Swann's Way
obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same carriage and
drove to Prévost's, he was no longer the same man, was no longer alone
even--but that a new personality was there beside him, adhering to him,
amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable
to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some such
stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during
this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality
was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, more
interesting.
It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
Prévost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so
bare the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea,
not one memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take
shelter and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be
much the same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every
other evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to
cast furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to
withdraw his eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of
desire and believe no more in his indifference, he would cease to
be able even to think of her, so busy would he be in the search for
pretexts which would enable him not to leave her immediately, and to
assure himself, without betraying his concern, that he would find her
again, next evening, at the Verdurins'; pretexts, that is to say, which
would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day
more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come
to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet
never dared embrace.
She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
direction, he sent in the other his coachman Rémi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting
at the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and
Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching
moment, as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there,"
or as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in
any of the cafés." And so he saw himself faced by the close of his
evening--a thing uniform, and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident
which would either put an end to his agony by discovering Odette, or
would oblige him to abandon any hope of finding her that night, to
accept the necessity of returning home without having seen her.
The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked,
not "Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in
some more firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had
persuaded himself that, if Rémi had at last found Odette in some café,
where she was waiting for him still, then his night of misery was
already obliterated by the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a
night of joy, and that there was no need for him to hasten towards the
attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place,
which would not escape his grasp again. But it was also by the force of
inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be
seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid
a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to
perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the
saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position,
as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength
and motion. And probably, if the coachman had interrupted him with,
"I have found the lady," he would have answered, "Oh, yes, of course;
that's what I told you to do. I had quite forgotten," and would have
continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so as to hide from his
servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give himself time to break
away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon himself to pleasure.
The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, "I
think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home."
But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when
Rémi uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a
cast-off cloak when he saw Rémi attempt to make him abandon hope and
retire from the quest.
"Certainly not!" he exclaimed. "We must find the lady. It is most
important. She would be extremely put out--it's a business matter--and
vexed with me if she didn't see me."
"But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir," answered Rémi, "since
it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
going to Prévost's, and then wasn't there."
Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go
out. Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people
strolling to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness.
Now and then the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few
words in his ear, asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering.
Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though
among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been
searching for a lost Eurydice.
Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the
human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking
amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided,
that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not
necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or
even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her
should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in
the moment when she has failed to meet us--for the pleasure which
we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly
substituted an anxious torturing desire, whose object is the creature
herself, an irrational, absurd desire, which the laws of civilised
society make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage--the
insensate, agonising desire to possess her.
Swann made Rémi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated
so calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon
their meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman,
as though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce
his own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming
that she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in
some restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
Maison Dorée, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching
sight of her, was emerging from the Café Anglais, striding with haggard
gaze towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of
the Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
been no room at Prévost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
Maison Dorée, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.
She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed
it possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered
even more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his
reason had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least,
to be realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever
before; for he himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating
probabilities,--it remained integral and external to himself; there
was no need for him to draw on his own resources to endow it with
truth--'twas from itself that there emanated, 'twas itself that
projected towards him that truth whose glorious rays melted and
scattered like the cloud of a dream the sense of loneliness which had
lowered over him, that truth upon which he had supported, nay founded,
albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So will a traveller, who has
come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the Mediterranean shore, and
is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands which he has left, let
his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward glance, by the radiance
streaming towards him from the luminous and unfading azure at his feet.
He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
ordered his own to follow.
She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath
the film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers
fastened to a swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a
flowing gown of black velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a
large triangular patch of her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,'
also of white silk, in the cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were
fastened a few more cattleyas. She had scarcely recovered from the shock
which the sight of Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the
horse start to one side. They were thrown forward from their seats; she
uttered a cry, and fell back quivering and breathless.
"It's all right," he assured her, "don't be frightened." And he slipped
his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then
went on: "Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes
or no, or you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the
flowers straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid
of their dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more
securely."
She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
smiled as she answered: "No, not at all; I don't mind in the least."
But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
"No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little--I think it must be
pollen, spilt over your dress,--may I brush it off with my hand? That's
not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a
little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a
little farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if
I just sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I
don't believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now."
Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who
should say, "You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it."
He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her
eyes on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women
of the old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type
of hers; swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes,
large and finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from
her face and rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her