Swann's Way
them, or even to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound
intuition there is in that '_Noli me tangere_' motto of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain."
He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off
the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more
and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority
of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the
night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better
than I; but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least,
are impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known)
"was far from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a
fundamental delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever
happened, incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and
an old hag like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something
complete about them, something almost fine in their trueness to type;
they're the most perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God,
it was high time that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse
with such infamy, such dung."
But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured
and protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication
in which he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which,
even when disseminated through the medium of other persons, could
have come to him from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really
existed) which he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless,
if they had not invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to
unstop the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.'
Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it
refused to utter those words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their
circle, and of joy at his having shaken himself free of it, save in an
artificial and rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts. The latter, in
fact, while he abandoned himself to invective, were probably, though he
did not know it, occupied with a wholly different matter, for once he
had reached his house, no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him
than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the
door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in a voice which,
this time, was quite natural; "I believe I have found a way of getting
invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!" But it must have been a
bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been
summoned to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from appearing at
Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he sat down to table
at their house:
"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth
which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was
supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous
emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied:
"Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his
forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the
whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk of Swann
at the Verdurins'.
And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to
him, as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet,
anyhow, to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins',"
but "We sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a
supper-party at the Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her
to the Opéra-Comique, to see _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_, and Swann could
read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go, which,
but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting
with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but which now
exasperated him. "Yet I'm not really angry," he assured himself, "when I
see how she longs to run away and scratch from maggots in that
dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed; not for myself, but for her;
disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in
daily contact with myself, she has not been capable of improving her
mind even to the point of spontaneously eradicating from it a taste for
Victor Massé! More than that, to find that she has not arrived at the
stage of understanding that there are evenings on which anyone with
the least shade of refinement of feeling should be willing to forego
an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to have the sense to
say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy, since it is by what
she answers now that the quality of her soul will be determined once and
for all." And having persuaded himself that it was solely, after all,
in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate of Odette's
spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him that evening
instead of going to the Opéra-Comique, he adopted the same line of
reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
"I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a
selfish man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have
a thousand other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have
been tricked and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if,
after all, you tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my
pleasures are not everything; I must think of you also. A day may come
when, seeing me irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to
reproach me with not having warned you at the decisive hour in which
I felt that I was going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern
judgments which love cannot long resist. You see, your _Nuit de
Cléopâtre_ (what a title!) has no bearing on the point. What I must know
is whether you are indeed one of those creatures in the lowest grade of
mentality and even of charm, one of those contemptible creatures who are
incapable of foregoing a pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone
love you, for you are not even a person, a definite, imperfect, but at
least perceptible entity. You are a formless water that will trickle
down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable
of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to
dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always
mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your answer will have the
effect--I do not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive to my
eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you are beneath
everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise yourself
one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you, as
though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
_Nuit de Cléopâtre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject
a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since
I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue
depend upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
warning."
Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it
was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes
which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying
any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not
make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in
love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in
love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost
tranquillity had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if
he went on speaking for any length of time she would "never" as she told
him with a fond smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in
time for the Overture."
On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which,
more than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her
refusal to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of
coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much
of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to
her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have
succeeded in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette
had no such system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished
Swann to remain in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not
telling him of it. So that a lie was, to her, something to be used only
as a special expedient; and the one thing that could make her decide
whether she should avail herself of a lie or not was a reason which,
too, was of a special and contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's
discovering that she had not told him the truth.
Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was
growing stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised,
wistful expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished
with her first youth, with the result that she became most precious to
Swann at the very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking.
He would gaze at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm
which he had once seen in her and could not find again. And yet the
knowledge that, within this new and strange chrysalis, it was still
Odette that lurked, still the same volatile temperament, artful and
evasive, was enough to keep Swann seeking, with as much passion as ever,
to captivate her. Then he would look at photographs of her, taken two
years before, and would remember how exquisite she had been. And that
would console him, a little, for all the sufferings that he voluntarily
endured on her account.
When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose
to remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme.
Verdurin would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist,
whose aunt had remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid
of you for a day. How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows
you're with us? Anyhow, I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the
blame on me."
If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until
he came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after
first finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must
warn. But Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message
for anyone, for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could