Swann's Way

by Proust, Marcel

  Odette de Crécy came to see Swann again, then visited him more and more often; and certainly each visit renewed the disappointment he felt at finding himself once again in the presence of that face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the meantime and which he had not recalled as being either so expressive or, despite her youth, so faded; he felt sorry, as she talked to him, that her considerable beauty was not the type he would spontaneously have preferred. Odette’s face seemed thinner and sharper, in fact, because her forehead and the upper part of her cheeks, those smoother and flatter surfaces, were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that time drawn forward in fringes, lifted in “switches,” spread in stray locks down along the ears; and as for her body, which was admirably formed, it was difficult to discern its continuity (because of the fashions of the period, and even though she was one of the best-dressed women in Paris), because her blouse, jutting out as though over an imaginary paunch and ending abruptly in a point, below which the balloon of the double skirts swelled out, made a woman look as though she were composed of different parts poorly fitted inside one another; because the flounces, the flutes, the vest followed so independently, according to the whimsy of their design or the consistency of their material, the line that led to the knots, the puffs of lace, the perpendicular fringes of jet, or that directed them along the corset, but were in no way attached to the living person, who, depending on whether the architecture of these frills and furbelows approached too closely or moved too far away from her own, was either encased or lost in them.

  But when Odette had left, Swann would smile, thinking of how she had told him the time would drag until he allowed her to come again; he would recall the worried, shy air with which she had begged him once that it should not be too long, and the expression in her eyes at that moment, fastened on him in anxious entreaty, which made her look so touching under the bouquet of artificial pansies fastened to the front of her round white straw hat with its black velvet ribbons. “And you,” she had said, “wouldn’t you come to my house just once for tea?” He had pleaded unfinished work, a study—in reality abandoned years before—of Vermeer of Delft.11 “I realize I can’t do anything, pitiful little me, compared with all you great scholars,” she had answered. “I would be like the frog in front of the Areopagus.12 And yet I would so love to educate myself, to be informed, to know things. How amusing it must be to bury your nose in old papers!” she had added with the self-satisfaction a stylish woman adopts to assert that she is happiest abandoning herself with no fear of getting dirty to some messy job, like doing a little cooking “with her own hands in the dough.” “You’re going to make fun of me, but that painter who keeps you from seeing me—” (she meant Vermeer) “I’ve never heard of him; is he still alive? Can I see any of his things in Paris, so that I could imagine what it is you like, so that I could have some idea what’s behind that great forehead that works so hard, inside that mind that I always sense is so busy with its thoughts, so that I could say to myself: There, this is what he’s thinking about. What a joy it would be, to share in your work!” He apologized for his fear of new friendships, for what he had called, out of politeness, his fear of being unhappy. “You’re afraid of affection? How odd; that’s all I ever look for, I would give my life to find it,” she had said in a voice so natural, so convinced, that he had been moved. “Some woman must have hurt you. And you think all other women are like her. She must not have understood you; you’re such an unusual person. That’s what I liked about you right away, I really felt you weren’t like anyone else.” “And you too,” he had said to her, “I know very well what women are like, you must be busy with a great many things, you must not have much time.” “Me! I never have anything to do! I’m always free, I will always be free for you. At any hour of the day or night that might be convenient for you to see me, send for me and I’ll be only too happy to come immediately. Will you do it? Do you know what would be nice—if you could obtain an introduction to Mme. Verdurin; I go to her house every evening. Just imagine if we met there and I thought it was partly because of me that you were there!”

  And as he recalled their conversations this way, as he thought of her this way when he was alone, he was no doubt merely turning over her image among those of many other women in his romantic daydreams; but if, due to some circumstance (or even perhaps not due to it, since a circumstance that presents itself at the moment when a state of mind, latent until then, comes out into the open may possibly not have influenced it in any way) the image of Odette de Crécy came to absorb all these daydreams, if these daydreams were no longer separable from the memory of her, then the imperfection of her body would no longer have any importance, nor would the fact that it might be, more or less than some other body, to Swann’s taste, since, now that it had become the body of the woman he loved, it would be the only one capable of filling him with joy and torment.

  As it happened, my grandfather had known—which was more than could be said of any of their current friends—the family of these Verdurins. But he had lost all contact with “young Verdurin,” as he called him, whom he regarded, somewhat approximately, as having fallen—even while holding on to his many millions—among bohemians and riffraff. One day, he received a letter from Swann asking him if he could put him in touch with the Verdurins: “On guard! On guard!” my grandfather had exclaimed. “This doesn’t surprise me at all; it’s just where Swann was bound to end up. A nice group they are! In the first place, I can’t do what he asks, because I don’t know the gentleman in question anymore. And secondly, there must be a woman in it somewhere, and I never get mixed up in such affairs. Well, well! We shall have a rather amusing time of it if Swann falls in with the young Verdurins.”

  And after my grandfather returned a negative answer, it was Odette herself who had taken Swann to the Verdurins’.

  The Verdurins had had to dinner, on the day Swann made his first appearance there, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt, and the painter who was in their favor at the time, and these were joined during the evening by several other faithful regulars.

  Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to answer someone, whether the person addressing him wanted to make a joke or was serious. And just in case, he would add to each of his facial expressions the offer of a conditional and tentative smile whose expectant shrewdness would exculpate him from the reproach of naïveté, if the remark that had been made to him was found to have been facetious. But since, so as to respond to the opposite hypothesis, he did not dare allow that smile to declare itself distinctly on his face, one saw an uncertainty perpetually floating upon it in which could be read the question he did not dare ask: “Are you saying this in earnest?” He was no more sure how he ought to behave in the street, and even in life generally, than in a drawing room, and he could be seen greeting passersby, carriages, and any minor event that occurred with the same ironic smile that removed all impropriety from his attitude in advance, since he was proving that if the attitude was not a fashionable one he was well aware of it and that if he had adopted it, it was as a joke.

  On all points, however, where a direct question seemed to him permissible, the doctor did not fail to endeavor to reduce the field of his doubts and complete his education.

  And so, acting on the advice given him by a foresightful mother when he left her province, he never let pass either an expression or a proper name that was unknown to him, without trying to acquire documentation about it.

  In the case of expressions, he was insatiable for enlightenment, because, sometimes assuming they had a more precise meaning than they had, he wanted to know exactly what was meant by those he heard used most often: the bloom of youth, blue blood, a fast life, the hour of reckoning, to be a prince of refinement, to give carte blanche, to be nonplussed, etc., and in which specific cases he in his turn could introduce them into his conversation. If there were none, he would substitute puns he had learned. As for new names of people mentioned
in his presence, he contented himself merely with repeating them in a questioning tone that he thought sufficient to procure him explanations without his appearing to ask for them.

  Since he completely lacked the critical faculty which he thought he exercised on everything, that refinement of politeness which consists in declaring to a person to whom you are doing a favor, without however expecting to be believed, that you are in fact indebted to him, was a waste of effort with the doctor, who took everything literally. Whatever Mme. Verdurin’s blindness with respect to him, she had in the end, while continuing to find him very subtle, been annoyed to see that, when she invited him to share a box near the stage for a performance by Sarah Bernhardt, saying to him, to be especially gracious: “It was too kind of you to come, Doctor, especially since I’m sure you’ve already heard Sarah Bernhardt many times, and we may also be too close to the stage,” Dr. Cottard, who had entered the box with a smile that was waiting to become more pronounced or to disappear as soon as some authoritative person informed him as to the quality of the entertainment, answered her: “It’s true that we’re much too close and one begins to tire of Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a desire that I should come. And your desire is my command. I am only too happy to do you this small service. Is there anything one would not do in order to please you, you’re so good!” And he added: “Sarah Bernhardt—she is in fact the Golden Voice, isn’t she? And they often write that she sets the stage on fire. That’s an odd expression, isn’t it?” in hope of commentaries which were not forthcoming.

  “You know,” Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, “I believe we’re steering the wrong course when we belittle our gifts to the doctor out of modesty. He’s a man of science, out of touch with the practical side of life, he has no idea of the value of things and relies on what we tell him.” “I hadn’t dared say anything to you, but I had noticed,” answered M. Verdurin. And the following New Year’s Day, instead of sending Dr. Cottard a three-thousand-franc ruby, remarking that it was only a trifle, M. Verdurin paid three hundred francs for an artificial stone, implying that it would be hard to find one as beautiful.

  When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they would be having M. Swann at the soirée, “Swann?” the doctor had exclaimed in a tone of voice made rough by surprise, for the slightest piece of news always caught him more off guard than anyone else, though this was a man who believed he was perpetually prepared for anything. And seeing that no one answered him, “Swann? Who’s this Swann?” he roared, filled with an anxiety that suddenly abated when Mme. Verdurin said: “Why, the friend Odette told us about.” “Ah, good, good! That’s all right then,” answered the doctor, pacified. As for the painter, he was delighted by the introduction of Swann to Mme. Verdurin’s, because he assumed Swann was in love with Odette and he liked to encourage love affairs. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than arranging a marriage,” he confided in Dr. Cottard’s ear. “I’ve already managed a good many, even between women!”

  By telling the Verdurins that Swann was very “smart,” Odette had awoken in them the fear that he would be a “bore.” However, he made an excellent impression, of which, without their knowing it, his association with fashionable society was one of the indirect causes. He had, in fact, over men who have never mixed in high society, even intelligent men, one of the superior qualities of those who have had some experience of it, which is that they no longer transfigure it out of the desire or the horror it inspires in their imagination, considering it unimportant. Their friendliness, disassociated from all snobbishness and from a fear of seeming too friendly, thus quite independent, has that ease, that grace characteristic of the motions of people whose supple limbs perform exactly what they want, without any indiscreet or awkward participation of the rest of the body. The simple elementary gymnastics of a man of the world extending his hand with good grace to the unknown young man who is being introduced to him, and bowing with reserve to the ambassador to whom he is being introduced, had in the end passed, without his being aware of it, into Swann’s whole social attitude, so that toward people of a social circle inferior to his, like the Verdurins and their friends, he instinctively displayed a marked attention, permitted himself to make advances, from which, according to them, a bore would have refrained. He had a moment of coldness only with Cottard: seeing the doctor wink at him and smile ambiguously before they had spoken to each other (a dumb show that Cottard called “wait-and-see”), Swann thought the doctor probably recognized him from a previous encounter in some house of pleasure, even though he himself went to such places very seldom, having never inhabited the world of dissipation. Finding the allusion in bad taste, especially in the presence of Odette, who might receive a poor impression of him from it, he assumed an icy manner. But when he learned that the lady standing near him was Mme. Cottard, he thought that such a young husband would not have tried to allude to amusements of that sort in front of his wife; and he ceased to give the doctor’s knowing look the meaning he had feared. The painter immediately invited Swann to come to his studio with Odette; Swann thought he was nice. “Perhaps he’ll favor you more than he has me,” said Mme. Verdurin in a tone of mock resentment, “perhaps he’ll show you Cottard’s portrait” (she had commissioned it from the painter). “Make sure, ‘Monsieur’ Biche,” she reminded the painter, whom it was a sacred joke to address as Monsieur, “to capture that nice look in his eye, that subtle, amusing little way he has of glancing at you. As you know, what I want most of all is his smile; what I asked you for was a portrait of his smile.” And since the phrase seemed to her noteworthy, she repeated it very loudly to make sure a number of guests heard it, and even, using some vague pretext, summoned a few of them over to her first. Swann asked to be introduced to everyone, even to an old friend of the Verdurins, Saniette, whose shyness, simplicity, and good nature had lost him all the esteem he had won by his skill as an archivist, his substantial fortune, and the distinguished family he came from. When he talked, there was a sort of mushy sound to his pronunciation that was charming because one sensed that it betrayed not so much an impediment in his speech as a quality of his soul, a sort of vestige of early childhood innocence that he had never lost. Each consonant he could not pronounce appeared to be another instance of a hardness of which he was incapable. In asking to be introduced to M. Saniette, Swann appeared to Mme. Verdurin to be reversing roles (to the degree that in response, she said, insisting on the difference: “Monsieur Swann, would you have the goodness to allow me to introduce to you our friend Saniette”), but aroused in Saniette a warm feeling of congeniality which the Verdurins, however, never revealed to Swann, for Saniette irritated them a little, and they were not anxious to make friends for him. But, on the other hand, Swann touched them infinitely by believing he ought to ask immediately to be introduced to the pianist’s aunt. She was in a black dress, as always, because she thought one always looked nice in black and that it was most distinguished, and her face was extremely red, as it always was after she had just eaten. She bowed to Swann with respect, but straightened with majesty. Because she had no education and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar, she deliberately pronounced things in a garbled way, thinking that if she made a blunder it would be fogged over by such indefiniteness that no one would be able to make it out with any certainty, so that her conversation was reduced to an indistinct hawking, from which emerged now and then the few vocables of which she felt confident. Swann thought he could poke a little fun at her when he was talking to M. Verdurin, but the latter was offended.