Swann's Way
mind that was interested; at such moments he felt utterly dull and
uninspired. But in this strange phase of love the personality of another
person becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity which
he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the least details of a
woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for knowledge with which
he had once studied history. And all manner of actions, from which,
until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night,
outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly
provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening
at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with the
deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation
of old monuments, that was to say, so many different methods of
scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value
and being legitimately employable in the search for truth.
As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at
the thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that
he had returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She
had often told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who
spied. What he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would
detest him for ever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as
he refrained from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she
loved him still. How often is not the prospect of future happiness
thus sacrificed to one's impatient insistence upon an immediate
gratification. But his desire to know the truth was stronger, and seemed
to him nobler than his desire for her. He knew that the true story
of certain events, which he would have given his life to be able to
reconstruct accurately and in full, was to be read within that window,
streaked with bars of light, as within the illuminated, golden boards of
one of those precious manuscripts, by whose wealth of artistic treasures
the scholar who consults them cannot remain unmoved. He yearned for
the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so impassioned him in that
brief, fleeting, precious transcript, on that translucent page, so warm,
so beautiful. And besides, the advantage which he felt--which he so
desperately wanted to feel--that he had over them, lay perhaps not so
much in knowing as in being able to shew them that he knew. He drew
himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not heard; he knocked again;
louder; their conversation ceased. A man's voice--he strained his ears
to distinguish whose, among such of Odette's friends as he knew, the
voice could be--asked:
"Who's that?"
He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window
first, then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late, now, to
retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible,
too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty,
welcoming tone:
"Please don't bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.
I wanted to know if you were feeling better."
He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him, in the window, one
of them with a lamp in his hand; and beyond them he could see into
the room, a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the
habit, when he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by
the fact that it was the only one still lighted in a row of windows
otherwise all alike, he had been misled, this time, by the light, and
had knocked at the window beyond hers, in the adjoining house. He made
what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction
of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having
feigned for so long, when in Odette's company, a sort of indifference,
he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her that proof
of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair of lovers, fully and
finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other
enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to
think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering
course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would
startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness,
and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. As though this had
been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to alleviate it; in the
case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent of the mind, the
mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished, that it has
momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind, merely by
recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it was but
to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in conversation
with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word casually
uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does when a
clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from Odette,
he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled the smile with which, in gentle
mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile which was
all tenderness for himself; he recalled the gravity of her head which
she seemed to have lifted from its axis to let it droop and fall, as
though against her will, upon his lips, as she had done on that first
evening in the carriage; her languishing gaze at him while she lay
nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her
shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold.
But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love,
presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile
with which she had greeted him that very evening,--with which, now,
perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to
another--of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other
lips, and (but bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection
that she had shewn to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he
bore away from her house were, as one might say, but so many sketches,
rough plans, like the schemes of decoration which a designer submits to
one in outline, enabling Swann to form an idea of the various attitudes,
aflame or faint with passion, which she was capable of adopting for
others. With the result that he came to regret every pleasure that he
tasted in her company, every new caress that he invented (and had been
so imprudent as to point out to her how delightful it was), every fresh
charm that he found in her, for he knew that, a moment later, they
would go to enrich the collection of instruments in his secret
torture-chamber.
A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swann recalled a sudden
expression which he had intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the
first time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'.
Whether it was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his
brother-in-law, was not in favour with them, had decided to make a butt
of him, and to shine at his expense, or because he had been annoyed
by some awkward remark which Saniette had made to him, although it had
passed unnoticed by the rest of the party who knew nothing of whatever
tactless allusion it might conceal, or possibly because he had been for
some time looking out for an opportunity of securing the expulsion from
the house of a fellow-guest who knew rather too much about him, and
whom he knew to be so nice-minded that he himself could not help feeling
embarrassed at times merely by his presence in the room, Forcheville
replied to Saniette's tactless utterance with such a volley of abuse,
going out of his way to insult him, emboldened, the louder he shouted,
by the fear, the pain, the entreaties of his victim, that the poor
creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether he should stay and
receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering confusion and with
tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at this scene; but
when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced the normal
expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs, so as to
bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville; her eyes
had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his audacity,
of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim; she
had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly
implied: "That's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you
see what a fool he looked? He was actually crying," that Forcheville,
when his eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger, or pretended
anger with which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained: "He need
only have made himself pleasant and he'd have been here still; a good
scolding does a man no harm, at any time."
One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call,
and had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it
occurred to him to go, instead, to Odette, at an hour when, although he
never went to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at
home, resting or writing letters until tea-time, and would enjoy seeing
her for a moment, if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he
believed Odette to be in; Swann rang the bell, thought that he heard a
sound, that he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and
annoyed, he went round to the other little street, at the back of her
house, and stood beneath her bedroom window; the curtains were drawn and
he could see nothing; he knocked loudly upon the pane, he shouted; still
no one came. He could see that the neighbours were staring at him. He
turned away, thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in
believing that he heard footsteps; but he remained so preoccupied with
the suspicion that he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting
for an hour, he returned. He found her at home; she told him that she
had been in the house when he rang, but had been asleep; the bell had
awakened her; she had guessed that it must be Swann, and had run out
to meet him, but he had already gone. She had, of course, heard him
knocking at the window. Swann could at once detect in this story one of
those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise,
console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood
which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated,
and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude. It was true
that, when Odette had just done something which she did not wish to
disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in a secret place in her
heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face with the man to
whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her ideas melted
like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning faculties
were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only a void;
still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely
the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the truth, was
the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny fragment,
of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it was
the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true,"
she said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she
had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth
had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those
contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily
detached it, edges which, whatever the fictitious details in which she