Swann's Way
their friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances
of Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money,
she would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have
the pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not
a word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth
would be a bar to his.
Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be
used, he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he
felt only too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily
procure, she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth,
since she wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing
between Bach and Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to
live in it more frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have
been if he had replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of
organising, each evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little
suppers, after which she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which,
it was possible, had never yet seized her) of falling into the arms of
Forcheville. At any rate, this loathsome expedition, it would not be
Swann who had to pay for it. Ah! if he could only manage to prevent
it, if she could sprain her ankle before starting, if the driver of the
carriage which was to take her to the station would consent (no matter
how great the bribe) to smuggle her to some place where she could be
kept for a time in seclusion, that perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled
with a smile of complicity for Forcheville, which was what Odette had
become for Swann in the last forty-eight hours.
But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining,
crafty eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of
an execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began
to grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before
him, softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who
also turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there
was nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay
long, for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's
here. Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile
with which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy
which she prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him
in one of those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him
alone.
Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then,
she had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him
from the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his
loyalty, he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear
to her, since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in
Forcheville nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that
Odette so often shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less
than nothing in his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of
reciprocal desire, was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love,
but the importance of which he began once more to feel in proportion as
the spontaneous relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the
distraction brought to him by reading about art or by the conversation
of a friend, rendered his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally
returned to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment
driven her, in the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her
to himself as full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes,
and so beautiful that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards
her, as though she had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and
he preserved a sense of gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly
glance, as strong as though she had really looked thus at him, and it
had not been merely his imagination that had portrayed it in order to
satisfy his desire.
What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate
reasons for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to
make him feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her.
Had he not nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women,
to whom he would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling
no anger towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever
came when he would find himself in the same state of indifference with
regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy
alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in
this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike
ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be
able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for
their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a house of her own.
He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love
and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from
which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
him, and warped against him.
Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or
with other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with
him, and which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements?
At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought
of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great
deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make
way, when they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a
triumph by being down there together in spite of him, it was he who had
engineered that triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going
there, whereas if he had approved of her plan, which for that matter was
quite defensible, she would have had the appearance of being there by
his counsel, she would have felt herself sent there, housed there by
him, and for the pleasure which she derived from entertaining those
people who had so often entertained her, it was to him that she would
have had to acknowledge her indebtedness.
And if--instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with him,
without having seen him again--he were to send her this money, if he
were to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way to
make it comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to him,
happy, grateful, and he would have the joy--the sight of her face--which
he had not known for nearly a week, a joy which none other could
replace. For the moment that Swann was able to form a picture of her
without revulsion, that he could see once again the friendliness in
her smile, and that the desire to tear her away from every rival was
no longer imposed by his jealousy upon his love, that love once again
became, more than anything, a taste for the sensations which Odette's
person gave him, for the pleasure which he found in admiring, as one
might a spectacle, or in questioning, as one might a phenomenon, the
birth of one of her glances, the formation of one of her smiles, the
utterance of an intonation of her voice. And this pleasure, different
from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which
she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as
disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which
characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the sereness,
the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of
spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this
unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate
health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and
seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:--this
other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible,
material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity
for Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind.
He was full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to
come to him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured
for her some pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her
face and moulding her smile.
So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days,
as tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a
reconciliation, became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him,
or even of making him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her,
the favours by which he set most store.
Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during
their quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any
money, but would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not
realise, either, how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate
with himself, on other occasions when, for the sake of their future
relations, to shew Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that
a rupture was still possible between them, he decided to wait some time
before going to see her again.
Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her,
he knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and
would not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run
to find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following
days. And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged
his letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing
her. For, upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had
entirely changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something
precious, so as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to
possess it, he had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving,
as he thought, everything else in the same state as when it was there.
But the absence of one part from a whole is not only that, it is not
simply a partial omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a
new state which it was impossible to foresee from the old.
But at other times--when Odette was on the point of going away for a
holiday--it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen the
pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until
her return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of
a serious rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a
separation, the greater part of which was inevitable, since she was