Like everything else that formed part of Odette’s environment, and was no more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her more often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. There, since at the heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings, games, suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre outings, even the infrequent “gala evenings” when they entertained the “bores,” there was the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette, conversation with Odette, an inestimable boon which the Verdurins bestowed on Swann by inviting him to their house, he was happier in the little “nucleus” than anywhere else, and tried to find some genuine merit in each of its members, imagining that this would lead him to frequent their society from choice for the rest of his life. Not daring to tell himself, lest he should doubt the truth of the suggestion, that he would always love Odette, at least in supposing that he would go on visiting the Verdurins (a proposition which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of his intelligence) he saw himself in the future continuing to meet Odette every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite to the same thing as loving her for ever, but for the moment, while he loved her, to feel that he would not eventually cease to see her was all that he asked. “What a charming atmosphere!” he said to himself. “How entirely genuine is the life these people lead! How much more intelligent, more artistic, they are than the people one knows! And Mme Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are rather absurd, what a sincere love of painting and music she has, what a passion for works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their ideas about artistic circles are still more wrong! Possibly I make no great intellectual demands in conversation, but I’m perfectly happy talking to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as for the painter, if he is rather disagreeably pretentious when he tries to shock, still he has one of the finest brains that I’ve ever come across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of good humour there is every day in that drawing-room! No question about it, with a few rare exceptions I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life there.”
And as the qualities which he supposed to be intrinsic to the Verdurins were no more than the superficial reflection of pleasures which he had enjoyed in their society through his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound, more vital, when those pleasures were too. Since Mme Verdurin often gave Swann what alone could constitute his happiness—since, on an evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to one of the party than to another, and, irritated by this, would not take the initiative of asking her whether she was coming home with him, Mme Verdurin brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by saying spontaneously: “Odette, you’ll see M. Swann home, won’t you?”; and since, when the summer holidays were impending and he had asked himself uneasily whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still be able to see her every day, Mme Verdurin had invited them both to spend the summer with her in the country—Swann, unconsciously allowing gratitude and self-interest to infiltrate his intelligence and to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme Verdurin was “a great soul.” Should one of his old fellow-students from the École du Louvre speak to him of some delightful or eminent people he had come across, “I’d a hundred times rather have the Verdurins” he would reply. And, with a solemnity of diction that was new in him: “They are magnanimous creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters, the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. You see, there are only two classes of people, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again as long as one lives. And so,” he went on, with the slight thrill of emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of it, he says something not because it is true but because he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they came from someone else, “the die is now cast. I have elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme Verdurin is really intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly attain without a corresponding loftiness of mind. Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is not, perhaps, in that that she is most admirable; every little action, ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she has performed for my sake, every thoughtful attention, every little gesture, quite domestic and yet quite sublime, reveals a more profound comprehension of existence than all your text-books of philosophy.”
He might have reminded himself that there were various old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins, companions of his youth who were just as fond of art, that he knew other “great-hearted” people, and that nevertheless, since he had opted in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and, if they had known her, would never have thought of introducing her to him.
And so, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, there was probably not a single one of the “faithful” who loved them, or believed that he loved them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin had said that he did not take to Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments, he had divined those of his wife. Doubtless Swann had too exclusive an affection for Odette, of which he had neglected to make Mme Verdurin his regular confidante; doubtless the very discretion with which he availed himself of the Verdurins’ hospitality, often refraining from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never suspected and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some “bore” or other, and doubtless, too, despite all the precautions which he had taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were making of his brilliant position in society—doubtless all this contributed to their growing irritation with Swann. But the real, the fundamental reason was quite different. The fact was that they had very quickly sensed in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque and that Cottard’s jokes were not amusing, in a word, for all that he never deviated from his affability or revolted against their dogmas, an impermeability to those dogmas, a resistance to complete conversion, the like of which they had never come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven him for associating with “bores” (to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all the little “nucleus”) had he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those “bores” in the presence of the “faithful.” But that was an abjuration which they realised they were powerless to extort from him.
How different he was from a “newcomer” whom Odette had asked them to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on whom they were building great hopes—the Comte de Forcheville! (It turned out that he was Saniette’s brother-in-law, a discovery which filled all the faithful with amazement: the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always supposed him to be socially inferior to themselves, and had never expected to learn that he came from a rich and relatively aristocratic background.) Of course, Forcheville was a colossal snob, which Swann was not; of course he would never dream of placing, as Swann now did, the Verdurin circle above all others. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from associating himself with the more obviously false accusations that Mme Verdurin levelled at people he knew. As for the vulgar and pretentious tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged, the commer
cial traveller’s pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard, and for which Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses without having either the heart or the hypocrisy to applaud them, Forcheville by contrast was of an intellectual calibre to be dumbfounded, awestruck by the first (without in the least understanding them) and to revel in the second. And as it happened, the very first dinner at the Verdurins’ at which Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all these differences, brought out his qualities and precipitated Swann’s fall from grace.
There was at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme Verdurin at a watering-place somewhere and who, if his university duties and scholarly labours had not left him with very little time to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had the sort of curiosity and superstitious worship of life which, combined with a certain scepticism with regard to the object of their studies, earns for some intelligent men of whatever profession, doctors who do not believe in medicine, schoolmasters who do not believe in Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant and indeed superior minds. He affected, when at Mme Verdurin’s, to choose his illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day when he spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those sciences as no more than a preparation for life, and imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the “little clan” what hitherto he had known only from books, and perhaps also because, having had instilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously preserved, a reverence for certain subjects, he thought that he was casting aside the scholar’s gown when he ventured to treat those subjects with a conversational licence which in fact seemed daring to him only because the folds of the gown still clung.
Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the right of Mme Verdurin who in the “newcomer’s” honour had taken great pains with her toilet, observed to her: ‘Quite original, that white dress,” the doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him so curious was he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a “de,” and who was on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention and coming into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective “blanche” and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, “Blanche? Blanche of Castile?” then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, smiling uncertainly. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile, showed that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shown at one and the same time that he could appreciate its subtlety and that he was a man of the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity of which had charmed Mme Verdurin.
“What do you make of a scientist like that?” she asked Forcheville. “You can’t talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the sort of thing you tell them at your hospital?” she went on, turning to the doctor. “They must have some pretty lively times there, if that’s the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!”
“I think I heard the Doctor speak of that old termagant, Blanche of Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?” Brichot appealed to Mme Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes tightly closed, had buried her face in her hands, from behind which muffled screams could be heard.
“Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, sub rosa … I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian—oh, how infinitely Athenian—republic is capable of honouring, in the person of that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our strong-arm chiefs of police. Yes, indeed, my dear host, yes indeed, yes indeed!” he repeated in his ringing voice, which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest from M. Verdurin. “The Chronique de Saint-Denis, and the authenticity of its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that point. No one could be more fitly chosen as patron by a secularised proletariat than that mother of a saint, to whom, incidentally, she gave a pretty rough time, according to Suger and other St Bernards of the sort; for with her everyone got hauled over the coals.”
“Who is that gentleman?” Forcheville asked Mme Verdurin. “He seems first-rate.”
“What! Do you mean to say you don’t know the famous Brichot? Why, he’s celebrated all over Europe.”
“Oh, that’s Bréchot, is it?” exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite caught the name. “You must tell me all about him,” he went on, fastening a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. “It’s always interesting to dine with prominent people. But, I say, you ask one to very select parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I’m sure.”
“Well, you know what it is really,” said Mme Verdurin modestly, “they feel at ease here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is nothing. I’ve seen him, don’t you know, when he’s been in my house, simply dazzling; you’d want to go on your knees to him. Well, anywhere else he’s not the same man, he’s not in the least witty, you have to drag the words out of him, he’s even boring.”
“That’s strange,” remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
A sort of wit like Brichot’s would have been regarded as out-and-out stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life, for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the intelligence of the Professor’s vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to social life, including that adjunct to social life which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not but find Brichot’s pleasantries pedantic, vulgar and nauseating. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone the pugnacious academic adopted no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally, perhaps, he had lost some of his tolerance that evening when he saw the cordiality displayed by Mme Verdurin towards this Forcheville fellow whom it had been Odette’s unaccountable idea to bring to the house. Somewhat embarrassed vis-à-vis Swann, she asked him on her arrival: “What do you think of my guest?”
And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom he had known for years, could actually attract a woman and was quite a good-looking man, replied: “Unspeakable!” It did not occur to him to be jealous of Odette, but he did not feel quite so happy as usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche of Castile’s mother who, according to him, “had been with Henry Plantagenet for years before they were married,” tried to prompt Swann to beg him to continue the story by interjecting “Isn’t that so, M. Swann?” in the martial accents people use in order to put themselves on a level with a country bumpkin or to put the fear of God into a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the painter. The latter, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme Verdurin, who had recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in these last works than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in his earlier exhibitions.
“From that point of view it was remarkable, but it did not seem to me to be a form of art which you could call ‘elevated,’ ” said Swann with a smile.
“Elevated … to the purple,” interrupted Cottard, raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out laughing.
“What did I tell you?” said Mme Verdurin to Forcheville. “It’s simply impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he comes with some piece of foolery.”
But she observed that Swann alone had not un
bent. For one thing he was none too pleased with Cottard for having secured a laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the easy admiration of the rest with a witty dissertation on the talent of the deceased master.
“I went up to one of them,” he began, “just to see how it was done. I stuck my nose into it. Well, it’s just not true! Impossible to say whether it was done with glue, with rubies, with soap, with sunshine, with leaven, with cack!”
“And one makes twelve!” shouted the doctor, but just too late, for no one saw the point of his interruption.
“It looks as though it was done with nothing at all,” resumed the painter. “No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the ‘Night Watch’ or the ‘Female Regents,’ and technically it’s even better than Rembrandt or Hals. It’s all there—but really, I swear it.”
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