Swann's Way
Machard's portrait; you aren't smart, you aren't really cultured, you
aren't up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard's portrait."
Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard
was afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to
confess the omission.
"Oh, that's quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite
frank about it. You don't consider yourself disgraced because you
haven't seen Machard's portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well
now, I have seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people
who find it rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think
it's just ideal. Of course, she's not a bit like the blue and yellow
ladies that our friend Biche paints. That's quite clear. But I must tell
you, perfectly frankly (you'll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I
always say just what I think), that I don't understand his work. I can
quite see the good points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh,
dear me, yes; and it's certainly less odd than most of what he does,
but even then he had to give the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard!
Just listen to this now, the husband of my friend, I am on my way to see
at this very moment (which has given me the very great pleasure of your
company), has promised her that, if he is elected to the Academy (he
is one of the Doctor's colleagues), he will get Machard to paint her
portrait. So she's got something to look forward to! I have another
friend who insists that she'd rather have Leloir. I'm only a wretched
Philistine, and I've no doubt Leloir has perhaps more knowledge of
painting even than Machard. But I do think that the most important
thing about a portrait, especially when it's going to cost ten thousand
francs, is that it should be like, and a pleasant likeness, if you know
what I mean."
Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the
loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number
inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of
speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they
had still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the
Rue Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the
promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
"Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."
Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
uttered in the Verdurins' presence.
"You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Crécy was there; need I say
more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says.
What! you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked
sceptical. And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without
putting any evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the
sense in which one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a
pair of friends: "Why, she _adores_ you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would
never do to say anything against you when she was about; one would soon
be taught one's place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at
a picture, for instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's
the man who could tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one
like him for that.' And all day long she would be saying, 'What can
he be doing just now? I do hope, he's doing a little work! It's too
dreadful that a fellow with such gifts as he has should be so lazy.'
(Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can see him this very moment; he's thinking
of us, he's wondering where we are.' Indeed, she used an expression
which I thought very pretty at the time. M. Verdurin asked her, 'How in
the world can you see what he's doing, when he's a thousand miles away?'
And Odette answered, 'Nothing is impossible to the eye of a friend.'
"No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a
true friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you,
besides, in case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme.
Verdurin told me as much herself on our last day with them (one talks
more freely, don't you know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette
isn't fond of us, but anything that we may say to her counts for very
little beside what Swann might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor
stopping for me; here have I been chatting away to you, and would have
gone right past the Rue Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so
very kind as to tell me whether my plume is straight?"
And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
white-gloved hand from which there floated, with a transfer-ticket, an
atmosphere of fashionable life that pervaded the omnibus, blended with
the harsher fragrance of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself
overflowing with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and
almost to Odette, for the feeling that he now entertained for her was
no longer tinged with pain, was scarcely even to be described, now,
as love), while from the platform of the omnibus he followed her with
loving eyes, as she gallantly threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte,
her plume erect, her skirt held up in one hand, while in the other she
clasped her umbrella and her card-case, so that its monogram could be
seen, her muff dancing in the air before her as she went.
To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feelings that Swann had
for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever
her husband would have been, had grafted among them others more normal,
feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind were to make
Odette seem again more human (more like other women, since other women
could inspire the same feelings in him), were to hasten her final
transformation back into that Odette, loved with an undisturbed
affection, who had taken him home one evening after a revel at the
painter's, to drink orangeade with Forcheville, that Odette with whom
Swann had calculated that he might live in happiness.
In former times, having often thought with terror that a day must come
when he would cease to be in love with Odette, he had determined to
keep a sharp look-out, and as soon as he felt that love was beginning to
escape him, to cling tightly to it and to hold it back. But now, to the
faintness of his love there corresponded a simultaneous faintness in
his desire to remain her lover. For a man cannot change, that is to say
become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the
self which he has ceased to be. Occasionally the name, if it caught
his eye in a newspaper, of one of the men whom he supposed to have been
Odette's lovers, reawakened his jealousy. But it was very slight, and,
inasmuch as it proved to him that he had not completely emerged from
that period in which he had so keenly suffered--though in it he had also
known a way of feeling so intensely happy--and that the accidents of his
course might still enable him to catch an occasional glimpse, stealthily
and at a distance, of its beauties, this jealousy gave him, if anything,
an agreeable thrill, as to the sad Parisian, when he has left Venice
behind him and must return to France, a last mosquito proves that
Italy and summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this
particular period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made
an effort, if not to remain in it, at least to obtain, while still he
might, an uninterrupted view of it, he discovered that already it was
too late; he would have looked back to distinguish, as it might be
a landscape that was about to disappear, that love from which he had
departed, but it is so difficult to enter into a state of complete
duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling
which one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering
in his brain, he could see nothing, he would abandon the attempt, would
take the glasses from his nose and wipe them; and he told himself that
he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be time enough
later on, and settled back into his corner with as little curiosity,
with as much torpor as the drowsy traveller who pulls his cap down over
his eyes so as to get some sleep in the railway-carriage that is drawing
him, he feels, faster and faster, out of the country in which he has
lived for so long, and which he vowed that he would not allow to slip
away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell. Indeed,
like the same traveller, if he does not awake until he has crossed the
frontier and is again in France, when Swann happened to alight, close
at hand, upon something which proved that Forcheville had been Odette's
lover, he discovered that it caused him no pain, that love was now
utterly remote, and he regretted that he had had no warning of the
moment in which he had emerged from it for ever. And just as, before
kissing Odette for the first time, he had sought to imprint upon his
memory the face that for so long had been familiar, before it was
altered by the additional memory of their kiss, so he could have
wished--in thought at least--to have been in a position to bid farewell,
while she still existed, to that Odette who had inspired love in him and
jealousy, to that Odette who had caused him so to suffer, and whom now
he would never see again. He was mistaken. He was destined to see
her once again, a few weeks later. It was while he was asleep, in the
twilight of a dream. He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr. Cottard,
a young man in a fez whom he failed to identify, the painter, Odette,
Napoleon III and my grandfather, along a path which followed the line
of the coast, and overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a few
feet only, so that they were continually going up and down; those of the
party who had reached the downward slope were no longer visible to those
who were still climbing; what little daylight yet remained was failing,
and it seemed as though a black night was immediately to fall on them.
Now and then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann could feel on
his cheek a shower of freezing spray. Odette told him to wipe this off,
but he could not, and felt confused and helpless in her company, as well
as because he was in his nightshirt. He hoped that, in the darkness,
this might pass unnoticed; Mme. Verdurin, however, fixed her astonished
gaze upon him for an endless moment, in which he saw her face change
its shape, her nose grow longer, while beneath it there sprouted a heavy
moustache. He turned away to examine Odette; her cheeks were pale, with
little fiery spots, her features drawn and ringed with shadows; but she
looked back at him with eyes welling with affection, ready to detach
themselves like tears and to fall upon his face, and he felt that he
loved her so much that he would have liked to carry her off with him
at once. Suddenly Odette turned her wrist, glanced at a tiny watch,
and said: "I must go." She took leave of everyone, in the same formal
manner, without taking Swann aside, without telling him where they were
to meet that evening, or next day. He dared not ask, he would have liked
to follow her, he was obliged, without turning back in her direction,
to answer with a smile some question by Mme. Verdurin; but his heart was
frantically beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly
have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly,
have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb
with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from