perfidies with which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and
would be able, if it turned out--as he tried to convince himself--that
she was indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her,
emptying upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he
went so far as to suppose that he was going to receive a letter from
her, in which she would ask him for money to take the house at Bayreuth,
but with the warning that he was not to come there himself, as she had
promised Forcheville and the Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he
would have loved it, had it been conceivable that she would have
that audacity. What joy he would have in refusing, in drawing up that
vindictive reply, the terms of which he amused himself by selecting and
declaiming aloud, as though he had actually received her letter.
The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and
their friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances
of Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money,
she would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have
the pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not
a word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth
would be a bar to his.
Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be
used, he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he
felt only too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily
procure, she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth,
since she wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing
between Bach and Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to
live in it more frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have
been if he had replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of
organising, each evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little
suppers, after which she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which,
it was possible, had never yet seized her) of falling into the arms of
Forcheville. At any rate, this loathsome expedition, it would not be
Swann who had to pay for it. Ah! if he could only manage to prevent
it, if she could sprain her ankle before starting, if the driver of the
carriage which was to take her to the station would consent (no matter
how great the bribe) to smuggle her to some place where she could be
kept for a time in seclusion, that perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled
with a smile of complicity for Forcheville, which was what Odette had
become for Swann in the last forty-eight hours.
But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining,
crafty eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of
an execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began
to grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before
him, softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who
also turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there
was nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay
long, for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's
here. Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile
with which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy
which she prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him
in one of those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him
alone.
Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then,
she had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him
from the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his
loyalty, he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear
to her, since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in
Forcheville nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that
Odette so often shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less
than nothing in his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of
reciprocal desire, was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love,
but the importance of which he began once more to feel in proportion as
the spontaneous relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the
distraction brought to him by reading about art or by the conversation
of a friend, rendered his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally
returned to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment
driven her, in the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her
to himself as full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes,
and so beautiful that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards
her, as though she had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and
he preserved a sense of gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly
glance, as strong as though she had really looked thus at him, and it
had not been merely his imagination that had portrayed it in order to
satisfy his desire.
What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate
reasons for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to
make him feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her.
Had he not nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women,
to whom he would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling
no anger towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever
came when he would find himself in the same state of indifference with
regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy
alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in
this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike
ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be
able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for
their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a house of her own.
He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love
and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from
which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
him, and warped against him.
Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or
with other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with
him, and which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements?
At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought
of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great
deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make
way, when they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a
triumph by being down there together in spite of him, it was he who had
engineered that triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going
there, whereas if he had approved of her plan, which for that matter was
quite defensible, she would have had the appearance of being there by
his counsel, she would have felt herself sent there, housed there by
him, and for the pleasure which she derived from entertaining those
people who had so often entertained her, it was to him that she would
have had to acknowledge her indebtedness.
And if--instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with him,
without having seen him again--he were to send her this money, if he
were to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way to
make it comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to him,
happy, grateful, and he would have the joy--the sight of her face--which
he had not known for nearly a week, a joy which none other could
replace. For the moment that Swann was able to form a picture of her
without revulsion, that he could see once again the friendliness in
her smile, and that the desire to tear her away from every rival was
no longer imposed by his jealousy upon his love, that love once again
became, more than anything, a taste for the sensations which Odette's
person gave him, for the pleasure which he found in admiring, as one
might a spectacle, or in questioning, as one might a phenomenon, the
birth of one of her glances, the formation of one of her smiles, the
utterance of an intonation of her voice. And this pleasure, different
from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which
she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as
disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which
characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the sereness,
the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of
spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this
unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate
health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and
seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:--this
other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible,
material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity
for Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind.
He was full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to
come to him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured
for her some pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her
face and moulding her smile.
So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days,
as tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a
reconciliation, became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him,
or even of making him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her,
the favours by which he set most store.
Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during
their quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any
money, but would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not
realise, either, how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate
with himself, on other occasions when, for the sake of their future
relations, to shew Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that
a rupture was still possible between them, he decided to wait some time
before going to see her again.
Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her,
he knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and
would not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run
to find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following
days. And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged
his letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing
her. For, upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had
entirely changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something
precious, so as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to
possess it, he had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving,
as he thought, everything else in the same state as when it was there.
But the absence of one part from a whole is not only that, it is not
simply a partial omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a
new state which it was impossible to foresee from the old.
But at other times--when Odette was on the point of going away for a
holiday--it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen the
pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until
her return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of
a serious rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a
separation, the greater part of which was inevitable, since she was
going away, which, in fact, he was merely allowing to start a little
sooner than it must. At once he could imagine Odette, puzzled, anxious,
distressed at having received neither visit nor letter from him and this
picture of her, by calming his jealousy, made it easy for him to break
himself of the habit of seeing her. At odd moments, no doubt, in the
furthest recesses of his brain, where his determination had thrust
it away, and thanks to the length of the interval, the three weeks'
separation to which he had agreed, it was with pleasure that he would
consider the idea that he would see Odette again on her return; but it
was also with so little impatience that he began to ask himself whether
he would not readily consent to the doubling of the period of so easy an
abstinence. It had lasted, so far, but three days, a much shorter time
than he had often, before, passed without seeing Odette, and without
having, as on this occasion he had, premeditated a separation. And
yet, there and then, some tiny trace of contrariety in his mind, or
of weakness in his body,--by inciting him to regard the present as an
exceptional moment, one not to be governed by the rules, one in which
prudence itself would allow him to take advantage of the soothing
effects of a pleasure and to give his will (until the time should come
when its efforts might serve any purpose) a holiday--suspended the
action of his will, which ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or,
without that even, the thought of some information for which he had
forgotten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour she
would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to some investment,
whether they were 'ordinary' or 'preference' shares that she wished him
to buy (for it was all very well to shew her that he could live without
seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over
again, if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would
have done),--and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is
let go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea
of seeing her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been
attached, sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate
possibilities.
It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he
must spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes
while his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to
her, minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in
which he recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the
wealth of his affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by
so abrupt a repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was
once more present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact
was that this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the
desire to contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which
had ceased to have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to
himself--or so, at least, he believed--that he was so easily capable of
resisting it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of
separation which he was now certain of being able to put into operation
whenever he would. Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back
to him adorned with a novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence,
all of which long habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour
during this privation, not of three days but of a fortnight (for a
period of abstinence may be calculated, by anticipation, as having
lasted already until the final date assigned to it), and had converted
what had been, until then, a pleasure in store, which could easily be
sacrificed, into an unlooked-for happiness which he was powerless to
resist. Finally, the idea returned to him with its beauty enhanced by
his own ignorance of what Odette might have thought, might, perhaps,
have done on finding that he shewed no sign of life, with the result
that he was going now to meet with the entrancing revelation of an
Odette almost unknown.