 Section 19 of Swan's Way—Swan's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Buncrief. And, as the qualities which Swan supposed to be an intrinsic part of the Verderan character were no more really than their superficial reflection of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound, more vital as that pleasure increased. Since Madame Verderan gave Swan, now and then, what alone could constitute his happiness, since on an evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to one of the party than to another, and in a spasm of irritation would not take the initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Madame Verderan brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous exclamation, Odette, you'll see Mistress Swan home, won't you? Since when the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still be able to see her every day, Madame Verderan was going to invite them both to spend the summer with her in the country, Swan unconsciously allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Madame Verderan was a great and noble soul. Would any of his old fellow pupils in the Louvre School of Painting speak to him of some rare or imminent artist? I'd a hundred times rather, he would reply, have the Verderans. And with a solemnity of diction, which was new in him, they are magnanimous creatures and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters, the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there are only two classes of men, the magnanimous and the rest, and I have reached an age when one has to take sides to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes and to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again as long as one lives. Very well, he went on with the slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of what he is doing, he says something not because it is true, but because he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they came from someone else. The die is now cast, I have elected to love none but magnanimous souls and to live only in an atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Madame Verderan is really intelligent, I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility of heart, of a loftiness of soul to which no one could possibly attain, how could they, without a corresponding loftiness of mind. Without question she has a profound understanding of art, but it is not perhaps in that that she is most admirable. Every little action ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which he has performed for my sake, every friendly attention, simple little things, quite domestic and yet quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension of existence than all your textbooks of philosophy. He might have reminded himself all the same that there were various old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verderans, companions of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew other great-hearted creatures and that, nevertheless, since he had cast his vote in favor of simplicity, the arts and magnanimity, he had entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and if they had known her would never have thought of introducing her to him. And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verderan circle, a single one of the faithful who loved them, or believed that he loved them as dearly as did Swan. And yet, when M. Verderan said that he was not satisfied with Swan, he had not only expressed his own sentiments, he had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swan had two particular ineffections for Odette, as to which he had failed to take M. Verderan daily into his confidence. Doubtless, the very discretion with which he availed himself of the Verderan's hospitality, refraining often from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never suspected, and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some boar or other. Doubtless also, and despite all the precautions which he had taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were making of his brilliant position in society, doubtless all these things contributed to their general annoyance with Swan. But the real, the fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved impenetrable chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the princess to Sagan was not grotesque, and that Kotar's joke were not amusing in a word and for all that he never once abandoned his friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas, they had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, of entirely converting him to their faith, the like of which they had never come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven his going to the houses of boars to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he infinitely preferred the verdurans and all their little nucleus, had he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those boars in the presence of the faithful. But that was an abjuration which, as they well knew, they were powerless to extort. What a difference was there in a newcomer whom Odette had asked them to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on whom they were building great hopes, the camp de Fourchville. It turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of Sanyet, a discovery which filled all the faithful with amazement. The manners of the old paleographer were so humble that they had always supposed him to be a class inferior socially to their own, and had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively aristocratic family. Of course Fourchville was enormously the swell, which Swan was not, or had quite ceased to be. Of course he would never dream of placing, as Swan now placed, the verdurant circle above any other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swan from associating himself with the criticisms to, obviously, false to be worth his notice, that Madame Verdurant leveled at people whom he knew. As for the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged, the bagman's pleasantries, which Qatar used to hazard, whereas Swan, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them. Fourchville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which permitted him to be stupefied, amazed by the invective, and to be frankly delighted by the wit. And the very first dinner at the verdurants at which Fourchville was present, through a glaring light upon all the differences between them, made his qualities start into prominence, and precipitated the disgrace of Swan. There was at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met Mishir and Madame Verdurant at a watering-place somewhere, and if his duties at the university and his works of scholarship had not left him with very little time to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which combined with the certain amount of skepticism with regard to the object of their studies, earned for men of intelligence whatever their profession, for doctors who do not believe in medicine, for school masters who do not believe in Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and even superior minds. He affected, when at Madame Verdurant's, to choose his illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those sciences as no more really than a preparation for life itself, and imagined that he was seen put into practice by the little clan what hitherto he had known only from books. And also, perhaps, because having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously preserved a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those subjects with a conversational license, which seemed so to him only because the folds of the gown still clung. Early in the course of the dinner, when Mishir de Forchville, seated on the right of Madame Verdurant, who, in the newcomer's honor, had taken great pains with her toilette, observed to her quite original, that white dress, the doctor who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was he to learn the attributes of what he called a de, and was on the lookout for an opportunity of attracting his attention so as to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective blanche, and his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, blanche, blanche of Castile, then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful but happy on the whole. While Swan, by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forchville had shown at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth, the spontaneity of which had charmed Madame Verdurant. What are you to say of a scientist like that? he asked Forchville. You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the sort of thing you tell them at your hospital? She went on, turning to the doctor. They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient. I think I heard the doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, blanche of Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame? Brichot appealed to Madame Verdurant, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands from beneath which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream. Gracious Madame, I would not dream of shocking the reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, subrosa. I recognize moreover that our ineffable and Athenian, oh how infinitely Athenian, Republic is capable of honoring, in the person of that obscurantist old she-capay, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes, indeed, my dear host, yes indeed, he repeated in his ringing voice, which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest by Brichot Verdurant. The chronicle of Sondanie, and the authenticity of its information, is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that point. No one could be more fitly chosen as patron by a secularizing proletariat than that mother of a saint, who let him see some pretty fishy saints besides, as Sugaire says, and other great saint Bernard's of the sort, for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased. Who is that gentleman, Forsvill asked Verdurant. He seems to speak with great authority. What, do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he celebrated all over Europe. Oh, that's Brichot, is it, exclaimed Forsvill, who had not quite caught the name. You must tell me all about him, he went on, fascinating a pair of goggle-eyes on the celebrity. It's always interesting to meet well-known people at dinner. But I say, you ask us to very select parties here, no dull evenings in this house, I'm sure. Well, you know what it is really, says Verdurant modestly. They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the conversation goes off like fireworks. Now, Brichot, this evening, is nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply dazzling. You'd want to go on your knees to him, well, with anyone else he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty. You have to drag the words out of him. He's even boring. That's strange, remarked Forsvill, with fitting astonishment. A sort of wit-like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out stupidity by the people among whom Swan had spent his early life, for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence, and the intelligence of the professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to Swan. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social existence, which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely conversation, that Swan could not see anything and Brichot's pleasantries. To him they were merely pedantic, vulgar, and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barric-room tone which this student in arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally, perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening, as he watched Madame Verduran welcoming with such unnecessary warmth this Forsvill fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the house, feeling a little awkward. With Swan there also, she had asked him on her arrival, what do you think of my guest? And he, suddenly realizing for the first time that Forsvill, whom he had known for years, could actually attract a woman and was quite a good specimen of a man, had retorted beastly. He had certainly no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy, as usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche of Castile's mother, who, according to him, had been with Henry Plantagenet for years before they were married. To prompt Swan to beg him to contend you the story, by interjecting, isn't that so, Mr. Swan, in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to the level of an unintelligent rustic, or to put the fear of God into a trooper, Swan cut his story short to the intense fury of their hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a friend of Madame Verdurant, who had recently died, and Swan wished to find out from him, for he valued his discrimination, whether there had really been anything more in the later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in his early exhibitions. From that point of view, it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me to be a form of art, which you could call elevated, said Swan, with a smile, elevated to the height of an institute, interrupted Qatar, raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out laughing. What did I tell you? said Madame Verdurant to Forsfield. It's simply impossible to be serious with him when you least expect it out. He comes with a joke. But she observed that Swan, and Swan alone, had not unbent. For one thing, he was none too well pleased with Qatar, for having secured a laugh at his expense in front of Forsfield, but the painter, instead of replying in a way that might have interested Swan, as he would probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of their dead friend. I went up to one of them. He began just to see how it was done. I stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think impossible to say whether it was done with glue, soap, with sealing wax, with sunshine, with leaven, with extra, and one make twelve, shouted the doctor, wittingly, but just too late for no one saw the point of his interruption. It looks as though it were done with nothing at all, resumed the painter. No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the night watch or the regents. And it's even bigger work than either Rembrandt or Halls ever did. It's all there. And yet, no, I'll take my oath. It isn't. Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their compass proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while as if, after all, there had been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting. It smells all right. It makes your head go round. It catches your breath. You feel ticklish all over and not the faintest clue to how it's done. The man's a sorcerer, the thing's a conjuring trick. It's a miracle. Bursting outright into laughter. It's dishonest. Then, stopping solemnly raising his head, pitching his voice on a double base note, which he struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, and it's so loyal, except at the moment when he called it bigger than the Night Watch, a blasphemy, which had called forth an instant protest from Adam Verderan, who regarded the Night Watch as the supreme masterpiece of the universe, conjointly with the ninth and the psalmothrace. And at the word excrement, which had made Forsfield throw a sweeping glance around the table to see whether it was all right, before he allowed his lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile. All the party, saves one, had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the painter. I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that, cried Madame Verderan the moment he had finished, enraptured that the table talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that Forsfield was dining with them for the first time. Hello, you, she turned to her husband. What's the matter with you sitting there gaping like a great animal? You know, though, don't you? She apologized for him to the painter that he can talk quite well when he chooses. Anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you. If you had only seen him while you were speaking, he was just drinking it all in, and tomorrow he will tell us everything you said without missing a word. No, really, I'm not joking, protested the painter, enchanted by the success of his speech. You all look as if you thought I was pulling your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to the show, and then you can say whether I've been exaggerating, I'll bet you anything you like, you'll come away more up in the air than I am. But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating, we only want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give Mr. Beesh some more soul. Can't you see? His has got cold. We're not in any hurry. You're dancing around as if the house was on fire. Wait a little, don't serve the salad just yet. Madame Cotard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom was not lacking for all that in self-assurance, when a happy inspiration put the right word in her mouth, she felt that it would be well received. The thought gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object, not so much of shining herself as of helping her husband on in his career. And so she did not allow the word salad, which Madame Verdurant had just uttered, to pass unchallenged. It's not a Japanese salad, is it? She whispered, turning towards Odette, and then in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness and daring, which there had been in making so discreet and yet so unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it. Who is that lady? She seems devilish, clever, said Forchfield. No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to dinner on Friday. You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir, said Madame Cotard de Swan. But do you know I haven't been yet to see this famous Frasilon that everybody's talking about. The doctor has been, I remember now, he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the evening with you there, and I must confess, I don't see much sense in spending money on seats for him to take me when he's seen the play already. Of course, an evening at the Théâtre Français is never wasted, really, the acting so good there always. But we have some very nice friends. Madame Cotard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but restricted herself to some friends of ours, or one of my friends, as being more distinguished, speaking in an affected tone, and with all the importance of a person who need, give names only when she chooses, who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the new pieces that are worth going to. And so I'm certain to see this Frasilon sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for whenever I pay a call anywhere, I find everybody's talking, it's only natural, about that wretched Japanese salad, really and truly, once beginning to get just a little tired of hearing about it, she went on, seeing that Swan seemed less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. I must admit, though, that it's sometimes quite amusing the way they joke about it. I've got a friend now who is most original, though she's really a beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting in everything that young Monsieur Dumas says you're to put in, in the play. Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among the favored few, I'm sorry to say, but she told us all about it on her next day. It seems it was quite horrible. She made us all laugh till we cried. I don't know. Perhaps it was the way she told it. Madame Cotard asked doubtfully, seeing that Swan still looked grave. And imagining that it was perhaps because he had not been amused by Fressylone. Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it after all. I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Madame Zelle de Crichy worships. Serge Panine. There is a play, if you like, so deep makes you think, but just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the Théâtre français. Now Serge Panine. But then it's like everything that comes from the pen of Monsieur Georges René. It's so well written. I wonder if you know the Métre de Forge, which I liked even better than Serge Panine. A part of me sits one with a polite irony, but I can assure you that my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces. Really. Now that's very interesting. And what don't you like about them? Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little too sad. Well, well, what I always say is one should never argue about plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things and what may be horrible to you. Perhaps just what I like best. She was interrupted by Forgeville's addressing Swan. What had happened was that while Madame Cotard was discussing François Long, Forgeville had been expressing to Madame Verdurant his admiration for what he called the little speech of the painter. Your friend has such a flow of language, such a memory. He said to her when the painter had come to a standstill, I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a first rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and Monsieur Bréchot? You've drawn two lucky numbers tonight, though I'm not sure that simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are a bit realistic and all that. But that's quite the thing nowadays. Anyhow, it's not often I've seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as that. Hold the spittoon, as we used to say in the regiment where, by the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of, you could take anything you liked. I don't know what this glass say, and he'd talk about it for hours. No, not this glass. That's a silly thing to say. I'm sorry. But something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo or anything of that sort. He'd tell you things you simply wouldn't believe. Why, Swann was in the regiment then. He must have known him. Do you see much of Mr. Swann, asked Madame Verdurant? Oh, dear, no. He answered and then thinking that he had made himself pleasant to Swann. He might find favor with Odette. He decided to take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable friends. But speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann upon some undeserved good fortune, isn't that so, Swann? I never see anything of you, do I? But then where on earth is one to see him? The creature spends all his time shut up with the Latrimelius and with the Laums and all that lot. The imputation would have been false at any time and was all the more so now that for at least a year Swann had given up going to almost any house but the Verdurans. But the mere names of families whom the Verdurans did not know were received by them in a reproachful silence. Monsieur Verdurant dreading the painful expression which the mention of these bores, especially when flung at her in this tackless fashion, and in front of all the faithful was bound to make on his wife cast a covert glance at her instinct with anxious solicitude. He saw then that in her fixed resolution to take no notice, to have escaped contact all together with the news which had just been addressed to her, not merely to remain dumb, but to have been deaf as well as we pretend to be when a friend who has been in the wrong attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse which we should appear to be accepting should we appear to have heard it without protesting, or when someone utters the name of an enemy, the very mention of whom in our presence is forbidden. Madame Verdurant, so that in her silence should have the appearance not of consent, but of the unconscious silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly emptied her face of all life, all mobility. Her rounded forehead was nothing now, but an exquisite study in high relief which the name of those Tremoy, with whom Swan was always shut up, had failed to penetrate. Her nose just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown exposed to view two dark cavities that were surely modelled from life. You would have said that her half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was all no more, however, than a wax cast, a mask and plaster, the sculptors designed for a monument, a bust to be exhibited in the palace of industry where the public would most certainly gather in front of it and marvel to see how the sculptor in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of the Verdurant, as opposed to that of La Tremoy or Laums, whose equals, if not indeed their betters, they were, and the equals and betters of all other boars upon the face of the earth, had managed to invest with a majesty that was almost papal, the whiteness and rigidity of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that house since the woman was always tipsy and the husband, so uneducated, that he called a corridor a collider. You need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set foot inside my house. Madame Verdurant concluded, gazing imperially down on Swan. She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed, to think of that now. What surprises me is that they can get anybody to go near them. I'm sure I should be afraid. One can't be too careful. How can people be so common as to go running after them? But he might at least have replied, like Forsfield, Gad, she's a duchess. There are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort of thing, which would at least have permitted Madame Verdurant the final retort and a lot of good may it do them. Instead of which Swan merely smiled, in a matter which showed quite clearly that he could not, of course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. Monsieur Verdurant, who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife, could see with regret and could understand only too well that she was now inflamed with the passion of a grand inquisitor who cannot succeed in stamping out a heresy. And so in the hope of bringing Swan round to a recractation for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the other side. He broke in. Tell us, frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat it to them. You may be sure. To which Swan answered why I'm not in the least afraid of the Duchess. If it is of the Latremois that you are speaking, I can assure you that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as to say that she's at all deep. He pronounced the word as if it meant something ridiculous for his speech kept the traces of certain mental habits, which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable warmth. But I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent while her husband is positively a bookworm. They are charming people. His explanation was terribly effective. Madame Verduran now realized that this one state of unbelief would prevent her little nucleus from ever attaining to complete unanimity and was unable to restrain herself in her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish his words were causing her, but cried aloud from the depths of her tortured heart, you may think so if you wish, but at least you need not say so to us. It all depends upon what you call intelligence, Forchevue felt that it was his turn to be brilliant. Come now, Swan, tell us what you mean by intelligence. There cried Odette, that's one of the big things I beg him to tell me about, and he never will. Oh, but protested Swan. Oh, but nonsense, said Odette. A water, but asked the doctor. To you, pursued Forchevue, does intelligence mean what they call clever talk, you know, the sort of people who worm their way into society? Finish your sweet so that you can take your plate away, said Madame Verdurent, sourly to Sonnier, who was lost and thought and had stopped eating, and then perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness. It doesn't matter. Take your time about it. There is no hurry. I only reminded you because of the others, you know. It keeps the servants back. There is, began Brichot with a resonant smack upon every syllable, a rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist Fennelon. Just listen to this. Madame Verdurent rallied Forchevue and the doctor. He's going to give us Fennelon's definition of intelligence. That's interesting. It's not often you get a chance of hearing that. But Brichot was keeping Fennelon's definition until Swan should have given his own. Swan remained silent. And by this fresh act of recreancy, spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic, which Madame Verdurent was rejoicing at being able to offer Toe Forchevue. You see, it's just the same as with me. Odette was peevish. I'm not at all sorry to see that I'm not the only one that he doesn't find quite up to his level. These de la Trimouise, whom Madame Verdurent has exhibited to us as so little to be desired, inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously. Are they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old snob, Sevingne, said she was delighted to know because it was so good for her peasants. True, the Marquis had another reason, which in her case probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart and always on the lookout for copy. And in the journal, which she used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Madame de la Trimouise kept well informed through all her grand connections who supplied the foreign politics. Oh, dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family, said Madame Verdurent, desperately. Zannier, who ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation and emerged, finally, to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined with the Duke de la Trimouise, the point of which was that the Duke did not know that Georges Saint was the pseudonym of a woman. Swan, who really liked Zannier, felt bound to supply him with a few facts, illustrative of the Duke's culture, which would prove that such ignorance on his part was literally impossible. But suddenly he stopped short. He had realized, as he was speaking, that Zannier needed no proof, but knew already that this story was untrue for the simple reason that he had, at that moment, invented it. The worthy man suffered acutely from the Verdurents always finding him so dull. And, as he was conscious of having been more than ordinarily morose this evening, he had made up his mind that he would succeed in being amusing at least once before the end of dinner. He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the sight of his castle in ruins and replied in so craven, atoned to Swan, appealing to him not to persist in a refutation, which was already superfluous. All right. All right. Anyhow, even if I have made a mistake, that's not a crime, I hope. That swan longed to be able to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and exquisitely funny. The doctor, who had been listening, had an idea that it was the right moment to interject. C'enant et verreau. But he was not quite certain of the words and was afraid of being caught out. After dinner, Forsfield went up to the doctor. She can't have been at all bad looking, Madame Verdurant. Anyhow, she's a woman you can really talk to. That's all I want. Of course, she's getting a bit broad in the beam. But Madame Decressie. There's a little woman who knows what's what. All right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got the American eye that girl has. We are speaking of Madame Decressie. He explained, as Monsieur Verdurant joined them, his pipe in his mouth. I should say that as a specimen of the female form, I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder. The words came tumbling from Qatar, who had been for some time waiting in vain until Forsfield should pause for breath so that he might get in his hoary old joke. A chance for which might not, he feared, come again if the conversation should take a different turn. And he produced it now with that excessive spontaneity and confidence, which may often be noticed, attempting to cover up the coldness and the slight flutter of emotion inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forsfield knew and saw the joke and was thoroughly amused. As for Monsieur Verdurant, he was unsparing of his merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by a symbol different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious. Scarcely had he begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man who was shaking with laughter, then he would begin also to cough. As though in laughing too violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke from his pipe. And by keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth, he could prolong indefinitely the dumb show of suffocation and hilarity. So he and Madame Verdurant, who at the other side of the room, where the painter was telling the story, was shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging her face into her hands, resembled two masts in a theater, each representing comedy, but in a different way. Monsieur Verdurant had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of his mouth. For Quotar, having occasion to leave the room for a moment, murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated now whenever he had to go to the place in question. I must just go and see the Duke de Mal for a moment. So droly that Monsieur Verdurant's cough began all over again. Now then, take your pipe out of your mouth. Can't you see? You'll choke if you try to bottle up your laughter like that, counseled Madame Verdurant as she came round with a tray of liquors. What a delightful man your husband is. He has the wit of a dozen, declared Forchville to Madame Quotar. Thank you, thank you, an old soldier like me can never say no to a drink. Monsieur de Forchville thinks Odette charming. Monsieur Verdurant told his wife, Why, do you know she wants so much to meet you again some day at luncheon? We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swan hear about it. He spoils everything, don't you know? I don't mean to say that you're not to come to dinner too, of course, we hope to see you very often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner out of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet little dinner now and then in the bois? Splendid, splendid, that will be quite delightful. Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say? She screamed suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for a display before a newcomer of Forchville's importance, at once her unfailing wit and her despotic power over the faithful. Monsieur de Forchville was just going to say something dreadful about you. Madame Cotart warned her husband as he reappeared in the room and he, still following up the idea of Forchville's noble birth, which had obsessed him all through dinner, began again with, I am treating a baroness. Just now, baroness putbou. Weren't there some putbouzes in the crusades? Anyhow, they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the size of the Place de la Cogcorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis. She's a charming woman. Madame Verduran knows her, too, I believe, which enabled Forchville, a moment later, finding himself alone with Madame Cotart, to complete his favorable verdict on her husband with he's an interesting man, too. You can see that he knows some good people. Gad, but they get to know a lot of things, those doctors. Do you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for Monsieur Swan, as the pianist? What the devil's that, not the sonata snake, I hope, shouted Monsieur de Forchville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cotart, who had never heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that Monsieur de Forchville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it. No, no, the word isn't serpent a sonate. It's serpent a sonate. He explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient and triumphant. Forchville explained the joke to him. The doctor blushed. You'll admit it's not bad, a doctor. Oh, I've known it for ages. End of section 19. Section 20 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 20. Then they were silenced, heralded by the waving tremolo of the violin part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound, two octaves above it, and, as in a mountainous country, against the seeming immobility of a vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two hundred feet below, the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley. The little phrase had just appeared, distant but graceful, protected by the long, gradual unfurling of its transparent, incessant, and sonorous curtain. And Swan, in his heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as a confidant in the secret of his love, as to a friend of Odette, who would assure him that he'd need pay no attention to this fourcheville. Ah, you've come too late, Madame Verdurand greeted one of the faithful, whose invitation had been only to look in after dinner. We've been having a simply incomparable brief show. You've never heard such eloquence, but he's gone. Isn't that so, Mr. Swan? I believe it's the first time you've met him. She went on to emphasize the fact that it was to her that Swan owed the introduction. Isn't that so? Wasn't he delicious, our brief show? Swan bowed politely. No, you weren't interested, she asked, dryly. Oh, but I assure you I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little too preemptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see him a little less confident at times, a little more tolerant. But one feels that he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound fellow. The party broke up very late. Kotar's first words to his wife were, I have rarely seen Madame Verdurand in such form as she was tonight. What exactly is your Madame Verdurand? A bit of a bad hat, a, said Forsfield to the painter, to whom he had offered a lift. Odette watched his departure with regret. She dared not refuse to let Swan take her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage. And when he asked whether he might come in, replied, I suppose so, with an impatient shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Madame Verdurand said to her husband, did you notice the way Swan laughed, such an idiotic laugh when we spoke about Madame La Tramoye? She had remarked more than once how Swan and Forsfield suppressed the particle d before that lady's name, never doubting that it was done on purpose to show that they were not afraid of a title. She had made up her mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite grasped what grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural corruptness of her speech, overcoming her implacable republicanism, she still said instinctively the de la Tramoye, or rather by an abbreviation sanctified by the usage of music hall singers and writers of the captions beneath caricatures, would elide the de la Tramoye, but she corrected herself at once to Madame La Tramoye. The Duchess, as Swan calls her, she said ironically, with a smile which proved that she was merely quoting and would not herself, except the least responsibility for a classification so pure-rile and absurd. I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid. Monsieur Verderin took it up. He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer, always hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to run with the hair and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between him and Forsfield. There, at least, you have a man who tells you straight out what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't, not like the other fellow who's never definitely fish or foul. Did you notice, by the way, that Odette seemed all out for Forsfield? And I don't blame her either. And then, after all, if Swan tries to come the man of fashion over us, the champion of distressed duchesses, at any rate, the other man has got a title. He's always con de Forsfield. He let the words slip delicately from his lips, as though familiar with every page of the history of that dignity. He were making a strupulously exact estimate of its value in relation to others of the sort. I don't mind saying, Madame Berderin went on, that he saw fit to utter some most venomous and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot. Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the dear good friend of the family who pulls you all to pieces on the stairs as he's going away. Didn't I say so? retorted her husband. He's simply a failure, a poor little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's at all big. Had the truth been known, there was not one of the faithful who was not infinitely more malicious than Swan. But the others would all take the precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with little sparks of emotion and cordiality, while the least indication of reserve on Swan's part undraped in any such conventional formula of, of course, I don't want to say anything to which he would have scorned to descend appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery. There are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least freedom of speech is thought revolting because they have not begun by flattering the public taste and serving up to it the commonplace expressions to which it is used. It was by the same process that Swan infuriated M. Verduran. In his case, as in theirs, it was the novelty of his language, which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his designs. Swan was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the Verduran's and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most rosy light through the admiring eyes of love. As a rule, he made no appointments with Odette, except for the evenings. He was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the day as well. At the same time, he was reluctant to forfeit, even for an hour, the place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly looking out for an opportunity of claiming her attention in any way that would not be displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweler's window, a plant or an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think of sending them to Odette, imagining that the pleasure, which the casual sight of them had given him, would instinctively be felt also by her and would increase her affection for himself. And he would order them to be taken at once to the Rue La Peruse. So as to accelerate the moment in which, as she received an offering from him, he might feel himself, in a sense, transported into her presence. He was particularly anxious always that she should receive these presents before she went out for the evening so that her sense of gratitude towards him might give additional tenderness to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurans. Might even, for all he knew, if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a letter from her before dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep, come on a little extraordinary visit of thanks. As in an earlier phase, when he had experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt upon her character, he sought, now, by that of gratification, to elicit from her fresh particles of her intimate feelings, which she never yet revealed. Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from a creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this as he enjoyed everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself, or merely with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might make of him. Probably, if anyone had said to him at the beginning, it's your position that attracts her, or at this stage, it's your money that she really is in love with. He would not have believed the suggestion, nor would he have been greatly distressed by the thought that people supposed her to be attached to him, that people felt them to be united by any ties, so binding as those of snobbishness or wealth. But even if he had accepted the possibility, it might not have caused him any suffering to discover that Odette's love for him was based on a foundation more lasting than mere affection, or any attractive qualities, which she might have found in him, on a sound commercial interest, an interest which would postpone forever the fatal day on which she might be tempted to bring the relations to an end. For the moment while he lavished presents upon her and performed all manner of services, he could rely on advantages not contained in his person, or in his intellect, could forgo the endless killing effort to make himself attractive. And this delight in being a lover and living by love alone, of the reality of which he was inclined to be doubtful, the price which in the long run he must pay for it, as a dilettante in immaterial sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes. As one sees people who are doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are really enjoyable, become convinced that they are, as also of the rare quality and absolute detachment of their own taste when they have agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in a hotel from which that sight and that sound may be enjoyed. One day when reflections of this order had brought him once again to the memory of the time when someone had spoken to him of Odette as of a kept woman, and when once again he had amused himself with contrasting that strange personification, the kept woman and iridescent mixture of unknown and demoniacal qualities embroidered as in some fantasy of Gustave Moreau with poison-dripping flowers interwoven with precious jewels. With that of Odette upon whose face he had watched the passage of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer, resentment of an act of injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness, which he had seen in earlier days on his own mother's face and on the faces of friends, that Odette, whose conversation had so frequently turned on the things that he himself knew better than anyone, his collections, his room, his old servant, his banker, who kept all his title deeds and bonds. The thought of the banker reminded him that he must call on him shortly to draw some money. And indeed, if during the current month he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in her financial difficulties than in the month before when he had given her five thousand francs, if he refrain from offering her a diamond necklace for which he longed, he would be allowing her admiration for his generosity to decline. That gratitude, which had made him so happy, and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love for her, as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer, had itself diminished. And then suddenly he asked himself whether that was not precisely what was implied by keeping a woman, as if, in fact, that idea of keeping could be derived from elements not at all mysterious nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life, such as that thousand franc note, a familiar and domestic object torn in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying the household accounts and the rent, had locked up high in a drawer in the old writing desk once he had extracted it to send it with four others to Odette. And whether it was not possible to apply to Odette, since he had known her for he never imagined for a moment that she could ever have taken a penny from anyone else before that title, which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her of kept woman. He could not explore the idea further for a sudden access of that mental lethargy, which was with him congenital, intermittent and providential, happened at that moment to extinguish every particle of light in his brain as instantaneously as at a later period when electric lighting had been everywhere installed. It became possible merely by fingering a switch to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind fumbled for a moment in the darkness he took off his spectacles, wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light until he found himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the realization that he must endeavor in the coming month to send Odette six or seven thousand frank notes instead of five, simply as a surprise for her and to give her pleasure. In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was time to meet Odette at the Bergerin's or rather at one of the open-air restaurants, which they like to frequent in the Boise, and especially at St. Cloud, he would go to Dine in one of those fashionable houses in which, at one time, he had been a constant guest. He did not wish to lose touch with people who, for all he knew, might be of use some day to Odette, and thanks to whom he was often, in the meantime, able to procure for her some privilege or pleasure. Besides, he had been used for so long to the refinement and comfort of good society that, side by side with his contempt, there had grown up also a desperate need for it with the result that when he had reached the point after which the humblest lodgings appeared to him as precisely on a par with the most princely mansions, his senses were so thoroughly accustomed to the latter that he could not enter the former without a feeling of acute discomfort. He had the same regard to a degree of identity which they would never have suspected for the little families with small incomes who asked him to dances in their flats, straight upstairs to the fifth floor and the door on the left, as for the Princess de Parme, who gave the most splendid parties in Paris, but he had not the feeling of being actually at the ball when he found himself herded with the fathers of families in the bedroom of the lady of the house, while the spectacle of wash hand stands covered over with towels and of beds converted into cloak rooms with a mass of hats and great coats sprawling over their counterpains gave him the same stifling sensation that nowadays people who have been used for half a lifetime to electric light derive from a smoking lamp or a candle that needs to be snuffed. If he were dining out, he would order his carriage for half past seven. While he changed his clothes, he would be wondering all the time about Odette, and in this way was never alone. For the constant thought of Odette gave to the moments in which he was separated from her the same peculiar charm as those in which she was at his side. He would get into his carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had jumped in after him and had settled down upon his knee, like a pet animal, which he might take everywhere, and would keep with him at the dinner table unobserved by his fellow guests. He would stroke and fondle it, warm himself with it, and as a feeling of languor swept over him would give way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted his throat and nostrils. A new experience, this, as he fastened the bunch of column binds in his buttonhole. He had for some time been feeling neither well nor happy, especially since Odette had brought force field to the verdurans, and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in the country, but he could never summon up the courage to leave Paris even for a day while Odette was there. The weather was warm, it was the finest part of spring, and for all that he was driving through a city of stone to amure himself in a house without grass or garden. What was incessantly before his eyes was a park that he owned near Cambrai, where, at four in the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus bed, thanks for the breeze that was wafted across the fields from Mesuglis, he would enjoy the fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an arbor of horned beams in the garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with forget-me-not and iris, and where, when he sat down to dinner, trained and twined by the gardener's skillful hand, there ran all about his table current bush and rose. After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the bois, or at Saint Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so abruptly, especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the faithful before their normal time, that, on one occasion, the princess de l'homme, at whose house dinner had been so late, that Swan had left before the coffee came in, to join the verdurans on the island in the bois. Observed, really, if Swan were thirty years older and had diabetes, there might be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us all as a joke. He persuaded himself that the springtime charm, which he could not go down to Conbray to enjoy, he would find at least on the Eida Singh or at Saint Cloud. But, as he could think only of Odette, he would return home, not knowing even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young leaves or if the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by the little phrase from the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant piano. If there was none in the garden, the verdurans would have taken immense pains to have a piano brought out, either from a private room or from the restaurant itself, not because Swan was now restored to favor, far from it. But the idea of arranging an ingenious form of entertainment for someone, even for someone whom they disliked, would stimulate them, during the time spent in its preparation, to a momentary sense of cordiality and affection. Now and then he would remind himself that another fine spring evening was drawing to a close, and would force himself to notice the trees in the sky. But the state of excitement into which Odette's presence never failed to throw him, added to a feverish ailment which, for some time now, had scarcely left him, robbed him of that sense of quiet and comfort, which is an indispensable background to the impressions that we derive from nature. One evening when Swan had consented to dine with the verdurans, and had mentioned during dinner that he had to attend, next day, the annual banquet of an old comrade's association, Odette had it once exclaimed, across the table, in front of everyone, in front of Forcheville, who was now one of the faithful, in front of the painter, in front of Qatar. Yes, I know you have your banquet tomorrow. I shan't see you then till I get home. Don't be too late. And although Swan had never taken offense at all seriously, at Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the faithful, he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow before them all, with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each other regularly every evening, his privileged position in her house, and her own preference for him, which it implied. It was true that Swan had often reflected that Odette was, in no way, a remarkable woman, and in the supremacy, which he wielded over a creature so distinctly inferior to himself, there was nothing that especially flattered him when he heard it proclaimed to all the faithful. But since he observed that to several other men than himself, Odette seemed a fascinating and desirable woman. The attraction, which her body held for him, had aroused a painful longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest particles of her heart, and he had begun to attach an incalculable value to those moments passed in her house in the evenings, when he held her upon his knee, made her tell him what she thought about this or that, and counted over that treasure to which, alone of all his earthly positions, he still clung. And so, after this dinner, drawing her aside, he took care to thank her effusively, seeking to indicate to her by the extent of his gratitude the corresponding intensity of the pleasures which was in her power to bestow on him the supreme pleasure being to guarantee him immunity for as long as his love should last, and he remained vulnerable, from the assaults of jealousy. When he came away from his banquet the next evening, it was pouring rain, and he had nothing but his Victoria. A friend offered to take him home in a closed carriage, and as Odette, by the fact of her having invited him to come, had given him an assurance that she was expecting no one else. He could, with a quiet mind, and an untroubled heart, rather than set off thus in the rain, have gone home and to bed. But perhaps if she saw that he seemed not to adhere to his resolution to end every evening without exception in her company, she might grow careless and fail to keep free for him just the one evening on which he particularly desired it. It was after eleven when he reached her door, and as he made his apology for having been unable to come away earlier, she complained that it was indeed very late. The storm had made her unwell, her head ached, and she warned him that she would not let him stay longer than half an hour, that at midnight she would send him away. A little while later she felt tired and wished to sleep. No Catlea tonight. Then he asked, and I've been looking forward so, to a nice little Catlea. But she was irresponsible, saying nervously, No, dear, no Catlea tonight. Can't you see I'm not well? It might have done you good, but I won't bother you. She begged him to put out the light before he went. He drew the curtains close round her bed and left her. But when he was in his own house again, the idea suddenly struck him that perhaps Odette was expecting someone else that evening, that she had merely pretended to be tired, that she had asked him to put the light out only so that he should suppose that she was going to sleep, that the moment he had left the house she had lighted it again, and had reopened her door to the stranger who was to be her guest for the night. He looked at his watch. It was about an hour and a half since he had left her. He went out, took a cab, and stopped it close to her house, in a little street running at right angles to that other street, which lay at the back of her house, and along which he used to go, sometimes, to tap upon her bedroom window for her to let him in. He left his cab. The streets were all deserted and dark. He walked a few yards and came out almost opposite her house. Amid the glimmering blackness of all the row of windows, the lights in which had long since been put out, he saw one, and only one from which overflowed between the slabs of its shutters dosed like a wine-press over its mysterious golden juice, the light that filled the room within, a light which, on so many evenings, as soon as he saw it, far off, as he turned into the street, had rejoiced his heart with its message, she is there, expecting you, and now tortured him with, she is there with the man she was expecting. He must know who. He tiptoed along by the wall until he reached the window, but between the slanting bars of the shutters he could see nothing. He could hear, only in the silence of the night, the murmur of conversation, what agony he suffered as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere were moving behind the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he listened to that murmur, which revealed the presence of the man who had crept in after his own departure, the perfidy of Odette, and the pleasures which she was at that moment tasting with the stranger. And yet he was not sorry that he had come. The torment which had forced him to leave his house had lost its sharpness when it lost its uncertainty. Now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamplight, caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner in that room into which, when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it, or rather he would tap upon the shutters as he had often done, when he had come there very late. And by that signal Odette would at least learn that he knew, that he had seen the light, and had heard the voices while he himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him, as sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been tricked. Now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in their error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they believed to be a mile away, but who was there in person, there with a plan, there with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to tap upon the shutter. And perhaps what he felt, almost an agreeable feeling, at that moment, was something more than relief at the solution of a doubt, at the soothing of a pain, was an intellectual pleasure. If, since he had fallen in love, things had recovered a little of the delicate attraction that they had for him long ago, though only when a light was shed upon them by a thought, a memory of Odette. Now it was another of the faculties prominent in the studious days of his youth that Odette had quickened with new life the passion for truth, but for a truth which, too, was interposed between himself and his mistress, receiving its light from her alone, a private and personal truth. The sole object of which, an infinitely precious object, and one almost impersonal in its absolute beauty, was Odette. Odette in her activities, her environment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in his life, the little everyday words and actions of another person had always seemed wholly valueless to Swan. If gossip about such things were repeated to him, he would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he listened, it was only the lowest, the most commonplace part of his mind that was interested. At such moments he felt utterly dull and uninspired, but in this strange phase of love the personality of another person becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity which he could now feel aroused in himself to know the least details of a woman's daily occupation was the same thirst for knowledge with which he had once studied history, and all manner of actions from which until now he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying tonight outside a window, tomorrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants listening at doors, seemed to him now to be precisely on a level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation of old monuments that was to say so many different methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for truth. As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at the thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that he had returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She had often told him what a horror she had of jealous men of lovers who spied. What he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would detest him forever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as he refrained from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she loved him still. How often is not the prospect of future happiness thus sacrificed to one's impatient insistence upon an immediate gratification, but his desire to know the truth was stronger and seemed to him nobler than his desire for her. He knew that the true story of certain events which he would have given his life to be able to reconstruct accurately and in full was to be read within that window, straight with bars of light, as within the illuminated golden boards of one of those precious manuscripts by whose wealth of artistic treasures the scholar who consults them cannot remain unmoved. He yearned for the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so impassioned him in that brief, fleeting, precious transcript on that translucent page so warm, so beautiful. And besides the advantage which he felt, which he so desperately wanted to feel, that he had over them, lay perhaps not so much in knowing as in being able to show them that he knew. He drew himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not heard. He knocked again, louder. Their conversation ceased. A man's voice. He strained his ears to distinguish whose among such of Odette's friends as he knew the voice could be. Asked, who's that? He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window, first. Then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late now to retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible, too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty, welcoming tone. Please don't bother. I just happened to be passing and saw the light. I wanted to know if you were feeling better. He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him in the window, one of them with a lamp in his hand, and beyond that he could see into the room, a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the habit, when he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by the fact that it was the only one still lighted in a row of windows otherwise all alike, he had been misled this time by the light, and had not at the window beyond hers in the adjoining house. He made what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having feigned for so long, when in Odette's company a sort of indifference, he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her proof that the excess of his own passion, which, in a pair of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure. He ceased to think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory, where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. As though this had been a bodily pain, Swan's mind was powerless to alleviate it. In the case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent of the mind, the mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished, that it has momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind, merely by recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in conversations with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word casually uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does when a clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from Odette he was happy, he felt calm. He recalled the smile with which, in gentle mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile which was all tenderness for himself. He recalled the gravity of her head when she seemed to have lifted it from its axis to let it group and fall, as though against her will upon his lips. As she had done on that first evening in the carriage, her languishing gaze at him, while she lay nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold. But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love, presented him with the compliment, with the converse of that new smile with which she had greeted him that very evening, with which now, perversely, she was mocking Swan, while she tendered her love to another of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other lips, and but bestowed upon a stranger of all the marks of affection that she had shown to him. In all these voluptuous memories, which he bore away from her house, were, as one might say, but so many sketches, rough plans, like the schemes of decoration which a designer submits to one in outline, enabling Swan to form an idea of the various attitudes, a flame, or faint with passion, which she was capable of adopting for others. With the result that he came to regret every pleasure that he tasted in her company, every new caress that he invented, and had been so imprudent as to point out to her how delightful it was, every fresh charm that he found in her, for he knew that a moment later, they would go to enrich the collection of instruments in his secret torture chamber. A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swan recalled a sudden expression which he had intercepted a few days earlier, and for the first time in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verderans, whether it was because Forcheville, aware that Sanyet, his brother-in-law, was not in favor with them, had decided to make a butt of him, and to shine at his expense, or because he had been annoyed by some awkward remark which Sanyet had made to him, although it had passed unnoticed by the rest of the party, who knew nothing of whatever tactless illusion it might conceal, or possibly because he had been for some time looking out for an opportunity of securing the expulsion from the house of a fellow guest who knew rather too much about him, and whom he knew to be so nice-minded that he himself could not help feeling embarrassed at times merely by his presence in the room. Forcheville replied to Sanyet's tactless utterance with such a volley of abuse going out of his way to insult him, emboldened, the louder he shouted, by the fear, the pain, the entreaties of his victim, that the poor creature, after asking Madame Verdurant whether he should stay, and receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering confusion, and with tears in his eyes Odette had looked on impassive at this scene. But when the door had closed behind Sanyet, she had forced the normal expression of her face down, as the saying is by several pegs, so as to bring herself on the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville. Her eyes had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his audacity, of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim. She had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly implied that's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you see what a fool he looked? He was actually crying. That Forcheville, when his eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger or pretended anger with which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained, he need only have made himself pleasant, and he'd have been here still. A good scolding does a man no harm at any time. One day when Swan had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call, and had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it occurred to him to go, instead, to Odette. At an hour when, although he never went to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at home resting or writing letters until tea time, and would enjoy seeing her for a moment if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he believed Odette to be in. Swan rang the bell, thought that he heard a sound, that he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and annoyed, he went around to the other little street at the back of her house, and stood beneath her bedroom window. The curtains were drawn, and he could see nothing. He knocked loudly upon the pain. He shouted. Still no one came. He could see that the neighbors were staring at him. He turned away, thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in believing that he heard footsteps, but he remained so preoccupied with the suspicion that he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting for an hour, he returned. He found her at home. She told him that she had been in the house when he rang, but had been asleep. The bell had awakened her. She had guessed that it must be Swan, and had run out to meet him, but he had already gone. She had, of course, heard him knocking at the window. Swan could at once detect, in this story, one of those fragments of literal truth, which liars, when taken by a surprise, consoled themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood, which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated, and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude. It was true that, when Odette had just done something, which she did not wish to disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in a secret place in her heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy. All her ideas melted like wax before a flame. Her inventive and her reasoning faculties were paralyzed. She might ransack her brain, but would find only a void. Still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which being the truth was the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny fragment of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it was the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. At any rate, this is true, she said to herself. That's always something to the good. He may make inquiries. He will see that this is true. It won't be this anyhow. That will give me away. But she was wrong. It was what gave her away. She had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it. Edges which, whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it, would continue to show, by their overlapping angles, and by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was elsewhere.