Swann's Way
"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
last moment."
Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in
time for the _Danicheff_ revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect
of Police to-morrow, as it happens, at the Elysée."
"What's that? The Elysée?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
"Yes, at M. Grévy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
effect which his announcement had produced.
"Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
mock-seriousness.
As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point
his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself
was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no
honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head
of the State.
"What's that you say? M. Grévy? Do you know M. Grévy?" he demanded of
Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of
the Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of
the police infirmary.
"I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not
add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is
very free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties
are not the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you
know; never more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately
to cut out everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the
President in a light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from
M. Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into
the highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at
all surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at
the Elysée'; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to
luncheon-parties which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
"Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of
a customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
"I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded
the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded,
since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion,
which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them
'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
"Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A
note of pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the
number--only eight at table--"Are these luncheons what you would
describe as 'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle
curiosity as in his linguistic zeal.
But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann
nor the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first
impression, and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without
asking anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening?
He is a personal friend of M. Grévy's. I suppose that means he's what
you'd call a 'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann
a card of invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
"This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because
some friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there
was the devil to pay."
As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect
upon his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of
whom he had never spoken.
If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the
Verdurins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but
he never appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever
accept their invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
"I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
"But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
"Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
"How charming of you."
But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other
pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire
that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of
satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty
that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom
he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the
first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see
Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to
call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins'. The little
girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Rémi, his
coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him
in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins'. He would enter
the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses
which he had sent her that morning, said: "I am furious with you!" and
sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist
would play to them--for their two selves, and for no one else--that
little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from the violin
part, which, for several bars, was unaccompanied, and filled all the
foreground; until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside, and--just as in
those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where the subject is set back a
long way through the narrow framework of a half-opened door--infinitely
remote, in colour quite different, velvety with the radiance of some
intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral,
interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It passed, with
simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of
its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now
discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how
hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace
there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an
outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked
upon the sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had,
in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or
Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and
would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
to come--than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the
rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went
farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
a 'lass unparalleled.'
It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La Pérouse, behind the
Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
spirit, after he had left her for the night.
And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
and murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him,
plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
the drive home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it
away, like something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her
life--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those
short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses,
self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and
there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once
an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the
district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the
garden-beds or clung to the branches of the trees, the careless disarray
of the season, the assertion, in this man-made city, of a state of