Swann's Way

by Proust, Marcel

  After dinner, Forcheville went up to the doctor.

  “She must not have been too bad at one time, Mme. Verdurin, and she’s a woman you can talk to; for me that’s everything. Of course she’s beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. But Mme. de Crécy—now there’s a little woman who seems intelligent—oh yes, by God; you can see at a glance that she keeps her eyes peeled! We’re talking about Mme. de Crécy,” he said to M. Verdurin, who was approaching, his pipe in his mouth. “I would imagine that as a specimen of the female figure . . .”

  “I’d rather have it in my bed than a slap with a wet fish,” Cottard rushed to say, having waited in vain for some moments for Forcheville to pause for breath so that he could insert that old joke, which he feared would not be appropriate again if the conversation changed course, and which he delivered with that excess of spontaneity and assurance which attempts to mask the coldness and anxiety inseparable from a recitation. Forcheville was familiar with the joke, he understood it and was amused by it. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing with his mirth, because he had recently discovered a signal for expressing it different from the one used by his wife but equally simple and clear. Scarcely had he begun moving his head and shoulders in the manner of a person shaking with laughter than he would immediately begin coughing as if, in laughing too hard, he had swallowed smoke from his pipe. And still keeping the pipe in one corner of his mouth, he would prolong indefinitely this pantomime of suffocation and hilarity. Thus he and Mme. Verdurin, who, across the room from him, listening to the painter tell her a story, was closing her eyes before dropping her face into her hands, looked like two theater masks each representing merriment in its own way.

  M. Verdurin had in fact been wise not to withdraw his pipe from his mouth, for Cottard, who needed to leave the room for a moment, made a joke under his breath that he had learned recently and that he repeated each time he had to go to the same place: “I must absent myself for a moment in aid of the Duc d’Aumale,”63 so that M. Verdurin’s fit began again.

  “Take your pipe out of your mouth. Can’t you see you’re going to choke to death trying not to laugh?” Mme. Verdurin said to him as she came around offering the liqueurs.

  “How charming your husband is, he has wit enough for four,” declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. “Thank you, madame. An old soldier like me never refuses a drop.”

  “M. de Forcheville thinks Odette is charming,” said M. Verdurin to his wife.

  “Why, actually she would like to come to lunch with you some time. We’re going to contrive to make it happen, but Swann mustn’t hear of it. You know, he puts rather a damper on things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t join us for dinner, of course, we hope to have you often. With summer coming, we’ll be dining outdoors quite frequently. That won’t bore you, will it—little dinners in the Bois? Good, good, it’ll be very nice. You! Aren’t you going to go do your job now?” she cried out to the little pianist, in order to display, in front of a newcomer as important as Forcheville, both her wit and her tyrannical power over the faithful.

  “M. de Forcheville was saying bad things to me about you,” said Mme. Cottard to her husband when he returned to the drawing room.

  And he, pursuing the idea of Forcheville’s noble lineage, which had preoccupied him from the beginning of dinner, said to him:

  “I’m treating a baroness just now, Baronne Putbus;64 the Putbuses took part in the Crusades, didn’t they? They have a lake in Pomerania that’s so big it must be ten times the size of the place de la Concorde. I’m treating her for rheumatoid arthritis; she’s a charming woman. In fact she knows Mme. Verdurin, I believe.”

  Which allowed Forcheville, finding himself, a moment later, alone with Mme. Cottard, to complete the favorable judgment that he had passed on her husband:

  “And he’s so interesting, you can tell he’s acquainted with more than a few people. Lord, they know such a lot, these doctors!”

  “I’m going to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann,” said the pianist.

  “My God! I trust we don’t have the ‘sonata-snake’65 in our midst?” asked M. de Forcheville to create an effect.

  But Dr. Cottard, who had never heard that pun, did not understand it and thought M. de Forcheville was making a mistake. He went up to them briskly to correct it:

  “No, no, one doesn’t say serpent à sonates, it’s serpent à sonnettes, ‘rattlesnake,’ ” he said in a tone that was zealous, impatient, and triumphant.

  Forcheville explained the pun to him. The doctor blushed.

  “Admit that it’s funny, Doctor!”

  “Oh, I’ve known it for too long,” answered Cottard.

  But they fell silent; under the agitation of the violin tremolos which protected it with their quivering extended two octaves above—and as in a mountainous countryside, behind the apparent and vertiginous immobility of a waterfall one sees, two hundred feet down, the minuscule form of a woman walking—the little phrase had just appeared, distant, graceful, protected by the long unfurling of its transparent, ceaseless curtain of sound. And Swann, in his heart, appealed to it as to a confidant of his love, as to a friend of Odette’s who certainly should tell her to pay no attention to that Forcheville.

  “Ah, you’re late!” said Mme. Verdurin to a regular whom she had invited only “for coffee.” “Brichot was incomparable—so eloquent! But he’s gone. Isn’t that right, Monsieur Swann? I believe it was the first time you and he had met,” she said in order to point out to him that she was the one to whom he owed the introduction. “Wasn’t our Brichot delicious?”

  Swann bowed politely.

  “No? He didn’t interest you?” Mme. Verdurin asked him curtly.

  “Why, of course, madame, very much, I was delighted. He is perhaps a little peremptory and a little jovial for my taste. I would like to see some hesitation, some gentleness now and then, but one senses that he knows so many things and he seems like an all-around decent man.”

  Everyone went home very late. Cottard’s first words to his wife were:

  “I’ve rarely seen Mme. Verdurin as spirited as she was this evening.”

  “What exactly is this Mme. Verdurin of yours, rather a mixed bag of goods?” said Forcheville to the painter, whom he had invited to ride with him.

  Odette watched with regret as he went off; she did not dare decline to ride with Swann, but was in a bad mood in the carriage, and when he asked her if he ought to come in, she said, “Of course,” shrugging her shoulders impatiently. When all the guests had gone, Mme. Verdurin said to her husband:

  “Did you notice how Swann laughed foolishly when we were talking about Mme. La Trémoïlle?”

  She had noticed that several times, when saying this name, Swann and Forcheville had omitted the particle. Having no doubt that they did this to show they were not intimidated by titles, she wanted to imitate their pride, but had not fully understood by which grammatical form it was expressed. And so her incorrect way of speaking won out over her republican intransigence, and she still said “the de la Trémoïlles” or rather, using an abbreviation current in the words of the café songs and caricature captions, which swallowed the de, “the d’La Trémoïlles,” but she made up for it by saying: “Madame La Trémoïlle,” “The Duchesse, as Swann calls her,” she added ironically with a smile which proved she was only quoting and did not accept responsibility for so naive and ridiculous a denomination.

  “I must tell you I found him extremely stupid.”

  And M. Verdurin answered her:

  “He’s not direct, he’s cunning, always betwixt and between. He’s a fellow who’s always wanting to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. How different from Forcheville! There’s a man who at least tells you fair and square what he’s thinking. You either agree with him or you don’t. He’s not like the other, neither fish nor fowl. Anyway, Odette really seems to prefer Forcheville, and I think she’s right. And then, also, since Swann wants to play the society man with us, defender of duch
esses, at least the other has his own title; he’s still the Comte de Forcheville,” he added delicately, as if, well informed about the history of that dignity, he was scrupulously weighing its particular value.

  “I must tell you,” said Mme. Verdurin, “that he felt called upon to direct some venomous and quite ridiculous insinuations against Brichot. Naturally, since he saw that Brichot was well liked in this house, it was a way of attacking us, of disparaging our dinner party. What I suspect is he’s the sort of good friend who says nasty things about you on his way out.”

  “But that’s what I told you,” answered M. Verdurin. “He’s a typical failure, the little fellow envious of anything that’s at all big.”

  In reality there was not one of the faithful who was not more malicious than Swann; but they all took care to season their slander with familiar jokes, with little hints of anxiety and cordiality; whereas the slightest reserve that Swann allowed himself, omitting such conventional formulas as, “Now I don’t mean to say anything bad,” to which he did not deign to stoop, seemed perfidious. There are authors of true originality in whom the least boldness offends because they have not first flattered the tastes of the public and have not served it the commonplaces which it is used to; it was in the same way that Swann roused M. Verdurin’s indignation. In Swann’s case as in theirs, it was the novelty of his language that convinced one of the darkness of his intentions.

  Swann was still unaware of the disgrace that threatened him at the Verdurins’ and continued to regard all their absurdities in a favorable light, with the eyes of his love.

  Most of the time, at least, he met Odette only in the evening; but during the day, though he was afraid of causing her to become tired of him by going to her house, he wanted at least not to cease to occupy her thoughts and was always looking for an opportunity of involving himself in them, but in a way that would be pleasant for her. If, in the window of a florist or a jeweler, the sight of a shrub or a jewel charmed him, instantly he would think of sending it to Odette, imagining that the pleasure it had given him would be felt by her too, increasing her affection for him, and he would immediately have it delivered to the rue La Pérouse so as not to delay the moment when, because she was receiving something from him, he would feel he was in some way close to her. He especially wanted her to receive it before she went out so that the gratitude she felt would win him a more tender welcome when she saw him at the Verdurins’, or even—who knows?—if the shopkeeper was prompt enough, perhaps a letter which she would send him before dinner, or her arrival in person at his house, in a supplementary visit to thank him. Just as he had once tested Odette’s nature for reactions of resentment, so now he sought by reactions of gratitude to extract from her intimate particles of feeling that she had not yet revealed to him.

  Often, she had money troubles and, hard-pressed by a debt, would ask him for help. He was happy about that, as about everything that could give Odette a strong impression of the love he had for her, or simply a strong impression of his influence, of how useful he could be to her. No doubt if someone had said to him in the beginning: “It’s your position that attracts her,” and now: “It’s because of your wealth that she loves you,” he would not have believed it, and would also not have minded very much that people imagined she was attached to him—that people felt they were joined together—by something as powerful as snobbishness or money. But, even if he had thought it was true, perhaps he would not have been hurt by discovering within Odette’s love for him that mainstay more durable than his charm or the good qualities she might find in him: namely, self-interest, a self-interest that would prevent the day ever coming when she would be tempted to stop seeing him. For the moment, by overwhelming her with presents, by doing her favors, he could rely upon advantages extrinsic to his person, his intelligence, to take over from him the exhausting responsibility of pleasing her by himself. And as for the pleasure of being in love, of living by love alone, the reality of which he doubted at times, it was increased in value for him, as dilettante of immaterial sensations, by the price he was paying her for it—as we observe that people who are uncertain whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are delightful convince themselves of it and also of the exceptional quality and disinterest of their own taste, by paying a hundred francs a day for a hotel room that allows them to experience that sight and that sound.

  One day when reflections of this kind were leading him back once again to the memory of the time when people had described Odette to him as a kept woman, and when he was amusing himself yet again by contrasting that strange personification, the kept woman—an iridescent amalgam of unfamiliar and diabolical elements, set, like some apparition by Gustave Moreau,66 among venomous flowers interwoven with precious jewels—with the Odette on whose face he had seen the same feelings of pity for a sufferer, revolt against an injustice, gratitude for a favor, that he had seen in earlier days on his own mother’s face and on the faces of his friends, the Odette whose conversation had so often turned on the things he knew best himself, on his collections, his room, his old servant, the banker who looked after his securities, it happened that this last image of the banker reminded him that he would have to call on him soon to draw some money. In fact, if this month he was less liberal when helping Odette out of her material difficulties than he had been the month before when he had given her five thousand francs, and if he did not present her with a diamond rivière that she wanted, he would not reawaken her admiration for his generosity, her gratitude, which made him so happy, and he would even risk making her think that his love for her, as she saw its manifestations become less abundant, had diminished. Then, suddenly, he wondered if this was not precisely what was meant by “keeping” her (as if, in fact, this notion of keeping could be derived from elements not at all mysterious or perverse but belonging to the intimate substance of his daily life, like that thousand-franc bill, domestic and familiar, torn and reglued, which his valet, after having paid the month’s accounts and the quarter’s rent for him, had locked in the drawer of the old desk from which Swann had taken it out again to send it with four others to Odette) and if one could not apply to Odette, starting from when he had come to know her (because he did not for a moment suspect that she could ever have received money from anyone before him), those words which he had believed so irreconcilable with her—“kept woman.” He could not study this idea in greater depth, because an attack of that mental laziness which in him was congenital, intermittent, and providential, happened at that moment to extinguish all light in his intelligence, as abruptly as, later, when electric lighting had been installed everywhere, one could cut off the electricity in a house. His mind groped for a moment in the darkness, he took off his glasses, wiped the lenses, passed his hand over his eyes, and saw the light again only when he found himself in the presence of an entirely different idea, namely that he ought to try to send six or seven thousand francs to Odette next month instead of five, because of the surprise and pleasure it would give her.

  In the evening, when he did not stay at home waiting for the hour when he would meet Odette at the Verdurins’ or rather in one of the summer restaurants they favored in the Bois and especially at Saint-Cloud, he would go and dine in one of those elegant houses where he had once been a habitual guest at table. He did not want to lose touch with people who—one never could tell—might perhaps be useful to Odette one day and through whom, in the meantime, he often succeeded in pleasing her. Also, his long habit of society, of luxury, had given him, at the same time as a disdain for them, a need for them, so that by the time he had come to regard the most modest houses as exactly on a par with the most princely, his senses were so accustomed to the latter that he experienced some indisposition at finding himself in the former. He had the same esteem—identical to a degree they could not have believed—for a petit bourgeois family which asked him up to a dance on the fifth floor, Stairway D, left at the landing, as for the Princess of Parma, who gave the finest parties in Paris;
but he did not have the feeling of being actually at a ball while standing with the fathers in the bedroom of the mistress of the house and the sight of the washstands covered with towels, of the beds, transformed into cloakrooms, their coverlets piled with overcoats and hats, gave him the same stifling sensation that people today who are used to twenty years of electricity may experience at the smell of a lamp blackening or a night-light smoking. On the days when he dined in town, he would have the horses harnessed for seven-thirty; he would dress while thinking about Odette and so would not be alone, because the constant thought of Odette would give to the moments in which he was away from her the same particular charm as to those in which she was there. He would get into his carriage, but he would feel that this thought had leaped into it at the same time and settled on his knees like a beloved pet which one takes everywhere and which he would keep with him at the table, unbeknownst to the other guests. He would stroke it, warm himself at it, and, experiencing a sort of languor, yield to a light quivering that tensed his neck and his nose, and was new to him, all the while fastening the bunch of columbines in his buttonhole. Having felt unwell and sad for some time, especially from the time that Odette had introduced Forcheville to the Verdurins, Swann would have liked to go and rest a little in the country. But he would not have had the courage to leave Paris for a single day while Odette was there. The air was warm; these were the finest days of spring. And though he might cross a city of stone to immure himself in some town house, what was constantly before his eyes was a park that he owned near Combray, where, from four o’clock on, before reaching the asparagus patch, because of the wind that comes from the fields of Méséglise, one could savor as much coolness under an arbor as at the edge of the pond encircled by forget-me-nots and gladioli, and where, when he dined, it was at a table around which ran red currants and roses intertwined by his gardener.