Swann's Way
last time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance;
you are all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of
you will have to stay in bed, for a week."
This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist
sat down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though
each of them were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the
seductive originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the
acute sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would
attract the attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at
the other end of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as
in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was
being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had
been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the
'little scene' had never been so amusingly done.
"Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the
andante."
"Just the _andante_! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it
weren't 'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The
'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he
said 'we need only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the
_Meistersinger_."
The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play,
not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised
the existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common
to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.
"You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
are ill, we will cure you."
"Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a
favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate.
Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had
worked herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it
was all only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely,
from an invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that
invalids grow weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend
always on their own prudence in avoiding them, and like to let
themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most
enjoy doing, although they are always ill after doing it, provided only
that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority which,
without putting them to the least inconvenience, can and will, by
uttering a word or by administering a tabloid, set them once again upon
their feet.
Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
to Mme. Verdurin, "I have my own little corner, haven't I?"
And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get
up. "You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette;
you can make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
"What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
"I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn
you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well
abandon the idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these
little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a
moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the
subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you combine amusement
with instruction when you look at them;--I can promise you a delightful
time, I assure you. Just look at the little border around the edges;
here, look, the little vine on a red background in this one, the Bear
and the Grapes. Isn't it well drawn? What do you say? I think they knew
a thing or two about design! Doesn't it make your mouth water, this
vine? My husband makes out that I am not fond of fruit, because I eat
less than he does. But not a bit of it, I am greedier than any of you,
but I have no need to fill my mouth with them when I can feed on them
with my eyes. What are you all laughing at now, pray? Ask the Doctor;
he will tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge. Some
people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my own little Beauvais cure
here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without feeling the little
bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite surface? No, no,
not with your whole hand like that; feel them properly!"
"If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes,"
said the painter, "we shan't get any music to-night."
"Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are
forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in
the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour
of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say
that you never have been jealous!"
"But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
you as a witness; did I utter a word?"
Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
like to stop.
"Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to
be caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the
young gentleman who will take charge of that."
After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music
played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the
material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it
had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the
violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole,
he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a
flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent,
level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of
the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at
a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline,
or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had
tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he
knew not which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded
his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist
air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was
owing to his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so
confused an impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only
purely musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original,
and irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order,
vanishing in an instant, is, so to speak, an impression _sine materia_.
Presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out
before our eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their
pitch and volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation
of breadth or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves
have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to
escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous
notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception
would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the _motifs_ which now
and then emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and
drown; recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they
instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;--if
our memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm
foundations beneath the tumult of the waves, did not, by fashioning for
us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to
contrast them with those that follow. And so, hardly had the delicious
sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory
had furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true,
and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while
the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression
suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture
to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the
strength of its expression; he had before him that definite object which
was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought,
and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had
distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
strange desire.
With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly
indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which
he was prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it
changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform,
melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista
of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing,
that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though
without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure
less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he
was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment
passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and
enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether
he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows
nothing of her, not even her name.
Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few
months, to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of
rejuvenation. He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards
any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe
in (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had
grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations,
which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance.
Just as he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have
done better by not going into society, knowing very well that if he
had accepted an invitation he must put in an appearance, and that
afterwards, if he did not actually call, he must at least leave cards
upon his hostess; so in his conversation he took care never to express
with any warmth a personal opinion about a thing, but instead would
supply facts and details which had a value of a sort in themselves, and
excused him from shewing how much he really knew. He would be extremely
precise about the recipe for a dish, the dates of a painter's birth and
death, and the titles of his works. Sometimes, in spite of himself, he