“What do you think of my guest?”
And he, realizing for the first time that Forcheville, whom he had known for a long time, might be attractive to a woman and was a rather handsome man, had answered: “Disgusting!” Of course, it did not occur to him to be jealous over Odette, but he did not feel as happy as usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell the story of Blanche de Castille’s mother, who “had been with Henry Plantagenet52 for years before she married him,” tried to prompt Swann to ask him what happened next by saying to him: “Isn’t that so, Monsieur Swann?” in the martial tone one adopts to make oneself understood by a peasant or instill courage in a soldier, Swann spoiled Brichot’s effect, to the fury of their hostess, by answering that they must please excuse him for being so uninterested in Blanche de Castille, but he had something to ask the painter. That afternoon, in fact, the painter had gone to see the show of a friend of Mme. Verdurin’s, an artist who had died recently, and Swann wanted to find out from him (for he respected his taste) if there really was even more in these last works than the virtuosity that was already so astounding in the earlier ones.
“In that respect it was extraordinary, but it didn’t seem to me to be an art that was, as they say, all that ‘elevated,’” said Swann, smiling.
“Elevated . . . to the height of an institution,” interrupted Cottard, lifting his arms with mock gravity.
The whole table burst out laughing.
“Didn’t I tell you? He won’t allow anyone to be serious,” said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. “Just when you least expect it, he comes out with a pun.”
But she noticed that Swann alone had not brightened up. What was more, he was not very pleased that Cottard had made fun of him in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of answering Swann in an interesting way, which he probably would have done if he had been alone with him, preferred to win the admiration of the guests by contributing a little set piece on the skill of the deceased master.
“I went up to one of them,” he said, “just to see how it was done. I stuck my nose into it. Well! Absolute truth! Impossible to say whether it was done with glue, or rubies, or soap, or sunshine, or leaven, or bronze, or caca!”
“And one makes twelve,” cried the doctor, too late, so that no one understood his interruption.
“The thing looked as though it were made with nothing at all,” the painter went on; “absolutely no way of discovering the trick, any more than in The Night Watch or The Regents, and the brushwork is even stronger than Rembrandt or Hals.53 It’s got everything in it—no, I swear.”
And just as singers who have reached the highest note they can sing continue in falsetto, softly, he confined himself to murmuring, and smiling, as if in fact the painting had been absurdly beautiful:
“It smells good, it goes to your head, it takes your breath away, it tickles you, and you haven’t a hope of knowing what it’s made with, it’s some kind of sorcery, it’s a trick, it’s a miracle” (bursting fully into laughter): “it’s dishonest!” And stopping, gravely lifting his head, adopting a deep bass note which he tried to make harmonious, he added: “and it’s so sincere!”
Except at the moment when he had said “stronger than The Night Watch,” a blasphemy that had provoked a protest from Mme. Verdurin, who considered The Night Watch the greatest masterpiece in the world along with the Ninth and the Winged Victory,54 and at “made with caca,” which had caused Forcheville to cast a circular glance at the table to see if the word was acceptable and had then brought to his mouth a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the guests except for Swann had fastened their eyes on the painter with gazes hypnotized by admiration.
“How he amuses me when he gets carried away like that,” cried Mme. Verdurin when he was finished, delighted that the table was so interesting on the very day when M. de Forcheville had come for the first time. “And what about you, what’s the matter with you, letting your mouth hang open that way like some great dog?” she said to her husband. “You know very well how he can talk; it’s as if my husband had never heard you before. If only you could have seen the way he looked while you were talking, he was lapping you up. And tomorrow he’ll repeat everything you said without losing a word.”
“But it’s no joke,” said the painter, enchanted with his success, “you seem to think I’m giving you a sales talk, you think it’s all a sham; I’ll take you there to see for yourself, then you’ll decide whether I’m exaggerating. I’ll bet your boots you’ll come back even more enthusiastic than I was!”
“But we don’t think you’re exaggerating, we just want you to eat your dinner, and we want my husband to eat too; give Monsieur some more sole normande, you can see that his is cold. We’re not in such a hurry as all that, you’re serving as if the house were on fire, now wait a little before you bring in the salad.”
Mme. Cottard, who was modest and did not talk much, did not lack self-assurance when a happy inspiration caused her to hit upon a suitable remark. She felt that it would have some success, this gave her confidence, and what she did with it was not so much in order to shine as to be useful to her husband’s career. And so she did not allow the word salad to escape after it was spoken by Mme. Verdurin.
“That wouldn’t be Japanese salad, would it?” she said softly, turning to Odette.
And delighted and abashed by the appropriateness and boldness of making this allusion, so discreet, yet so clear, to the new and astonishing play by Dumas,55 she burst into charming, ingenuous laughter, not very noisy, but so irresistible that for a few moments she could not control it. “Who is that lady? She’s a lively one,” said Forcheville.
“No, it’s not, but we’ll have some for you if you’ll all come to dine with us on Friday.”
“I’m going to seem very provincial to you, monsieur,” said Mme. Cottard to Swann, “but I haven’t yet seen the famous Francillon everyone’s talking about. The doctor has already gone (I even recall that he told me he had the very great pleasure of spending the evening with you) and I confess that I didn’t find it reasonable that he should pay for seats to go again with me. Obviously, at the Théâtre-Français, one never regrets one’s evening, it’s always well acted, but as we have very nice friends” (Mme. Cottard rarely uttered a proper name and simply referred to “some friends of ours” or “one of my friends,” because it was more “distinguished,” speaking in an artificial tone and with the air of importance of a person who names only those she chooses to) “who often have a box and are kind enough to take us to all the new productions that are worth going to, I’m certain to see Francillon sooner or later, and then I can form an opinion for myself. Yet I must confess I find I’m a bit embarrassed, for in every drawing room I visit, naturally the only thing they’re talking about is that wretched Japanese salad. One even begins to be a little tired of it,” she added, seeing that Swann did not seem as interested as she would have thought in so burning a topic. “I must admit, though, that it sometimes provides an excuse for some rather amusing notions. For instance, I have a friend who’s most original, though she’s a very pretty woman, very popular, very sought after, who claims she got her cook to make that Japanese salad at her house, putting in everything that Alexandre Dumas fils mentions in the play. She invited some friends to come and eat it. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of the elect. But she told us about it at her next ‘at-home’; apparently it was quite horrible, she made us laugh till we cried. But you know, it’s all in the way you tell it,” she said, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
And imagining that it was perhaps because he did not like Francillon: “Anyway, I think I’ll be disappointed. I don’t think it’s as good as Serge Panine, which Mme. de Crécy worships so. In that one, at least, there are deep things that make you think; but to give a recipe for salad on the stage of the Théâtre-Français! Whereas Serge Panine! But then, it’s like everything that comes from Georges Ohnet’s pen, it’s always so well written. I don’t know if you know Le Maître de Forges, which I like
even better than Serge Panine.”
“Forgive me,” Swann said to her with irony, “but I confess that my lack of admiration is almost equally divided between the two masterpieces.”
“Really, what have you got against them? Are you sure you aren’t prejudiced? Do you think perhaps they’re a little dreary? Anyway, as I always say, one should never argue about novels or plays. Everyone has his own way of looking at things and what you find detestable may be the very thing I like best.”
She was interrupted by Forcheville addressing Swann. In fact, while Mme. Cottard was talking about Francillon, Forcheville had told Mme. Verdurin how much he admired what he called the painter’s little “speech.”56
“The gentleman has a facility for speaking, a memory,” he had said to Mme. Verdurin when the painter was finished, “such as I have rarely encountered! By my bootlaces! I’d love to have such a gift. He would make an excellent preacher. One may say that with him and M. Bréchot, you have two real characters, one as good as the other, though for gift of the gab I’m not even sure this one would not in fact ace the professor. It comes out more naturally, it’s less studied. Although now and then he does use words that are a bit on the vulgar side, but that’s the thing to do nowadays. It’s not often that I’ve seen anyone hold the floor so cleverly—‘hold the spittoon,’ as we used to say in the regiment, and come to think of it, it was in the regiment that I had a friend the gentleman rather reminded me of. Apropos of anything, I don’t know what, this glass, for instance, he could rattle on for hours; no, not about this glass, that’s a silly thing to say; but about the Battle of Waterloo, anything you like, and he would throw in things you never would have thought of. Why, Swann was in the same regiment; he must have known him.”
“Do you see M. Swann often?” asked Mme. Verdurin.
“Oh no,” answered M. de Forcheville, and since in order to approach Odette more easily he wanted to be pleasant to Swann, he attempted to seize this opportunity of flattering him by talking about his distinguished friends, but talking about them as a man of the world, in the tone of an affectionate critic and not as though he were congratulating him as on an unhoped-for success: “Isn’t it so, Swann? I never see you. Anyway, how could I ever see him? The man is always hanging about with the La Trémoïlles,57 with the Laumes, people like that! . . .” An imputation especially false, since, for a year now, Swann had hardly gone anywhere but to the Verdurins’. But the mere name of a person they did not know was greeted by a reproving silence on their part. M. Verdurin, afraid of the painful impression that these names of “bores,” especially when tactlessly hurled thus in the faces of all the faithful, must have produced on his wife, secretly cast at her a glance full of worried solicitude. He saw then that in her resolution not to take action, not to have been affected by the news that had just been announced to her, not merely to remain dumb but to have been deaf as well, the way we pretend to be deaf when a friend who has offended us tries to slip into the conversation an excuse which we would seem to accept if we listened to it without protesting, or when someone utters in our presence the forbidden name of an ingrate, Mme. Verdurin, so that her silence would not seem to be a form of consent, but rather the ignorant silence of an inanimate object, had suddenly divested her face of all life, all mobility; her prominent forehead was now merely a lovely study in the round, which the name of those La Trémoïlles at whose house Swann was always hanging about had not been able to penetrate; her slightly wrinkled nose revealed an indentation that seemed copied from life. Her half-open mouth seemed about to speak. She was now merely a lost wax,58 a plaster mask, a model for a monument, a bust for the Palais de l’Industrie59 in front of which the public would certainly stop to admire how the sculptor, by expressing the indefeasible dignity of the Verdurins as opposed to that of the La Trémoïlles and the Laumes, whose equals they naturally were, as they were the equals of all the bores on earth, had managed to give an almost papal majesty to the whiteness and rigidity of the stone. But at last the marble came to life and insinuated that one could not be squeamish if one wanted to go to the homes of these people, because the wife was always drunk and the husband so ignorant that he said “collidor” instead of “corridor.”
“You’d have to pay me handsomely before I’d let that sort enter my house,” concluded Mme. Verdurin, looking at Swann with an imperious air.
She probably did not hope that he would be submissive enough to imitate the saintly simplicity of the pianist’s aunt, who had just exclaimed: “You see that? What astonishes me is that there’s still people who’ll speak to them! I think I would be too afraid: once struck, out of luck! How can there still be folks low enough to go running after them?” But he might at least have answered like Forcheville: “Lord, she’s a duchess; some people are still impressed by that,” which had at least allowed Mme. Verdurin to reply: “Much good may it do them!” Instead of that, Swann merely laughed with an air that signified that he could not even take such extravagant nonsense seriously. M. Verdurin, continuing to cast furtive glances at his wife, saw with sadness and understood all too well that she was feeling the rage of a grand inquisitor who cannot manage to extirpate the heresy, and in order to try to lead Swann to a recantation, since the courage of one’s convictions always seem to be a calculation and an act of cowardice in the eyes of those who do not share them, M. Verdurin challenged him:
“Now tell us frankly what you think of them, we won’t repeat it to them.”
To which Swann answered:
“Why, it’s not in the least out of fear of the duchess (if you’re talking about the La Trémoïlles). I assure you everyone likes to visit her. I’m not saying she’s ‘profound’” (he pronounced profound as if it were a ridiculous word, because his language still bore the trace of habits of mind which his recent rejuvenation, marked by a love of music, had temporarily made him lose, so that at times he now expressed his opinions warmly) “but I’m quite sincere when I say that she’s intelligent and her husband is truly well read. They’re charming people.”
Whereupon Mme. Verdurin, feeling that because of this one infidel she would be prevented from creating a complete moral unanimity among the little clan, was unable to stop herself, in her rage against this stubborn man who did not see how much his words pained her, from crying out to him from the bottom of her heart:
“Believe it if you like, but at least don’t say it to us.”
“It all depends on what you call intelligence,” said Forcheville, who felt it was his turn to shine. “Now, Swann, what do you mean by intelligence?”
“There you are!” exclaimed Odette. “That’s the sort of big subject I’m always asking him to talk to me about, but he never will.”
“But I do . . .” protested Swann.
“What tripe!” said Odette.
“Tripe with onions?” asked the doctor.
“As you see it,” Forcheville went on, “does intelligence mean a gift of the gab, does it have to do with how people manage to worm their way in?”
“Finish up so they can take your plate,” said Mme. Verdurin sourly, turning to Saniette, who, absorbed in thought, had stopped eating. And perhaps a little ashamed of the tone she had taken: “Never mind, take your time, I only said it for the sake of the others, because it holds up the next course.”
“There is,” said Brichot, rapping out the syllables, “a very curious definition of intelligence in that gentle anarchist, Fénelon . . .”60
“Listen!” said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville and the doctor. “He’s going to give us Fénelon’s definition of intelligence. Now that’s interesting. It’s not often you have a chance of hearing that.”
But Brichot was waiting for Swann to give his own definition. Swann did not answer, and by evading them spoiled the brilliant contest that Mme. Verdurin was so delighted to be able to offer Forcheville.
“Of course. He’s just like that with me all the time,” said Odette sulkily. “I’m glad to see I’m not the only one he doesn’t
think is up to his level.”
“Those de la Trémouailles,61 who are so little to be recommended, as Mme. Verdurin has shown us,” asked Brichot with powerfully clear articulation, “are they descended from the folk whom Mme. de Sévigné, that good snob, admitted she was pleased to know because it was good for her peasants? Of course, the Marquise had another reason, and one that had to be more important to her, for as a woman of letters through and through, she put copy before all else. Now in the journal she used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de la Trémouaille, kept well informed by her great connections, who supplied the foreign politics.”
“Why, no, I don’t think it’s the same family,” ventured Mme. Verdurin.
Saniette, who, after hurriedly giving the butler his plate, which was still full, had plunged back into a meditative silence, emerged from it at last to tell them with a smile the story of a dinner he had attended with the Duc de La Trémoïlle at which it turned out that the Duc did not know George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann, who was fond of Saniette, thought he ought to supply him with a few particulars about the Duc’s culture proving that such ignorance on the latter’s part was materially impossible; but suddenly he stopped, realizing that Saniette did not need these proofs and knew the story was untrue for the simple reason that he had just invented it a moment ago. That excellent man suffered from being thought such a bore by the Verdurins; and, aware that he had been even duller than usual at this dinner, he had not wanted to let it end before he succeeded in amusing them. He capitulated so quickly, looked so unhappy at seeing that the effect on which he had counted had failed, and answered Swann in such a pitiful tone so that Swann would not persist in a refutation that was henceforth pointless, “All right, all right; and if I’m mistaken it’s not a crime, I hope,” that Swann would have liked to be able to say the story was true and delightful. The doctor, who had been listening to them, thought this was the moment to say: Se non è vero,62 but he was not quite sure of the words and was afraid of getting muddled.
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