Swann's Way
like a great animal? You know, though, don't you," she apologised
for him to the painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses;
anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you.
If you had only seen him while you were speaking; he was just drinking
it all in. And to-morrow he will tell us everything you said, without
missing a word."
"No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling
your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and
then you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything
you like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
"But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only
want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche
some more sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry;
you're dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't
serve the salad just yet."
Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
uttered, to pass unchallenged.
"It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards
Odette.
And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness
and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so
unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by
Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but
so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it.
"Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
"No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
dinner on Friday."
"You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous _Francillon_
that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now,
he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the
evening with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in
spending money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play
already. Of course an evening at the Théâtre-Français is never wasted,
really; the acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice
friends," (Mme. Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but
restricted herself to "some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as
being more 'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all
the importance of a person who need give names only when she chooses)
"who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the
new pieces that are worth going to, and so I'm certain to see this
_Francillon_ sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I
do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a
call anywhere, I find everybody talking--it's only natural--about that
wretched Japanese salad. Really and truly, one's beginning to get just a
little tired of hearing about it," she went on, seeing that Swann seemed
less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. "I must admit,
though, that it's sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it:
I've got a friend, now, who is most original, though she's really a
beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells
me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting
in everything that young M. Dumas says you're to put in, in the play.
Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among
the favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her
next 'day'; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh
till we cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way she told it," Mme.
Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by
_Francillon_: "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after
all. I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Crécy worships,
_Serge Panine_. There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you
think! But just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the
Théâtre-Français! Now, _Serge Panine_--! But then, it's like everything
that comes from the pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I
wonder if you know the _Maître des Forges_, which I like even better
than _Serge Panine_."
"Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that
my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those
masterpieces."
"Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about
them? Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little
too sad. Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about
plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what
may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing _Francillon_, Forcheville
had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called
the "little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of
language, such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had
come to a standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a
first-rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and
M. Bréchot you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so
sure that, simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the
Professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a
book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are
a bit realistic, and all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays;
anyhow, it's not often I've seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as
that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we used to say in the regiment, where, by
the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of. You could take anything
you liked--I don't know what--this glass, say; and he'd talk away about
it for hours; no, not this glass; that's a silly thing to say, I'm
sorry; but something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo, or
anything of that sort, he'd tell you things you simply wouldn't believe.
Why, Swann was in the regiment then; he must have known him."
"Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
"Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to
take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable
friends, but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of
good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann
upon some undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see
anything of you, do I?--But then, where on earth is one to see him? The
creature spends all his time shut up with the La Trémoïlles, with the
Laumes and all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any
time, and was all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had
given up going to almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere
names of families whom the Verdurins did not know were received by them
in a reproachful silence. M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression
which the mention of these 'bores,' especially when flung at her in this
tactless fashion, and in front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to
make on his wife, cast a covert glance at her, instinct with anxious
solicitude. He saw then that in her fixed resolution to take no notice,
to have escaped contact, altogether, with the news which had just been
addressed to her, not merely to remain dumb but to have been deaf
as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who has been in the wrong
attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse which we should
appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it without
protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that
her silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the
unconscious silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly
emptied her face of all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was
nothing, now, but an exquisite study in high relief, which the name of
those La Trémoïlles, with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed
to penetrate; her nose, just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to
view two dark cavities that were, surely, modelled from life. You would
have said that her half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was
all no more, however, than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's
design for a monument, a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry,
where the public would most certainly gather in front of it and marvel
to see how the sculptor, in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of
the Verdurins, as opposed to that of the La Trémoïlles or Laumes, whose
equals (if not, indeed, their betters) they were, and the equals and
betters of all other 'bores' upon the face of the earth, had managed to
invest with a majesty that was almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity
of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be
understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that
house, since the woman was always tipsy and the husband so uneducated
that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
"You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down
on Swann.
She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed:
"To think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody
to go near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful.
How can people be so common as to go running after them?"
But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann
merely smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could
not, of course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin,
who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife,
could see with regret, and could understand only too well that she was
now inflamed with the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed
in stamping out a heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round
to a retractation (for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of
calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
"Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
it to them, you may be sure."
To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the
Duchess (if it is of the La Trémoïlles that you're speaking). I can
assure you that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as
to say that she's at all 'deep'--" he pronounced the word as if it meant
something ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental
habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated
by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard,
so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable
warmth--"but I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent,