Swann's Way

by Proust, Marcel

  From that evening on, Swann understood that the feeling Odette had had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realized now. And on the days when she happened to be kind and affectionate toward him again, if she showed him some thoughtful attention, he would note these apparent and deceptive signs of a slight movement back toward him, with the loving, skeptical solicitude, the desperate joy of those who, caring for a friend in the last days of an incurable illness, relate as precious facts: “Yesterday, he did his accounts himself, and he was the one who spotted a mistake in addition that we had made; he ate an egg and enjoyed it—if he digests it easily we’ll try a cutlet tomorrow,” although they know these facts are meaningless on the eve of an unavoidable death. No doubt Swann was sure that if he had now been living far away from Odette, she would in the end have become unimportant to him, so that he would have been glad if she had left Paris forever; he would have had the courage to stay there; but he did not have the courage to leave.

  He had often thought of it. Now that he had resumed his study of Vermeer, he needed to return at least for a few days to The Hague, Dresden, Brunswick. He was convinced that a Diana with Her Companions which had been bought by the Mauritshuis at the Goldschmidt sale as a Nicolas Maes, was in reality a Vermeer.108 And he wished he could study the painting on the spot, in order to support his conviction. But to leave Paris while Odette was there, or even when she was absent—for in new places where our sensations are not dulled by habit, we retemper, we revive an old pain—was for him so cruel a plan that he was able to think about it constantly only because he knew he was resolved never to execute it. But sometimes, while he was asleep, the intention of taking the trip would revive in him—without his remembering that it was impossible—and in his sleep he would take the trip. One day he dreamed he was leaving for a year; leaning out the door of the railway car toward a young man on the platform who was saying good-bye to him, weeping, Swann tried to convince him to leave with him. The train began to move, his anxiety woke him, he remembered that he was not leaving, that he would see Odette that evening, the next day, and almost every day after. Then, still shaken by his dream, he blessed the particular circumstances that had made him independent, because of which he could remain near Odette, and also succeed in getting her to allow him to see her now and then; and, recapitulating all these advantages—his position; his fortune, from which she was too often in need of assistance not to shrink from contemplating a definite break with him (having even, people said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry her); his friendship with M. de Charlus, which in truth had never helped him obtain much from Odette, but gave him the comfort of feeling that she heard flattering things about him from this mutual friend for whom she had such great esteem; and lastly even his intelligence, which he employed entirely in contriving a new intrigue every day that would make his presence, if not agreeable, at least necessary to Odette—he thought about what would have become of him if he had not had all this, he thought that if, like so many other men, he had been poor, humble, wretched, obliged to accept any sort of work, or tied to relatives, to a wife, he might have been forced to leave Odette, that that dream, the terror of which was still so close to him, might have been true, and he said to himself: “You don’t know it when you’re happy. You’re never as unhappy as you think.”109 But he calculated that this existence had already lasted for several years, that all he could hope for now was that it would last forever, that he would sacrifice his work, his pleasures, his friends, finally his whole life to the daily expectation of a meeting that could bring him no happiness, and he wondered if he was not deceiving himself, if the circumstances that had favored his love affair and kept it from ending had not been bad for the course of his life, if the desirable outcome would not in fact have been the one which, to his delight, had taken place only in a dream: for him to have gone away; he told himself that you don’t know it when you’re unhappy, that you are never as happy as you think.

  Sometimes he hoped she would die in an accident without suffering, she who was outside, in the streets, on the roads, from morning to night. And when she returned safe and sound, he marveled that the human body was so supple and so strong, that it continued to ward off, to outwit all the perils which surrounded it (and which Swann found innumerable now that his secret desire had computed them) and so allowed people to abandon themselves daily and almost with impunity to their work of mendacity, their pursuit of pleasure. And Swann felt very close in his heart to Mohammed II, whose portrait by Bellini he liked so much, who, realizing that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed her in order, as his Venetian biographer ingenuously says, to recover his independence of mind. Then he would be filled with indignation that he should be thinking thus only of himself, and the sufferings he had endured would seem to him to deserve no pity since he himself had placed so low a value on Odette’s life.

  Since he was unable to separate from her irrevocably, if he had at least been able to see her without any separations, his pain would in the end have abated and perhaps his love would have died. And if she did not want to leave Paris forever, he would have liked her never to leave Paris. At least since he knew that her only long absence was the yearly one in August and September, he had ample opportunity several months in advance to dissolve the bitter idea of it in all the Time to come which he carried within him in anticipation and which, composed of days identical with those of the present, flowed through his mind transparent and cold, sustaining his sadness, but without causing him too sharp a pain. But that interior future, that colorless free-flowing river, was suddenly assaulted by a single remark of Odette’s which entered Swann and, like a piece of ice, immobilized it, hardened its fluidity, made it freeze entirely; and Swann suddenly felt he was filled with an enormous infrangible mass that pressed on the inner walls of his being till it nearly burst: what Odette had said, observing him with a sly smiling glance, was: “Forcheville is going to be taking a lovely trip, at Pentecost. He’s going to Egypt,” and Swann had immediately understood that this meant: “I’m going to Egypt at Pentecost with Forcheville.” And in fact, if several days after, Swann said to her: “Look, about this trip you told me you would be taking with Forcheville,” she would answer thoughtlessly: “Yes, my dear boy, we’re leaving the nineteenth, we’ll send you a view of the Pyramids.” Then he would want to know if she was Forcheville’s mistress, would want to ask her directly. He knew that, superstitious as she was, there were certain perjuries she would not commit, and, too, the dread, which had restrained him up to this point, of irritating Odette by questioning her, of causing her to hate him, had vanished now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her.

  One day he received an anonymous letter telling him that Odette had been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it mentioned, among them Forcheville, M. de Bréauté, and the painter), and of women too, and that she frequented houses of ill repute. He was tormented by the thought that among his friends there was an individual capable of sending him this letter (because certain details revealed that the person who had written it had an intimate knowledge of Swann’s life). He wondered who it could be. But he had never had any feelings of suspicion about the unknown actions of other people, those which had no visible connection with what they said. And when he tried to find out whether it was beneath the apparent character of M. de Charlus, or M. des Laumes, or M. d’Orsan, that he ought to situate the unknown region in which this ignoble act must have been conceived, since none of these men had ever spoken in praise of anonymous letters in his presence and since everything they had said to him implied that they condemned them, he saw no reason for connecting this infamy with the character of one rather than another. That of M. de Charlus was a little deranged but basically good and affectionate; that of M. des Laumes, a little hard, but sound and straightforward. As for M. d’Orsan, Swann had never met anyone who in even the most dismal circumstances would approach him with a more heartfelt remark, a more di
screet or appropriate gesture. So much so that he could not understand the rather indelicate role people ascribed to M. d’Orsan in the love affair he was having with a rich woman, and that each time Swann thought of him, he was obliged to thrust to one side that bad reputation which was so irreconcilable with the many clear proofs of his discretion. For a moment Swann felt his mind was darkening and he thought about something else in order to recover a little light. Then he had the courage to return to these reflections. But now, after being unable to suspect anyone, he had to suspect everyone. True, M. de Charlus was fond of him, had a good heart. But he was a neurotic, tomorrow he might weep at the news that Swann was ill, and today, out of jealousy, out of anger, acting under the influence of some sudden idea, he had wanted to hurt him. Really, that kind of man was the worst of all. Of course, the Prince des Laumes was not nearly as fond of Swann as M. de Charlus. But for that very reason he did not have the same susceptibilities with regard to him; and then although his was undoubtedly a cold nature, he was as incapable of base actions as of great ones. Swann regretted that in his life he had not formed attachments exclusively to such people. Then he mused that what prevents men from doing harm to their fellowmen is goodness of heart, that really he could answer only for men whose natures were analogous to his own, as was, so far as the heart was concerned, that of M. de Charlus. The mere thought of causing such pain to Swann would have revolted him. But with an insensitive man, of another order of humanity, as was the Prince des Laumes, how could one foresee the actions to which he might be led by motives that were so different in essence? To have a kind heart is everything, and M. de Charlus had one. M. d’Orsan was not lacking in heart either and his cordial but not very close relationship with Swann, arising from the pleasure which, since they thought the same way about everything, they found in talking together, was more secure than the excitable affection of M. de Charlus, capable of committing acts of passion, good or bad. If there was anyone by whom Swann had always felt himself understood and liked in a discriminating way, it was by M. d’Orsan. Yes, but what about this dishonorable life he was leading? Swann regretted never having taken it into account properly, having often confessed as a joke that he had never experienced such keen feelings of sympathy and respect as in the company of a scoundrel. It is not for nothing, he said to himself now, that when men judge another man, it is by his actions. They alone mean something, and not what we say, or what we think. Charlus and des Laumes may have their faults, but they are still honest men. Orsan perhaps has none, but he is not an honest man. He may have acted badly yet again. Then Swann suspected Rémi, who, it was true, could merely have inspired the letter, but for a moment he felt he was on the right track. In the first place Lorédan had reasons for resenting Odette. And then how can we help but imagine that our servants, living in a situation inferior to ours, adding to our fortunes and our faults imaginary wealth and vices for which they envy and despise us, will find themselves inevitably led to act in a way different from people of our own class? He also suspected my grandfather. Each time Swann had asked a favor of him, had he not always refused? And then with his bourgeois ideas he might have thought he was acting for Swann’s own good. Swann also suspected Bergotte, the painter, the Verdurins, admired once more in passing the wisdom of society people in not wanting to mix in those artistic circles in which such things are possible, perhaps even openly admitted as good pranks; but he recalled certain honest traits in those bohemians, and contrasted them with the life of expediency, almost of fraudulence, into which the lack of money, the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of their pleasures so often drive members of the aristocracy. In short, this anonymous letter proved that he knew an individual capable of villainy, but he could see no more reason why that villainy should be hidden in the bedrock—unexplored by any other person—of the character of an affectionate man rather than a cold one, an artist rather than a bourgeois, a great lord rather than a valet. What criterion should one adopt for judging men? Really there was not a single person among those he knew who might not be capable of infamy. Was it necessary to stop seeing all of them? His mind clouded over; he passed his hands across his forehead two or three times, wiped the lenses of his lorgnon with his handkerchief, and thinking that after all men as good as himself associated with M. de Charlus, the Prince des Laumes, and the others, he said to himself that this meant, if not that they were incapable of infamy, at least that it is a necessity of life to which each of us submits, to associate with people who are perhaps not incapable of it. And he continued to shake hands with all of those friends whom he had suspected, with the one purely formal reservation that they had perhaps tried to drive him to despair. As for the actual substance of the letter, he did not worry about it, because not one of the accusations formulated against Odette had a shadow of likelihood. Swann, like many people, had a lazy mind and lacked the faculty of invention. He knew very well as a general truth that people’s lives are full of contrasts, but for each person in particular he imagined the whole part of his life that he did not know as being identical to the part that he knew. He imagined what he was not told with the help of what he was told. During the times when Odette was with him, if they were talking about some indelicate act committed or some indelicate feeling experienced by someone else, she would stigmatize them by virtue of the same principles that Swann had always heard professed by his parents and to which he had remained faithful; and then she would arrange her flowers, she would drink a cup of tea, she would worry about Swann’s work. And so Swann extended these habits to the rest of Odette’s life, he repeated these gestures when he wanted to picture to himself the times when she was away from him. If anyone had portrayed her to him as she was, or rather as she had been with him for so long, but in the company of another man, he would have suffered, because that image would have appeared to him quite likely. But to think that she went to procuresses, took part in orgies with other women, that she led the dissolute life of the most abject of creatures—what an insane aberration, for the realization of which, God be thanked, the imagined chrysanthemums, the successive teas, the virtuous indignation left no room! Only from time to time, he would insinuate to Odette that, out of spite, someone had been reporting to him about everything she did; and, making use, in connection with this, of an insignificant but true detail, which he had learned by chance, as if it were the sole fragment among many others that he had allowed to slip out despite himself, of a complete reconstruction of Odette’s life which he kept hidden inside himself, he would lead her to suppose that he was well informed about things that in reality he did not know or even suspect, for if quite often he adjured Odette not to alter the truth, it was only, whether he realized it or not, so that she would tell him everything she did. Undoubtedly, as he said to Odette, he loved sincerity, but he loved it as a procuress who could keep him in touch with his mistress’s life. And so his love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had not made him a better person. The truth he cherished was the truth Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to obtain that truth, was not afraid to resort to falsehood, that very same falsehood which he constantly portrayed to Odette as leading every human creature down to utter degradation. And so he lied as much as Odette because, while unhappier than she, he was no less selfish. And she, hearing Swann tell her the things she had done, would gaze at him with a look of mistrust, and, just to be on the safe side, of vexation, so as not to seem to be humiliating herself and blushing at her actions.

  One day, during the longest period of calm he had yet been able to go through without suffering renewed attacks of jealousy, he had agreed to go to the theater that evening with the Princesse des Laumes. Having opened the newspaper, in order to find out what was being played, the sight of the title, Les Filles de Marbre by Théodore Barrière,110 struck him such a painful blow that he recoiled and turned his head away. Illuminated as though by footlights, in the new spot where it had appeared, the word marble, which he had lost the ability to distinguish because he was
so used to seeing it before his eyes, had suddenly become visible again and had immediately reminded him of the story Odette had told him once long ago, about a visit she had made to the Salon du Palais de l’Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, where the latter had said to her: “Watch yourself, now! I know how to make you melt. You’re not made of marble, you know.” Odette had sworn to him it was only a joke, and he had attached no importance to it. But he had had more confidence in her at that time than he did now. And in fact the anonymous letter mentioned love affairs of that kind. Without daring to lift his eyes to the newspaper again, he unfolded it, turned a page in order not to see the words Les Filles de Marbre, and mechanically began reading news from the provinces. There had been a storm on the Channel, damage was reported at Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval. Immediately he recoiled again.