 section 25 of Swan's Way this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dennis Sayers Swan's Way by Marcel Proust translated by C. K. Scott Moncrief section 25 Swan was extremely fond of the Princess Delome and the sight of her recalled to him Germant a property close to Cambrai and all that country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit so as not to be separated from Odette slipping into the manner half artistic half amorous with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess a manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment into the old social atmosphere and wishing to also express in words for his own satisfaction the longing that he felt for the country ah he exclaimed or rather intoned in such a way as to be audible at once to Madame de Saint-Hubert to whom he spoke and to Madame Delome for whom he was speaking behold our charming princess see she has come up on purpose from Germant to hear Saint Francis preach to the birds and has only just had time like a dear little titmouse to go and pick a few little hips and haws and put them in her hair there are even some drops of dew upon them still a little of the whore frost which must be making the duchess down their shiver it is very pretty indeed my dear princess what the princess came up on purpose from Germant but that's too wonderful I never knew I'm quite bewildered Madame Saint-Hubert protested with quaint simplicity being but little accustomed to Swan's way of speaking and then examining the princess's headdress why you're quite right it is copied from what shall I say not chestnuts no oh it's a delightful idea but how can the princess have known what was going to be on my program the musicians didn't tell me even Swan who was accustomed when he was with a woman whom he had kept up the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry to pay her delicate compliments which most of the people would not and need not understand did not condescend to explain to Madame de Saint-Hubert that he had been speaking metaphorically as for the princess she was in fits of laughter both because Swan's wit was highly appreciated by her set and because she would never hear a compliment addressed to herself without finding it exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing indeed I'm delighted Charles if my little hips and paws meet with your approval of a tell me why did you bow to that comber me person are you also her neighbor in the country Madame de Saint-Hubert seeing that the princess seemed quite happy talking to Swan had drifted away but you are yourself princess I why they must have countries everywhere those creatures don't I wish I had no not the comber me her own people she was a Le Grandin and used to come to combre I don't know whether you are aware that you are contests to combre and that the chapter owes you a due I don't know what the chapter owes me but I do know that I'm touched for a few hundred francs every year by the cura which is a due that I could very well do without but surely these comber may have rather a startling name it ends just in time but it ends badly she said with a laugh it begins no better swan took the point yes that double abbreviation some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first word but since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second he'd have done better to finish the first and be done with it oh we are indulging in the most refined form of humor my dear Charles in the very best of taste but how tiresome it is that I never see you now she went on in a coaxing tone I do so love talking to you just imagine I could not make that idiot for reveal see that there was anything funny about the name combre may do you agree that life is a dreadful business it's only when I see you that I stop feeling bored which was probably not true but swan and the princess had the same way of looking at the little things of life the effect if not the cause of which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of pronunciation this similarity was not striking because no two things could have been more unlike than their two voices but if one took the trouble to imagine swan's utterances divested of the sonority that enwrapped them of the moustache from under which they emerged one found that they were the same phrases the same inflections that they had the tone of the garment set on important matters swan and the princess had not an idea in common but since swan had become so melancholy and was always in that trembling condition which precedes a flood of tears he had the same need to speak about his grief that a murderer has to tell someone about his crime and when he heard the princess say that life was a dreadful business he felt as much comforted as if she had spoken to him of Odette yes life is a dreadful business we must meet more often my dear friend what is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful we could spend the most pleasant evening together i'm sure we could why not come down to guermont my mother-in-law would be wild with joy it's supposed to be very ugly down there but i must say i find the neighborhood not at all unattractive i have a horror of picturesque spots i know it well it's delightful replied swan it's almost too beautiful too much alive for me just at present it's a country to be happy in it's perhaps because i have lived there but things there speak to me so as soon as a breath of wind gets up and the corn fields begin to stir i feel that someone is going to appear suddenly that i am going to hear some news and those little houses by the water's edge i should be quite wretched oh my dear charles do take care oh there's that appalling ron beyond woman she's seen me hide me somewhere do tell me again quickly what it was that happened to her i get so mixed up she's just married off her daughter or her lover i never can remember perhaps both to each other oh no i remember now she's been dropped by her prince pretend to be talking so that the poor old baronese shan't come and invite me to dinner anyhow i'm going listen my dear charles now that i have seen you once in a blue moon won't you let me carry you off and take you to the process department who would be so pleased to see you you know and basa too for that matter he's meeting me there if one didn't get news of you sometimes from them remember i never see you at all now swan declined having told madame de charlieu that on leaving madame de santo vers he would go straight home he did not care to run the risk by going on now to the process department of missing a message which he had all the time been hoping to see brought into him by into him by one of the footmen during the party and which he was perhaps going to find left with his own porter at home poor swan said madame de lon that night to her husband he is most charming but he does look so dreadfully unhappy you will see for yourself for he has promised to dine with us one of these days i do feel that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself be made to suffer by a creature of that kind who isn't even interesting for they tell me she's an absolute idiot she concluded with the wisdom invariably shown by people who not being and love themselves feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such persons as are worth his while which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the common bacillus swan now wished to go home but just as he was making his escape general defrober view caught him and asked him for an introduction to madame de comre me and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for her i say swan i'd rather be married to that little woman then killed by savages what do you say the words killed by savages pierced swan's aching heart and at once he felt the need of continuing the conversation ah he began some fine lives have been lost in that way there was you remember that explorer whose remains du mont d'urville brought back la peruse and he was at once happy again as though he had named odette he was a fine character and interests me very much does la peruse he ended sadly oh yes of course la peruse said the general it's quite a well-known name there's a street called that do you know anyone in the roux la peruse asked swan excitedly only madame de chandleville the sister of that good fellow chose pierre she gave a most amusing theater party the other evening that's a house that will be really smart someday you'll see oh so she lives in the roux la peruse it's attractive i like that street it's so somber indeed it isn't you can't have been in it for a long time it's not at all somber now they're beginning to build all around there when swan did finally introduce monsieur de fraubreville to the young madame de cambremé since it was the first time that she had heard the general's name she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise with which she would have greeted him if she had never in the whole of her life heard anything else for as she did not yet know all the friends of her new family whenever anyone was presented to her she assumed that he must be one of them in thinking that she would show her tact by appearing to have heard such a lot about him since her marriage she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which was meant as a proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to overcome and of the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame it and so her parents-in-law whom she still regarded as the most imminent pair in france declared that she was an angel all the more that they preferred to appear in marrying her to their son to have yielded to the attraction rather of her natural charm than of her considerable fortune it's easy to see that you are a musician heart and soul madame said the general alluding to the incident of the candle meanwhile the concert had begun again and swan saw that he could not now go before the end of the new number he suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since being ignorant of his love incapable had they known of it of taking any interest or or of doing more than smile at it as at some childish joke or deplorate as an act of insanity they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone whose reality there was nothing external to confirm him he suffered overwhelmingly to the point at which even the sound of the instruments made him want to cry from having to prolong his exile in this place to which odette would never come to which no one nothing was aware of her existence from which she was entirely absent but suddenly it was as though she had entered and this apparition tore him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart what had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes on which it rested as though expecting something and expectancy which it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes in the exaltation with which it already saw the expected object approaching and with a desperate effort to continue until its arrival to welcome it before itself expired to keep the way open for a moment longer with all its remaining strength that the stranger might enter in as one holds a door open that would otherwise automatically close and before swan had had time to understand what was happening to think it is the little phrase from ventui sanata i mustn't listen all his memories of the days when odette had been in love with him which he had succeeded up till that evening in keeping invisible in the depths of his being deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love whose son they supposed had dawned again had awakened from their slumber had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears without pity for his present desolation the forgotten strains of happiness in place of the abstract expressions the time when i was happy the time when i was loved which he had often used until then and without much suffering for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar volatile essence of that lost happiness he could see it all the snowy curled petals of the chrysanthemum which he had tossed after him into his carriage which he had kept pressed to his lips the address meson doré embossed on the note paper on which he had read my hand trembles so as i write to you you the frowning contraction of her eyebrows when she said pleadingly you won't let it be very long before you send for me he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he used to have in to singe his hair while loré don went to fetch the little working girl could feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that spring the ice cold homework drive in the victoria by moonlight all the network of mental habits of seasonable impressions of sensory reactions which had extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes by which his body now found itself inextricably held at that time he had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who lived for love alone he had supposed that he could stop there that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also how small a thing the actual charm of odette was now in comparison with that formidable terror which extended it like a cloudy halo all around her that enormous anguish of not knowing at every hour of the day and night what she had been doing of not possessing her holy at all times and in all places alas he recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed but i can see you at any time i am always free she who was never free now the interest the curiosity that she had shown in his life her passionate desire that he should do her the favor of which it was he who then had felt suspicious as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of his arrangements of granting her access to his study how she had been obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the verdurant and when he did allow her to come to him once a month how she had first before he would let himself be swayed had to repeat what a joy it would be to her the custom of their seeing each other daily for which she had longed at a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction for which since that time she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken herself of it while it had become for him so insatiable so dolerous a need little had he suspected how truly he spoke when on their third meeting as she repeated but why don't you let me come to you often her he had told her laughing and in a vein of gallantry that it was for fear of forming a hopeless passion now alas it still happened at times that she wrote to him from a restaurant or hotel on paper which bore a printed address but printed in letters of fire that seared his heart written from the hotel volume all what on earth could she have gone there for with whom what happened there he remembered the gas jets that were being extinguished along the boulevard days italian when he had met her when all hope was gone among the errant shades upon that night which had seemed to him almost supernatural and which now that night of a period when he had not even to ask himself whether he would be annoying her by looking for her and by finding her so certain was he that she knew no greater happiness than to see him and to let him take her home belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one may never return again once its doors are closed and swan could distinguish standing motionless before that scene of happiness in which it lived again a wretched figure which filled him with such pity because he did not at first recognize who it was that he must lower his head lest anyone should observe that his eyes were filled with tears it was himself when he realized this his pity ceased he was jealous now of that other self whom she had loved he was jealous of those men of whom he had so often said without much suffering perhaps she's in love with them and now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving in which there is no love for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the letterheading of the mason door for they were full of love and then his anguish becoming too keen he passed his hand over his forehead let the monocle drop from his eye and wiped its glass and doubtless if he had caught sight of himself at that moment he would have added to the collection of the monocles which he had already identified this one which he removed like an importunate worrying thought from his head while from its misty surface with his handkerchief he sought to obliterate his cares there are in the music of the violin if if one does not see the instrument itself and so cannot relate what one hears to its form which modifies the fullness of its sound accents which are so closely akin to those of certain contralto voices that one has the illusion that a singer has taken her place amid the orchestra one raises one's eyes one sees only the wooden case magical as a chinese box but at moments one is still tricked by the deceiving appeal of the siren at times too one believes that one is listening to a captive spirit struggling in the darkness of its masterful box a box quivering with enchantment like a devil immersed in a stroup of holy water sometimes again it is in the air at large like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the ear as it passes its invisible message as though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would consent to appear as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary to procure and to prolong for a few moments the miracle of its apparition swan who was no more able now to see it then if it had belonged to a world of ultraviolet light who experienced something like the refreshing sense of a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness with which he had been struck as he approached it swan felt that it was present like a protective goddess a confidant of his love who so as to be able to come to him through the crowd and to draw him aside to speak to him had disguised herself in this sweeping cloak of sound and as she passed him light soothing as softly murmured as the perfume of a flower telling him what she had to say every word of which he closely scanned sorry to see them fly away so fast he made involuntarily with his lips the motion of kissing as it went by him the harmonious fleeting form he felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she who addressed herself to him spoke to him in a whisper of Odette for he had no longer as of old the impression that Odette and he were not known to the little phrase had it not often been the witness of their joys true that as often it had warned him of their frailty and indeed whereas in that distant time he had defined an element of suffering in its smile in its limpid and disillusioned intonation tonight he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was almost gay of those sorrows of which the little phrase had spoken to him then and which he had seen it without his being touched by them himself carry past him smiling on its sensuous and rapid course of those sorrows which were now become his own without his having any hope of being ever delivered from them it seemed to say to him as once it had said of his happiness what does all that matter it is all nothing and swan's thoughts were born for the first time on a wave of pity and tenderness towards that venturi towards that unknown exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly what could his life have been from the depths of what well of sorrow could he have drawn that godlike strength that unlimited power of creation when it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of sufferings swan found a sweetness in that very wisdom which but a little while back had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that he could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers who would regard his love as a digression that was without importance it was because the little phrase unlike them whatever opinion it might hold on the short duration of these states of the soul saw in them something not as everyone else saw less serious than the events of everyday life but on the contrary so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy of the trouble of expressing it those graces of an intimate sorrow it was them that the phrase endeavored to imitate to create a new and even their essence for all that it consists in being incommunicable and in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them the little phrase had captured had rendered visible so much so that it made their value be confessed their divine sweetness be tasted by all those same onlookers provided only that they were in any sense musical who the next moment would ignore would disown them in real life in every individual love that came into being beneath their eyes doubtless the form in which it had codified those graces could not be analyzed into any logical elements but ever since more than a year before discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul the love of music had been born and for a time at least had dwelt in him swan had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas of another world of another order ideas veiled in shadows unknown impenetrable by the human mind which nonetheless were perfectly distinct one from another unequal among themselves in value and in significance when after that first evening at the verdurance he had had the little phrase played over to him again and had sought to disentangle from his confused impressions how it was that like a perfume or a caress it swept over and enveloped him he had observed that it was to the closeness of the intervals between the five notes which composed it into the constant repetition of two of them that was due that impression of a frigid a contracted sweetness but in reality he knew that he was basing this conclusion not upon the phrase itself but merely upon certain equivalents substituted for his mind's convenience for the mysterious entity of which he had become aware before ever he knew the verdurance at that earlier party when for the first time he had heard the sonata played he knew that his memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the music that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes but an immeasurable keyboard still almost all of it unknown on which here and there only separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored tracks some few among the millions of keys keys of tenderness of passion of courage of serenity which compose it each one differing from all the rest as one universe differs from another had been discovered by certain great artists who do us the service when they awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme which they have found of showing us what richness what variety lies hidden unknown to us in that great black impenetrable night discouraging exploration of our soul which we have been content to regard as valueless and waste and void van too had been one of those musicians in his little phrase albeit it presented to the mind's eye a clouded surface there was contained one felt a matter so consistent so explicit to which the phrase gave so new so original a force that those who had once heard it preserved the memory of it in the treasure chamber of their minds swan would repair to it as to a conception of love and happiness of which at once he knew as well in what respects it was peculiar as he would know of the princess de cleve or of renais should either of those titles occur to him even when he was not thinking of the little phrase it existed latent in his mind in the same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent such as our notions of light of sound of perspective of bodily desire the rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned perhaps we shall lose them perhaps they will be obliterated if we return to nothing in the dust but so long as we are alive we can no more bring ourselves to a state of which we shall not have known them then we can with regard to any material object then we can for example doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted in view of the changed aspect of everything in the room from which has vanished even the memory of the darkness in that way ventures phrase like some theme say in tree stomp which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment has espoused our mortal state had endured a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough its destiny was linked for the future with that of the human soul of which it was one of the special the most distinctive ornaments perhaps it is not being that is the true state and all our dream of life is without existence but if so we feel that it must be that these phrases of music these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream are nothing either we shall perish but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate and death in their company is something less bitter less inglorious perhaps even less certain so swan was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonnet did really exist human as it was from this point of view it belonged nonetheless to an order of supernatural creatures whom we have never seen but whom in spite of that we recognize and acclaim with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coke's one fourth to bring it down from that divine world to which he has access to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours this was what ventur had done for the little phrase swan felt that the composer had been content with the musical instruments at his disposal to draw aside its fail to make it visible following and respecting its outlines with a hand so loving so prudent so delicate and so sure that the sound altered at every moment blunting itself to indicate a shadow springing back into life when it must follow the curve of some more bold projection and one proof that swan was not mistaken when he believed in the real existence of this phrase was that anyone with an ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected the imposture had ventur endowed with less power to see and to render its forms sought to disemble by adding a line here and there of his own invention the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand the phrase had disappeared swan knew that it would come again at the end of the last movement after a long passage which madame verdurans pianist always skipped there were in this passage some admirable ideas which swan had not distinguished on first hearing of the sonata in which he now perceived as if they had in the cloakroom of his memory divested themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty swan listened to all the scattered themes which entered into the composition of the phrase as its premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a syllogism he was assisting at the mystery of its birth audacity he exclaimed to himself as inspired perhaps as a la voici or an ampere the audacity of a ventur making experiment discovering the secret laws that govern an unknown force driving across a region unexplored towards the one possible goal the invisible team in which he has placed his trust and which he never made discern how charming the dialogue which swan now heard between piano and violin at the beginning of the last passage the suppression of human speech so far from letting fancy rain there uncontrolled as one might have thought had eliminated it altogether never was spoken language of such inflexible necessity never had it known questions so pertinent such obvious replies at first the piano complained alone like a bird deserted by its mate the violin heard and answered it as from a neighboring tree it was at the first beginning of the world as if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth or rather in this world closed against all the rest so fashioned by the logic of its creator that in it there should never be any but themselves the world of this sonata was it a bird was it the soul not yet made perfect of the little phrase was it a fairy invisibly somewhere lamenting whose plate the piano heard and tenderly repeated its cries were so sudden that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they came marvelous bird the violinist seemed to wish to charm to tame to woo to win it already it had passed into his soul already the little phrase which it evoked shook like a mediums the body of the violinist possessed indeed swan knew that the phrase was going to speak to him once again and his personality was now so divided that the strain of waiting for the imminent moment when he would find himself face to face once more with the phrase convulsed him in one of those sobs which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarming news will ring from us not when we are alone but when we repeat one or the other to a friend in whom we see ourselves reflected like a third person whose probable emotion softens him it reappeared but this time to remain poised in the air and to sport there for a moment only as though immobile and shortly to expire and so swan lost nothing of the precious time for which it lingered it was still there like an iridescent bubble that floats for a while unbroken as a rainbow when its brightness fades seems to subside then soars again before it is extinguished is glorified with greater splendor than it has ever shown so to the two colors which the phrase had hitherto allowed to appear it added others now chords shot with every hue in the prism and made them sing swan dared not move and would have liked to compel all the other people in the room to remain still also as if the slightest movement might embarrass the magic presence supernatural delicious frail that would so easily vanish but no one as it happened dreamed of speaking the ineffable utterance of one solitary man absent perhaps dead swan did not know whether ventul were still alive breathed out above the rites of those two hierophants sufficed to attest the attention of three hundred minds and made of that stage on which a soul was thus called into being one of the noblest alters on which a supernatural ceremony could be performed it followed that when the phrase at last was finished and only its fragmentary echoes floated among the subsequent themes which had already taken its place if swan at first was annoyed to see the contest of montrenday famed for her imbecilities lean over towards him to confide in him her impressions before even the sonata had come to an end he could not refrain from smiling and perhaps also found an underlying sense which she was incapable of perceiving in the words that she used dazzled by the virtuosity of the performers the contests exclaimed to swan it's astonishing i have never seen anything to beat it but a scrupulous regard for accuracy making her correct her first assertion she added the reservation anything to beat it since the table turning from that evening swan understood that the feeling which odette had once had for him would never revive that his hopes of happiness would not be realized now and the days on which by a lucky chance she had once more shown herself kind and loving to him or if she had paid him any attention he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of a slight movement on her part towards him with the same tender and skeptical solicitude the desperate joy that people reveal who when they are nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady relate as significant facts of infinite value yesterday he went through his accounts himself and actually corrected a mistake that we had made in adding them up he ate an egg today and seemed quite to enjoy it if he digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet tomorrow although they themselves know that these things are meaningless on the eve of an inevitable death no doubt swan was assured that if he had now been living at a distance from odette he would gradually have lost all interest in her so that he would never have been glad to learn that she was leaving paris forever he would have had the courage to remain there but he had not the courage to go he had often thought of going now that he was once again at work upon his essay on vermere he wanted to return for a few days at least to the hag to dresden to brunswick he was certain that a toilette of diana which had been acquired by the maritchus at the goldschmidt sale as a nicholas mace was in reality a vermere and he would have liked to be able to examine the picture on the spot so as to strengthen his conviction but to leave paris while odette was there and even when she was not there for in strange places where our sensations have not been numbed by habit we refresh we revive an old pain was for him so cruel a project that he felt himself to be incapable of entertaining it incessantly in his mind only because he knew himself to be resolute in his determination never to put it into effect but it would happen that while he was asleep the intention to travel would reawaken in him without his remembering that this particular tour was impossible and would be realized one night he dreamed that he was going away for a year leaning from the window of the train towards a young man on the platform who wept as he bade him farewell he was seeking to persuade this young man to come away also the train began to move he awoke an alarm and remembered that he was not going away that he would see odette that evening and next day and almost every day and then being still deeply moved by his dream he would thank heaven for those special circumstances which made him independent thanks to which he could remain in odette's vicinity and could even succeed in making her allow him to see her sometimes and counting over the list of his advantages his social position his fortune from which she stood too often in need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture having even so people said an ulterior plan of getting him to marry her his friendship with mr. de chaloux which it must be confessed had never won him very great favor from a debt but which gave him the pleasant feeling that she was always hearing complimentary things said about him by this common friend for whom she had so great an esteem and even his own intelligence the whole of which he employed in weaving every day a fresh plot which would make his presence if not agreeable at any rate necessary to odette he thought of what might have happened to him if all these advantages had been lacking he thought that if he had been like so many other men poor and humble without resources forced to undertake any task that might be offered to him or tied down by parents or by a wife he might have been obliged to part from odette that that dream the terror of which was still so recent might well have been true and he said to himself people don't know when they are happy they're never so unhappy as they think they are but he reflected that this existence had lasted already for several years that all that he could now hope for was that it should last forever that he would sacrifice his work his pleasures his friends in fact the whole of his life to the daily expectation of a meeting which when it occurred would bring him no happiness and he asked himself whether he was not mistaken whether the circumstances that had favored their relations and had prevented a final rupture had not done a disservice to his career whether the outcome to be desired was not that as to which he rejoiced that it happened only in dreams his own departure and he said to himself that people did not know when they were unhappy that they were never so happy as they supposed end of section 25 section 26 of swan's way this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dennis Sayers swan's way by Marcel Proust translated by C.K. Scott Moncrief section 26 sometimes he hoped that she would die painlessly in some accident she who was out of doors in the streets crossing busy thoroughfares from morning to night and as she always returned safe and sound he marveled at the strength at the suppleness of the human body which was able continually to hold in check to outwit all the perils that environed it which to swan seemed innumerable since his own secret desire had strewn them in her path and so allowed its occupant the soul to abandon itself day after day and almost with impunity to its career of mendacity to the pursuit of pleasure and swan felt a very cordial sympathy with that Mohammed II whose portrait by Bellini he admired who on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives stabbed her in order as his Phoenician biographer artlessly relates to recover his spiritual freedom then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of himself and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette's very life since he was unable to separate himself from her without a subsequent return if at least he had seen her continuously and without separations his grief would ultimately have been assuaged and his love would perhaps have died and from the moment when she did not wish to leave Paris forever he had hoped that she would never go and he knew that her one prolonged absence every year was in august and september he had abundant opportunity several months in advance to dissociate from it the grim picture of her absence throughout eternity which was lodged in him by anticipation and which consisting of days closely akin to the days through which he was then passing floated in a cold transparency in his mind which it saddened and depressed though without causing him any intolerable pain but that conception of the future that flowing stream colorless and unconfined a single word from Odette suffice to penetrate through all swan's defenses and like a block of ice immobilized it congealed its fluidity made it freeze altogether and swan felt himself suddenly filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass which pressed on the inner walls of his consciousness until he was feigned to burst a thunder for Odette had said casually watching him with a malicious smile foreshville is going for a fine trip at witsentide he's going to egypt and swan had at once understood that this meant i am going to egypt at witsentide with foreshville and in fact if a few days later swan began about that trip that you told me you were going to take with foreshville she would answer carelessly yes my dear boy we're starting on the 19th we'll send you a view of the pyramids then he was determined to know whether she was foreshfield's mistress to ask her point blank to insist upon her telling him he knew that there were some perjuries which being so superstitious she would not commit and besides the fear which had hitherto restrained his curiosity of making odette angry if he questioned her of making himself odious had ceased to exist now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her one day he received an anonymous letter which told him that odette had been the mistress of countless men several of whom it named among them foreshfield maturede brotte and the painter and women and that she frequented houses of ill fame he was tormented by the discovery that there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of sending him such a letter for certain details betrayed in the writer a familiarity with his private life he wondered who it could be but he had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other people those which had no visible connection with what they said and when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent character of monsieur de charlie or of monsieur de l'homme or of monsieur dorsin that he must place the untraveled region in which this ignoble action might have had its birth as none of these men had ever in conversation with swan suggested that he approved of anonymous letters and as everything that they had ever said to him implied that they strongly disapproved he saw no further reason for associating this infamy with the character of any one of them more than with the rest monsieur de charlie was somewhat inclined to eccentricity but he was fundamentally good and kind monsieur de l'homme was a trifle dry but wholesome and straight as for monsieur dorsin swan had never met anyone who even in the most depressing circumstances would come to him with a more heartfelt utterance would act more properly or with more discretion so much so that he was unable to understand the rather indelicate part commonly attributed to monsieur dorsin in his relations with a certain wealthy woman and that whenever he thought of him he was obliged to set that evil reputation on one side as irreconcilable with so many unmistakable proofs of his genuine sincerity and refinement for a moment swan felt that his mind was becoming clouded and he thought of something else so as to recover a little light until he had the courage to return to those other reflections but then after not being able to suspect anyone he was forced to suspect everyone that he knew after all monsieur de charlie might be most fond of him might be most good-natured but he was a neuropath tomorrow perhaps he would burst into tears on hearing that swan was ill and today from jealousy or in anger or carried away by some sudden idea he might have wished to do him a deliberate injury really that kind of man was the worst of all the prince de l'homme was certainly far less devoted to swan than was monsieur de charlie but for that very reason he had not the same susceptibility with regard to him and besides his was a nature which though no doubt it was cold was as incapable of a base as of a magnanimous action swan regretted that he had formed no attachments in his life except to such people then he reflected that what prevents men from doing harm to their neighbors is fellow feeling that he could not in the last resort answer for any but men whose natures were analogous to his own as was so far as the heart went that of monsieur de charlie the mere thought of causing swan so much distress would have been revolting to him but with a man who was insensible of another order of humanity as was the prince de l'homme how was one to foresee the actions to which he might be led by the promptings of a different nature to have a good heart was everything and monsieur de charlie had one but monsieur dorsin was not lacking in that either and his relations with swan cordial but scarcely intimate arising from the pleasure which as they held the same views about everything they found in talking together his relations with swan were more questioned than the enthusiastic affection of monsieur de charlie who was apt to be led into passionate activity good or evil if there was anyone by whom swan felt that he had always been understood and with delicacy loved it was monsieur dorsin yes but the life he led it could hardly be called honorable swan regretted that he had never taken any notice of those rumors that he himself had admitted justingly that he had never felt so keen a sense of sympathy or of respect as when he was in thoroughly detrimental society it is not for nothing he now assured himself that when people pass judgment upon their neighbor their finding is based upon his actions it is those alone that are significant and not at all what we say or what we think charlie and de l'homme may have this or that fault but they are men of honor or sa perhaps has not the same faults but he is not a man of honor he may have acted dishonorably once again then he suspected ray me who it was true could only have inspired the letter but he now felt himself for a moment to be on the right track to begin with lori da had his own reasons for wishing harm to odette and then how were we not to suppose that our servants living in a situation inferior to our own adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and vices for which they at once envied and despised us should not find themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own class he also suspected my grandfather on every occasion when swan had asked him to do any service had he not invariably decline besides with his ideas of middle class respectability he might have thought that he was acting for swan's good he suspected in turn bergotte the painter the verdura paused for a moment to admire once again the wisdom of people in society who refuse to mix in the artistic circles in which such things were possible were perhaps even openly avowed as excellent jokes but then he recalled the marks of honesty that were to be observed in those bohemians and contrasted them with the life of expedience often bordering on fraudulence to which the want of money the craving for luxury the corrupting influence of their pleasures often drove members of the aristocracy in a word this anonymous letter proved that he himself knew a human being capable of the most infamous conduct but he could see no reason why that infamy should lurk in the depths which no strange eye might explore of the warm heart rather than the cold the artists rather than the business man's the nobles rather than the flunkies what criterion ought one to adopt in order to judge one's fellows after all there was not a single one of the people whom he knew who might not in certain circumstances prove capable of a shameful action must he then cease to see them all his mind grew clouded he passed his hands two or three times across his brow wiped his glasses with his handkerchief and remembering that after all men who were as good as himself frequented the society of be sure to charlie the prince de l'homme and the rest he persuaded himself that this meant if not that they were incapable of shameful actions at least that it was a necessity of human life to which everyone must submit to frequent the society of people who were perhaps not incapable of such actions and he continued to shake hands with all his friends whom he had suspected with the purely formal reservation that each one of them had possibly been seeking to drive him to despair as for the actual contents of the letter they did not disturb him for in not one of the charges which it formulated against odette could he see the least vestige of fact like many other men swan had a naturally lazy mind and was slow in invention he knew quite well as a general truth that human life is full of contrasts but in the case of any one human life he imagined all that part of his or her life with which he was not familiar as being identical with the part with which he was he imagined what was kept secret from him in the light of what was revealed at such times as he spent with odette if their conversation turned upon an indelicate act committed or an indelicate sentiment expressed by some third person she would ruthlessly condemn the culprit by virtue of the same moral principles which swan had always heard expressed by his own parents and to which he himself had remained loyal and then she would arrange her flowers would sip her tea would show an interest in his work so swan extended those habits to fill the rest of her life he reconstructed those actions when he wished to form a picture of the moments in which he and she were apart if anyone had portrayed her to him as she was or rather as she had been for so long with himself but had substituted some other man he would have been distressed for such a portrait would have struck him as lifelike but to suppose that she went to bad houses that she abandoned herself to orgies with other women that she led the craptulous existence of the most abject the most contemptible of mortals would be an insane wandering of the mind for the realization of which thank heaven the chrysanthemums that he could imagine the daily cups of tea the virtuous indignation left neither time nor place only now and again he gave Odette to understand that people maliciously kept him informed of everything that she did and made opportune use of some detail insignificant but true which he had accidentally learned as though it were the soul fragment which he would allow in spite of in spite of himself to pass his lips out of the numberless other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her daily life which he carried secretly in his mind he led her to suppose that he was perfectly informed upon matters which in reality he neither knew nor suspected for if he often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make alteration of the truth that was only whether he realized it or no in order that Odette should tell him everything that she did no doubt as he used to assure Odette he loved sincerity but only as he might love a pander who could keep him in touch with the daily life of his mistress moreover his love of sincerity not being disinterested had not improved his character the truth which he cherished was that which Odette would tell him but he himself in order to extract that truth from her was not afraid to have recourse to falsehood the very falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette as leading every human creature down to utter degradation in a word he lied as much as did Odette because while more unhappy than she he was no less egotistical and she when she heard him repeating thus to her the things that she had done would stare at him with a look of distrust and at all hazards of indignation so as not to appear to be humiliated and to be blushing for her actions one day after the longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to exist without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy he had accepted an invitation to spend the evening at the theater with the process de l'homme having opened his newspaper to find out what was being played the site of the title Le Fille des Marbes by Theodore Barrière struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively from it and turned his head away illuminated as though by a row of footlights in the new surroundings in which it now appeared that word marble which he had lost the power to distinguish so often had it passed in print beneath his eyes had suddenly become visible once again and had at once brought back to his mind the story which Odette had told him long ago of a visit which she had paid to the salon at the Palais d'Industrie with Madame Verduran who had said to her take care now I know how to melt you all right you're not made of marble Odette had assured him that it was only a joke and he had not attached any importance to it at the time but he had had more confidence in her then than he had now and the anonymous letter referred explicitly to relations of that sort without daring to lift his eyes to the newspaper he opened it turned the page so as not to see again the words fee de marbre and began to read mechanically the news from the provinces there had been a storm in the channel and damage was reported from diep cabour bezaval suddenly he recoiled again in horror the name of bezaval had suggested to him that of another place in the same district bezaville which carried also bound to it by a hyphen a second name to which brotte which he had often seen on maps but without ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that born by his friend mature de brotte whom the anonymous letter accused of having been Odette's lover after all when it came to mature de brotte there was nothing improbable in the charge but so far as madame verdura was concerned it was a sheer impossibility from the fact that odette did occasionally tell a lie it was not fair to conclude that she never by any chance told the truth and in these bantering conversations with madame verdura which she herself had repeated to swan he could recognize those meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which in their inexperience of life and ignorance of vice women often utter thereby certifying their own innocence who as for instance odette would be the last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one another whereas on the other hand the indignation with which she had scattered the suspicions which she had unintentionally brought into being for a moment in his mind by her story fitted in with everything that he knew of the tastes the temperament of his mistress but at that moment by an inspiration of jealousy analogous to the inspiration which reveals to a poet or a philosopher who has nothing so far but an odd pair of rhymes or a detached observation the idea of natural law which will give power mastery to his work swan recalled for the first time a remark which odette had made to him at least two years before oh madame verdura she won't hear of anything just now but me i'm a love if you please and she kisses me and wants me to go with her everywhere and call her by her christian name so far from seeing in these expressions any connection with the absurd insinuations intended to create an atmosphere of vice which odette had since repeated to him he had welcomed them as a proof of madame verdura's warm hearted and generous friendship but now this old memory of her affection for odette had coalesced suddenly with his more recent memory of her unseemly conversation he could no longer separate them in his mind and he saw them blended in reality the affection imparting a certain seriousness and importance to the pleasantries which in return spoiled the affection of its innocence he went to see odette he sat down keeping at a distance from her he did not dare to embrace her not knowing whether in her in himself it would be affection or anger that a kiss would provoke he sat there silent watching their love expire suddenly he made up his mind odette my darling he began i know i am being simply odious but i must ask you a few questions you remember what i once thought about you and madame verdura tell me was it true have you with her or anyone else ever she shook her head piercing her lips together a sign which people commonly employ to signify that they are not going because it would bore them to go when someone has asked are you coming to watch the procession go by or will you be at the review but the shake of the head which is thus commonly used to decline participation in an event that has yet to come in parts for that reason an element of uncertainty to the denial of participation in an event that is past furthermore it suggests reasons of personal convenience rather than any definite repudiation any moral impossibility when he saw odette thus make him a sign that the insinuation was false he realized that it was quite possibly true i have told you i never did you know quite well she added seeming angry and uncomfortable yes i i know all that but are you quite sure don't say to me you know quite well say i have never done anything of that sort with any woman she repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote and as though she hoped thereby to be rid of him i have never done anything of that sort with any woman can you swear to me on your legato medal swan knew that odette would never perjure herself on that oh you do make me so miserable she cried with the jerk of her body as though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question have you nearly done what is the matter with you today you seem to have made up your mind that i am to be forced to hate you to curse you look i was anxious to be friends with you again for us to have a nice time together like the old days and this is all the thanks i get however he would not let her go but sat there like a surgeon who waits for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not make him abandon it you are quite wrong and supposing that i bear you the least ill will in the world odette he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness i never speak to you except of what i already know and i always know a great deal more than i say but you alone can molify by your confession what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by other people my anger with you is never due to your actions i can and do forgive you everything because i love you but to your untruthfulness the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in denying things which i know to be true how can you expect that i shall continue to love you when i see you maintain when i hear you swear to me a thing which i know to be false odette do not prolong this moment which is torturing us both if you are willing to end it at once you shall be free of it forever tell me upon your metal yes or no whether you have ever done those things how on earth can i tell she was furious perhaps i have ever so long ago when i didn't know what i was doing perhaps two or three times swan had prepared himself for all possibilities reality must therefore be something which bears no relation to possibilities any more than the stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual movement of the clouds overhead since those words two or three times carved as it were across upon the living tissues of his heart a strange thing indeed that those words two or three times nothing more than a few words words uttered in the air at a distance could so lacerate a man's heart as if they had actually pierced it could sicken a man like a poison that he had drunk instinctively swan thought of the remark that he had heard at madame de santo verde i have never seen anything to beat it since the table turning the agony that he now suffered in no way resembled what he had supposed not only because in the hours when he most entirely mistrusted her he had rarely imagined such a culmination of evil but because even when he did imagine that offense it remained vague uncertain was not clothed in the particular horror which had escaped with the words perhaps two or three times was not armed with that specific cruelty as different from anything that he had known as a new malady by which one is attacked for the first time and yet this Odette from whom all this evil sprang was no less dear to him was on the contrary more precious as if in proportion as his sufferings increased they're increased at the same time the price of the sedative of the antidote which this woman alone possessed he wished to pay her more attention as one attends to a disease which one discovers suddenly to have grown more serious he wished that the horrible thing which she had told him she had done two or three times might be prevented from occurring again to ensure that he must watch he must watch over Odette people often say that by pointing out to a man the faults of his mistress you succeed only in strengthening his attachment to her because he does not believe you yet how much more so if he does but swan asked himself how could he manage to protect her he might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of any one woman but there were hundreds of other women and he realized how insane had been his ambition when he had begun on the evening when he had failed to find Odette at the verdurant to desire the possession as if that were ever possible of another person happily for swan beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like a conquering horde of barbarians there lay a natural foundation older more placid and silently laborious like the cells of an injured organ which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues or the muscles of a paralyzed limb which tend to recover their former movements these older these octokthanus indwellers in his soul absorbed all swan strength for a while in that obscure task of reparation which gives one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence or after an operation this time it was not so much as it ordinarily was in swan's brain that the slackening of tension due to exhaustion took effect it was rather in his heart but all the things in life that have once existed tend to recur and like a dying animal that is once more stirred by the throes of a convulsion which was apparently ended upon swan's heart spared for a moment only the same agony returned of its own accord to trace the same cross again he remembered those moonlit evenings when leaning back in the victoria that was taking him to the rue la peruse he would cultivate with voluptuous enjoyment the emotions of a man in love ignorant of the poisoned fruit that such emotions must inevitably bear but all those thoughts lasted for no more than a second the time that it took him to raise his hand to his heart to draw breath again and to contrive to smile so as to dissemble his torment already he had begun to put further questions for his jealousy which had taken an amount of trouble such as no enemy would have incurred to strike him this mortal blow to make him forcibly acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known his jealousy was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough and sought to expose his wisdom to an even deeper wound like an evil deity his jealousy was inspiring swan was thrusting him on towards destruction it was not his fault but odets alone if at first his punishment was not more severe my darling he began again it's all over now was it with anyone i know no i swear it wasn't besides i think i exaggerated i never really went as far as that he smiled and resumed with just as you like it doesn't really matter but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name if i were able to form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking of her again i say it for your own sake because then i shouldn't bother you anymore about it it's so soothing to be able to form a clear picture of things in one's mind what is really terrible is what one cannot imagine but you've been so sweet to me i don't want to tire you i do thank you with all my heart for all the good that you have done me me i've quite finished now only one more word how many times oh charles can't you see you're killing me it's all ever so long ago i've never given it a thought anyone would say that you were positively trying to put those ideas into my head again and then you'd be a lot better off she concluded with unconscious stupidity but with intentional malice i only wish to know whether it had been since i knew you it's only natural did it happen here ever you can't give me any particular evening so that i can remind myself what i was doing at the time you understand surely that it's not possible that you don't remember with whom odette my love but i don't really i don't i think it was in the boi one evening when you came to meet us on the island you had been dining with the princess de l'homme she added happy to be able to furnish him with an exact detail which testified to her veracity at the next table there was a woman whom i hadn't seen forever so long she said to me come along round behind the rock there and look at the moonlight on the water at first i just yawned and said no i'm too tired and i'm quite happy where i am thank you she swore there'd never been anything like it in the way of moonlight i've heard that tale before i said to her you see i knew quite well what she was after odette narrated this episode almost as if it were a joke either because it appeared to her to be quite natural or because she thought that she was thereby minimizing its importance or else so as not to appear ashamed but catching sight of swan's face she changed her tone and you are a fiend she flung at him you enjoy tormenting me making me tell you lies just so that you'll leave me in peace the second blow struck at swan was even more excruciating than the first never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair hidden from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it not in a past which he had never known but in evenings which he so well remembered which he had lived through with odette of which he had supposed himself to have such an intimate such an exhaustive knowledge and which now assumed retrospectively an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty in the midst of them parted suddenly a gaping chasm that moment on the island in the wadi balloon without being intelligent odette had the charm of being natural she had recounted she had acted the little scene with so much simplicity that swan as he gasped for breath could vividly see it odette yawning the rock there he could hear her answer alas how light heartedly i've heard that tale before he felt that she would tell him nothing more that evening that no further revelation was to be expected for the present he was silent for a time then said to her my poor darling you must forgive me i know i am hurting you dreadfully but it's all over now i shall never think of it again but she saw his eyes remain fixed upon the things that he did not know and on that past era of their love monotonous and soothing in his memory because it was vague and now rent as with the sword wound by the news of that minute on the island in the boi by moonlight while he was dining with the princess de l'homme but he had so far acquired the habit of finding life interesting of marveling at the strange discoveries that were to be made in it that even while he was suffering so acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such agony for any length of time he said to himself life is indeed astonishing and holds some fine surprises it appears that vice is far more common than one has been led to believe here is a woman in whom i had absolute confidence who looks so simple so honest who in any case even allowing that her morals are not strict seemed quite normal and healthy in her tastes and inclinations i receive a most improbable accusation i question her and the little that she admits reveals far more than i could ever have suspected but he could not confine himself to these detached observations he sought to form an exact estimate of the importance of what she had just told him so as to know whether he might conclude that she had done these things often and was likely to do them again he repeated her words to himself i know quite well what she was after two or three times i've heard that tale before but they did not reappear in his memory unarmed each one of them held a knife with which it stabbed him afresh for a long time like a sick man who cannot restrain himself from attempting every minute to make the movement that he knows will hurt him he kept on murmuring to himself i'm quite happy where i am thank you i've heard that tale before but the pain was so intense that he was obliged to stop he was amazed to find that actions which he had always heard the two judge so lightly had dismissed indeed with a laugh should have become as serious to him as a disease which might easily prove fatal he knew any number of women whom he could ask to keep an eye on odette but how was he to expect them to adjust themselves to his new point of view and not to remain at that which for so long had been his own which had always guided him in his voluptuous existence not to say to him with a smile you jealous monster wanting to rob other people of their pleasure by that trap door suddenly lowered had he who had never found in the old days in his love for her debt any but the most refined of pleasures had he been precipitated into this new circle of hell from which he could not see how he was ever to escape poor odette he wished her no harm she was but half to blame had he not been told that it was her own mother who had sold her when she was still a little more than a child at Nice to a wealthy Englishman but what an agonizing truth was now contained for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's journal dune poet which he had previously read without emotion when one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman one ought to say to oneself what are her surroundings what has been her life all one's future happiness lies in the answer swan was astonished that such simple phrases spelt over in his mind as i've heard that tale before or i knew quite well what she was after could cause him so much pain but he realized that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed parts of the panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that he had felt while Odette was telling her story for it was the same anguish that he now was feeling afresh it was no good his knowing now indeed it was no good as time went on his having partly forgotten and altogether forgiven the offense whenever he repeated her words his old anguish refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak ignorant trustful his merciless jealousy placed him once again so that he might be effectively wounded by Odette's admission in the position of a man who does not yet know the truth and after several months this old story would still dumb founder him like a sudden revelation he marveled at the terrible recreated power of his memory it was only by the weakening of that generative force whose fecundity diminishes as age creeps over one that he could hope for a relaxation of his torments but as soon as the power that any one of Odette's sentences had to make swan's suffer seemed to be entirely exhausted low and behold another one of those to which he had hid the two paid least attention almost a new sentence came to relieve the first and to strike at him with undiminished force the memory of the evening on which he had dined with the process de l'homme was painful to him but it was no more than the center the core of his pain that radiated vaguely round about it overflowing into all the preceding and following days and under whatever point in it he might intend his memory to rest it was the whole of that season during which the vergerin had so often gone to dine upon the island in the bois that sprang back to hurt him so violently that by slow degrees the curiosity which is jealousy was ever exciting in him was neutralized by the fear of the fresh tortures which he would be inflicting upon himself were he to satisfy it he recognized that all the period of Odette's life which had elapsed before she first met him a period of which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind was not the featureless abstraction which he could vaguely see but had consisted of so many definite dated years each crowded with concrete incidents but were he to learn more of them he feared lest her past now colorless fluid and supportable might assume a tangible an obscene form with individual and diabolical features and he continued to reframe from seeking the conception of it not any longer now from laziness of mind but from fear of suffering he hoped that someday he might be able to hear the island in the bois or the process they long mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing him with fresh sentences with the names of more places and people and of different events which when his malady was still scarcely healed would make it break out again in another form end of section 26