section 15 of Swan's Way this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer visit LibriVox.org Swan's Way by Marcel Proust translated by CK Scott Mudcreef section 15 swan in love to admit you to the little nucleus the little group the little clan at the verdurant one condition sufficed but that one was indispensable you must give tacit adherence to a creed one of whose articles was that the young pianist whom Madame verdurant had taken under her patronage that year and of whom she said really it oughtn't to be allowed to play Wagner as well as that left both Plante and Rubenstein sitting while Dr. Quotar was a more brilliant diagnostician than potin each new recruit whom the verdurants failed to persuade that the evenings spent by other people in other houses than theirs were as dull as ditchwater saw himself banished forthwith women being in this respect more rebellious than men more reluctant to lay aside all worldly curiosity and the desire to find out for themselves whether other drawing rooms might not sometimes be as entertaining and the verdurant feeling moreover that this critical spirit and this demon of frivolity might by their contagion prove fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church they had been obliged to expel one after another all those of the faithful who were of the female sex apart from the doctors young wife they were reduced almost exclusively that season for all that madame verdurant herself was a thoroughly good woman and came of a respectable middle class family excessively rich and wholly undistinguished with which she had gradually and of her own accord severed all connection to a young woman almost of a certain class a madame du crissie whom madame verdurant called by her christian name Odette and pronounced a love and to the pianist's aunt who looked as though she had at one period answered the bell ladies quite ignorant of the world who in their social simplicity were so easily led to believe that the process de saga and the du chess de grimoire were obliged to pay large sums of money to other poor wretches in order to have anyone at their dinner parties that if somebody had offered to procure them an invitation to the house of either of those great dames the old doorkeeper and the woman of easy virtue would have contemptuously declined the verdurant never invited you to dinner you had your place laid there there was never any program for the evening's entertainment the young pianist would play but only if he felt inclined for no one was forced to do anything and as mature verdurant used to say we're all friends here liberty hall you know if the pianist suggested playing the ride of the balconies or the prelude to tree stonk madame verdurant would protest not that the music was displeasing to her but on the contrary that it made too violent an impression then you want me to have one of my headaches you know quite well it's the same every time he plays that I know what I'm in for tomorrow when I want to get up nothing doing if he was not going to play they talked and one of the friends usually the painter who was in favor there that year would spin as Mr. Verdurant put it a damned funny yarn that made him all split with laughter and especially Madame Verdurant for whom so strong was her habit of taking literally the figurative accounts of her emotions Dr. Kotar who was then just starting in general practice would really have to come one day and set her jaw which she had dislocated with laughing too much evening dress was barred because you were all good pals and didn't want to look like the boring people who were to be avoided like the plague and only asked to the big evenings which were given a seldom as possible and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician better known the rest of the time you were quite happy playing charades and having supper in fancy dress and there was no need to mingle any strange element with the little clan but just as the good pals came to take a more and more prominent place in Madame Verdurant's life so the boars the nuisances grew to include everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her that made them sometimes plead previous engagements the mother of one the professional duties of another the little place in the country of a third if dr. Kotar felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose from table so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill I don't know Madame Verdurant would say I'm sure it will do him far more good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening he will have a good night without you tomorrow morning you can go round early and you will find him cured from the beginning of December it would make her quite ill to think that the faithful might fail her on Christmas and New Year's days the pianist aunt insisted that he must accompany her on the ladder to a family dinner at her mother's you don't suppose she'll die your mother exclaimed Madame Verdurant bitterly if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day like people in the provinces her uneasiness was kindled again in holy week now you doctor you're a sensible broad-minded man you'll come of course on Good Friday just like any other day she said to Kotar in the first year of the little nucleus in a loud and confident voice as though there could be no doubt of his answer but she trembled as she waited for it for if he did not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone I shall come on Good Friday to say goodbye to you for we are going to spend the holidays in Overn in Overn to be eaten by flies and all sorts of creatures a fine lot of good that will do you and after a solemn pause if you had only told us we would have tried to get up a party and all gone there together comfortably and so too if one of the faithful had a friend or one of the ladies a young man who was liable now and then to make them miss an evening the verdurant who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a lover provided that she had him in their company loved him in their company and did not prefer him to their company would say very well then bring your friend along and he would be put to the test to see whether he was willing to have no secrets from Madame verdurant whether he was susceptible of being enrolled in the little clan if he failed to pass the faithful one who had introduced him would be taken on one side and would be tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or mistress but if the test proved satisfactory the newcomer would in turn be numbered among the faithful and so when in the course of the same year the courtesan told monsieur verdurant that she had made the acquaintance of such a charming gentleman monsieur swan and hinted that he would very much like to be allowed to come monsieur verdurant carried the request at once to his wife he never formed an opinion on any subject until she had formed hers his special duty being to carry out her wishes and those of the faithful generally which he did with boundless ingenuity my dear madame du crescey has something to say to you she would like to bring one of her friends here a monsieur swan what do you say why as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of perfection like that be quiet no one asked your opinion i tell you that you are a piece of perfection just as you like replied odette in an affected tone and then went on you know i am not fishing for compliments very well bring your friend if he's nice now there was no connection whatsoever between the little nucleus and the society which swan frequented and a purely worldly man would have thought it hardly worth his while when occupying so exceptional a position in the world to seek an introduction to the verdurant but swan was so ardent a lover that once he had got to know almost all the women of the aristocracy once they had taught him all that there was to learn he had ceased to regard those naturalization papers almost a patent of nobility which the fauberg sage german had bestowed upon him save as a sort of negotiable bond a letter of credit with no intrinsic value which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in the country or in some obscure quarter of paris where the good-looking daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken his fancy for at such times desire or love itself would revive in him a feeling of vanity from which he was now quite free in his everyday life although it was no doubt the same feeling which had originally prompted him towards that career as a manifestation in which he had squandered his intellectual gifts upon frivolous amusements and had made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses and this vanity it was which made him eager to shine in the sight of any fair unknown who had captivated him for the moment with a brilliance which the name of swan by itself did not emit and he was most eager when the fair unknown was in humble circumstances just as it is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought a fool so it is not by the great gentleman but by boars and bounders that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated three fours of the mental ingenuity displayed of the social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people whose importance they have served only to diminish have been aimed at inferiors and swan who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when with a duchess would tremble for fear of being despised and would instantly begin to pose where he to meet her graces made unlike so many people who either from lack of energy or else from a resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the stream of life abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above and below that point that degree in life in which they will remain fixed until the day of their death and are content in the end to describe as pleasures for want of any better those mediocre distractions that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there with them swan would endeavor not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he must pass time but to pass his time among women whom he had already found to be beautiful and charming and these were as often as not women whose beauty was of a distinctly common type for the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively and without reason were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women painted or sculptured by his favorite masters depth of character or a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses which would however immediately melt at the sight of healthy abundant rosy human flesh if on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct for him to make no attempt to know but among whom a woman caught his eye adorned with a special charm that was new to him to remain on his high horse and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him to substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come and join him would have seemed to him as cowardly and abdication in the face of life as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if instead of visiting the country where he was he had shot himself up in his own rooms and looked at views of Paris he did not ignore himself in the solid structure of his social relations but had made of them so as to be able to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman might take his fancy one of those collapsible tents which explorers carry about with them any part of it which was not portable or could not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless however enviable it might appear to others how often had his credit with the duchess built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to do him some favor for which she had never found an opportunity been squandered in a moment by his calling upon her in an indiscreetly worded message for a recommendation by telegraph which would put him in touch at once with one of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in the country just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a crust of bread indeed when it was too late he would laugh at himself for it for there was in his nature redeemed by many rare refinements an element of clownishness then he belonged to that class of intelligent men who have led a life of idleness and who seek consolation and perhaps an excuse in the idea which their idleness offers to their intelligence of objects as worthy of their interest as any that could be attained by art or learning the idea that life contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written so at least he would assure and had no difficulty in persuading the more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world notably the Baron du Chaloux whom he liked to amuse with stories of the startling adventures that had befallen him such as when he had met a woman in the train and had taken her home with him before discovering that she was the sister of a reigning monarch in whose hands were gathered at that moment all the threads of european politics of which he found himself kept informed in the most delightful fashion or when in the complexity of circumstances it depended upon the choice which the conclave was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover of somebody's cook it was not only the brilliant failings of virtuous dowagers generals and academicians to whom he was bound by such close ties that swan compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders all his friends were accustomed to receive from time to time letters which called on them for a word of recommendation or introduction with a diplomatic adroitness which persisting throughout all his successive affairs and using different pretexts revealed more claringly than the clumsiest in discretion a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest i used often to recall to myself when many years later i began to take an interest in his character because of the similarities which in holy different respects it offered to my own how when he used to write to my grandfather though not at the time we are now considering for it was about the date of my own birth that swan's great affair began and made a long interruption in his amatory practices the latter recognizing his friend's handwriting on the envelope would exclaim here is swan asking for something on guard and either from distressed or from the unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us to offer a thing only to those who do not want it my grandparents would meet with an obstinate refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers as when he begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with us every sunday and whom they were obliged whenever swan mentioned her to pretend that they no longer saw although they would be wondering all through the week whom they could invite to meet her and often failed in the end to find anyone sooner than make a sign to him who would so gladly have accepted occasionally a couple of my grandparents acquaintance who had been complaining for some time that they never saw swan now would announce with satisfaction and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my grandparents envious of them that he had suddenly become as charming as he possibly could be and was never out of their house my grandfather would not care to shatter their pleasant delusion but would look at my grandmother as he hummed the air of what is this mystery i cannot understand it or of vision fugitive in matters such as this tis best to close one's eyes a few months later if my grandfather asked swan's new friend what about swan do you still see as much of him as ever the others face would lengthen never mention his name to me again but i thought you were such friends he had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins of my grandmother dining almost every evening at their house suddenly and without warning he ceased to appear they supposed him to be ill and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him when in her kitchen she found a letter in his hand which her cook had left by accident in the housekeeping book in this he announced that he was leaving paris and would not be able to come to the house again the cook had been his mistress and at the moment of breaking off relations she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary to inform but when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society or at least one whose birth was not so lowly nor her position so irregular that he was unable to arrange for her reception in society then for her sake he would return to it but only to the particular orbit in which she moved or into which he had drawn her no good depending on swan for this evening people would say don't you remember it's his americans night at the opera he would secure invitations for her to the most exclusive drawing rooms to those houses where he himself went regularly for weekly dinners or for poker every evening after a slight wave and parted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered with a certain softness the ardor of his bold green eyes he would select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at the house of one or other of the women of his circle and then thinking of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk whom he always treated exactly as he pleased would when he met them there lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved he would find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown weary but whose substance pervaded and warmly colored by the flickering light which he had slipped into its midst seemed to him beautiful and rare now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love but while each of these attachments each of these flirtations had been the realization more or less complete of a dream born of the sight of a face or a form which swan had spontaneously and without effort on his part found charming it was quite another matter when one day at the theater he was introduced to Odette du Crécy by an old friend of his own who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom he might very possibly come to an understanding but had made her out to be harder of conquest than she actually was so as to appear to be conferring a special favor by the introduction she had struck swan not certainly as being devoid of beauty but as endowed with a style of beauty which left him indifferent which aroused in him no desire which gave him indeed a sort of physical repulsion as one of those women of whom every man can name some and each will name different examples who are the converse of the type which our senses demand to give him any pleasure her profile was too sharp her skin too delicate her cheekbones too prominent her features too tightly drawn her eyes were fine but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath her own weight strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in an ill humor sometime after this introduction at the theater she had written to swan whether she might see his collections which would interest her so much she an ignorant woman with a taste for beautiful things saying that she would know him better when once she had seen him in his home where she had imagined him to be so comfortable with his tea and his books although she had not concealed her surprise at his being in that part of town which must be so depressing and was not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man and when he allowed her to come she had said to him as she left house sorry she was to have stayed so short a time in a house into which she was so glad to have found her way at last speaking of him as though he had meant something more to her than the rest of the people she knew and appearing to unite their two selves with a kind of romantic bond which had made him smile but at the time of life tinged already with disenchantment which swan was approaching when a man can content himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting too much in return this linking of hearts if it is no longer as in early youth the goal towards which love of necessity tends still is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well become the cause of love if it presents itself first in his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves later the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her and fifty at an age when it would appear since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in its procreation love may come into being love of the most physical order without any foundation in desire at this time of life a man has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love it no longer evolves by itself obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws before his passive and astonished heart we come to its aid we falsify it by memory and by suggestion recognizing one of its symptoms we recall and recreate the rest since we possess its him engraved on our hearts in its entirety there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires for us to remember all that follows and if she begin in the middle where it sings of our existing hints forward for one another only we are well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner without hesitation at the first pause in her voice Odette de Chrissy came again to see Swan her visits grew more frequent and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he felt at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the interval not remembering it either so expressive or in spite of her youth so faded he used to regret while she was talking to him that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he spontaneously admired it must be remarked that Odette's face appeared thinner and more prominent than it actually was because her forehead and the upper part of her cheeks a single and almost plain surface were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that period drawn forward in a fringe raised in crimped waves and falling in stray locks over her ears while as for her figure and she was admirably built it was impossible to make out its continuity on account of the fashion then prevailing and in spite of her being one of the best dressed women in Paris for the corset jetting forwards in an arch as though over an imaginary stomach and ending in a sharp point beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts gave a woman that year the appearance of being composed of different sections badly fitted together to such an extent did the frills the flounces the inner bodice follow in complete independence controlled only by the fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material the line which led them to the knots of ribbons falls of lace fringes of vertically hanging jet or carried them along the bust but nowhere attached themselves to the living creature who according as the architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her own found herself either straight laced to suffocation or else completely buried but after Odette had left him swan would think with the smile of her telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again he remembered the anxious timid way in which she had once begged him that it might not be very long and the way in which she had looked at him then fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze which gave her a touching air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in the front of her round bonnet of white straw tied with strings of black velvet and won't you she had ventured come just once and take tea with me he had pleaded pressure of work an essay which in reality he had abandoned years ago on Vermeer or Delft I know that I am quite useless she had replied a little wild thing like me beside a learned great man like you I should be like the frog in the fable and yet I should so much like to learn to know things to be initiated what fun it would be to become a regular bookworm to bury my nose in a lot of old papers she had gone on with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself up without fear of soiling her fingers to some unclean task such as cooking the dinner with her hands right in the dish itself you will only laugh at me but this painter who stops you from seeing me she meant Vermeer I have never even heard of him is he alive still can I see any of his things in Paris so as to have some idea of what is going on behind that great brow which works so hard that head which I feel sure is always puzzling away about things just to be able to say there that's what he's thinking about what a dream it would be to be able to help you with your work he had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships which he gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion you are afraid of falling in love how funny that is when I go about seeking nothing else and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere she had said so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had been genuinely touched some woman must have made you suffer and you think that the rest are all like her she can't have understood you you are so utterly different from ordinary men that's what I liked about you when I first saw you I felt at once that you weren't like everybody else and then besides there's yourself he had continued I know what women are you must have a whole heap of things to do and never any time to spare I why I have never anything to do I am always free and I always will be free if you want me at whatever hour of the day or night it may suit you to see me just send for me and I shall be only too delighted to come will you do that do you know what I should really like to introduce you to Madame Verduran where I go every evening just fancy my finding you there and thinking that it was a little for my sake that you had gone no doubt in thus remembering their conversations in thinking about her thus when he was alone he did no more than call her image into being among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams but if thanks to some accidental circumstance or even perhaps without that assistance for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment when a mental state hitherto latent makes itself felt may well have had no influence whatsoever upon that state the image of Odette de Chrissy came to absorb the whole of his dreams if from those dreams the memory of her could no longer be eliminated then her bodily imperfections would no longer be of the least importance nor would the conformity of her body more or less than any other to the requirements of Swan's taste since having become the body of her whom he loved it must henceforth be the only one capable of causing him joy or anguish it so happened that my grandfather had known which was more than could be said of any other actual acquaintance the family of these verdurant but he had entirely severed his connection with what he called young verdurant taking a general view of him as one who had fallen though without losing hold of his millions among the riffraff of Bohemia one day he received a letter from Swan asking whether my grandfather could put him in touch with the verdurant on guard on guard he exclaimed as he read it I am not at all surprised Swan was bound to finish up like this a nice lot of people I cannot do what he asks because in the first place I no longer know the gentleman in question besides there must be a woman in it somewhere and I don't mix myself up in such matters ah well we shall see some fun if Swan begins running after the little verdurant and on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor it was Odette herself who had taken Swan to the house the verdurant had had dining with them on the day when Swan made his first appearance Dr. and Madame Cotard the young pianist and his aunt and the painter then in favor while these were joined in the course of the evening by several more of the faithful Dr. Cotard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to reply to any observation or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest and so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious but as he must also be prepared to face the alternative he never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features and you would see there a perpetually flickering uncertainty in which you might decipher the question that he never dared to ask do you really mean that he was no more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the street or indeed in life generally than he was in a drawing room and he might be seen greeting passersby carriages and anything that occurred with a malicious smile which absolved his subsequent behavior of all in propriety since it proved if it should turn out unsuited to the occasion that he was well aware of that and that if he had assumed a smile the just was a secret of his own on all these points however where a plain question appeared to him to be permissible the doctor was unsparing in his endeavors to cultivate the wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his education so it was that following the advice given him by a wise mother on his first coming up to the capital from his provincial home he would never let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it as regards figures of speech he was insatiable in his thirst for knowledge for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than was actually the case he would want to know what exactly was intended by those which he most frequently heard used devilish pretty blue blood a cat and dog life a day of reckoning a queen of fashion to give a free hand to be at a deadlock and so forth and in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in conversation failing these he would adorn it with puns and other plays upon words which he had learned by rote as for the names of strangers which were uttered in his hearing he used merely to repeat them to himself in a questioning tone which he thought would suffice to furnish him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek as the critical faculty on the universal application of which he prided himself was in reality completely lacking that refinement of good breeding which which consists in assuring someone whom you are obliging in any way without expecting to be believed that it is really yourself that is obliged to him was wasted on kotar who took everything that he heard in its literal sense however blind she may have been to his faults madame verdurant was genuinely annoyed though she still continued to regard him as brilliantly clever when after she had invited him to see and hear sarah bernhardt from a stage box and had said politely it is very good of you to have come doctor especially as i'm sure you must often have heard sarah bernhardt and besides i'm afraid we're rather too near the stage the doctor who had come into the box with a smile which waited before settling upon or vanishing from his face until someone in authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the spectacle replied to be sure we are far too near the stage and one is getting sick of sarah bernhardt but you expressed a wish that i should come for me your wish is a command i am only too glad to be able to do you this little service what would one not do to please you you are so good and he went on sarah bernhardt that's what they call the voice of god ain't it you see often too that she sets the boards on fire that's an odd expression ain't it in the hope of an enlightening commentary which however was not forthcoming do you know madame verdurant has said to her husband i believe we are going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the doctor he is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday existence he knows nothing himself of what things are worth and he accepts everything that we say as gospel i never dared to mention it mr verdurant had answered but i've noticed the same thing myself and on the following new year's day instead of sending dr cotar a ruby that cost 3000 francs and pretending that it was a mere trifle mr verdurant bought an artificial stone for 300 and let it be understood that it was something almost impossible to match when madame verdurant announced that they were to see mr swan that evening swan the doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal by his astonishment for the smallest piece of news would always take utterly unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in readiness for anything and seeing that no one answered him swan who on earth is swan he shouted in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided as soon as madame verdurant had explained why odette's friend whom she told us about ah good good that's all right then answered the doctor at once modified as for the painter he was overjoyed at the prospect of swans appearing at the verdurant because he supposed him to be in love with odette and was always ready to assist at lover's meetings nothing amuses me more than matchmaking he confided to cotar i have been tremendously successful even with women in telling the verdurant that swan was extremely smart odette had alarmed them with the prospect of another borer when he arrived however he made an excellent impression an indirect cause of which though they did not know it was his familiarity with the best society he had indeed one of those advantages which men who have lived and moved in the world enjoy over others even men of intelligence and refinement who have never gone into society namely that they no longer see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills the imagination but regarded as quite unimportant their good nature freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly grown independent in fact has the ease the grace of movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of his body the simple and elementary gestures used by a man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown youth who is being introduced to him and when he bows discreetly before the ambassador to whom he is being introduced had gradually pervaded without his being conscious of it the whole of swan's social deportment so that in the company of people of a lower grade than his own such as the verdurant and their friends he instinctively showed an assiduity and made overtures with which by their account any of their boars would have dispensed he chilled though for a moment only on meeting dr cotar for seeing him close one eye with an ambiguous smile before they had yet spoken to one another a grimace which cotar styled let in a mall come swan supposed that the doctor recognized him from having met him already somewhere probably in some house of ill fame though these he himself rarely visited never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love regarding such an illusion as in bad taste especially before Odette whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse swan assumed his most icy manner but when he learned that the lady next to the doctor was madame cotar he decided that so young a husband would not deliberately in his wife's hearing have made any illusion to amusements of that order and so cease to interpret the doctor's expression in the sense which he had at first suspected the painter at once invited swan to visit his studio with odette and swan found him very pleasant perhaps you will be more highly favored than i have been madam verdoran broken with mock resentment of the favor perhaps you will be allowed to see cotar's portrait for which he had given the painter a commission take care master bish she reminded the painter whom it was a time honored pleasantry to address as master to catch that nice look in his eyes that witty little twinkle you know what i want to have most of all is his smile that's what i've asked you to paint the portrait of his smile and since the phrase struck her as noteworthy she repeated it very loud so as to make sure that as many as possible of her guests should hear it and even made use of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer before she uttered it again end of section 15 read by denis sears in medesto california for liverbox section 16 of swan's way this is a liverbox recording all liverbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer visit liverbox.org swan's way by marcel proust translated by ck scott moncreef section 16 swan in love continued swan begged to be introduced to everyone even to the old friend of the verdurant called son yet whose shyness simplicity and good nature had deprived him of all the consideration due to his skill in paleography his large fortune and the distinguished family to which he belonged when he spoke his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown all the consonants which he did not manage to pronounce seemed like harsh utterances of which his gentle lips were incapable by asking to be made known to mr son yet swan made mr verduran reverse the usual form of introduction saying in fact with emphasis on the distinction mr swan pray let me present to you our friend son yet but he aroused in son yet himself a warmth of gratitude which however the verduran never disclosed to swan since son yet rather annoyed them and they did not feel bound to provide him with friends on the other hand the verduran were extremely touched by swan's next request for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the pianists aunt she wore a black dress as was her invariable custom for she believed that a woman always looked well in black and that nothing could be more distinguished but her face was exceedingly red as it always was for some time after a meal she bowed to swan with deference but drew herself up again with great dignity as she was entirely uneducated and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and pronunciation she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling manner thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had actually made it or not with the result that her talk was a sort of continuous blurred expectation out of which would emerge at rare intervals those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive swan supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in conversation with monsieur verduran who however was not at all amused she is such an excellent woman he rejoined i grant you that she is not exactly brilliant but i assure you that she can talk most charmingly when you are along with her i am sure she can swan hasten to conciliate him all i meant was that she hardly struck me as distinguished he went on isolating the epithet in the inverted commas of his tone and after all that is something of a compliment wait a moment said monsieur verduran now this will surprise you she writes quite delightfully you have never heard her nephew play it is admirable a doctor would you like me to ask him to play something monsieur swan i should count myself most fortunate swan was beginning a trifle pompously when the doctor broke in derisively having once heard it said and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the use of formal expressions were out of date whenever he heard a solemn word used seriously as the word fortunate had been used just now by swan he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately pedantic and if moreover the same word happened to occur also in what he called an old tag or saw however common it might still be in current usage the doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a joke and interrupted with the remaining words of the quotation which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended to introduce at that point although in reality it had never entered his mind most fortunate for france he recited wickedly shooting up both arms with great vigor monsieur verduran could not help laughing what are all those good people laughing at over there there is no sign of brooding melancholy down in your corner shouted madame verduran you don't suppose i find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on the stool of repentance she went on peevishly like a spoiled child madame verduran was sitting upon a high swedish chair of waxed pinewood which a violinist from that country had given her and which she kept in her drawing room although in appearance it suggested a school form and swore as the saiyan is at the really good antique furniture which she had besides but she made a point of keeping on view the presence which her faithful were in the habit of making her from time to time so that the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there when they came to the house she tried to persuade them to confine their tributes to flowers and sweets which had at least the merit of mortality but she was never successful and the house was gradually filled with a collection of foot warmers cushions clocks screens barometers and vases a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity of useless but indestructible objects from this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation of the faithful and would revel in all their fun but since the accident to her jaw she had abandoned the effort involved in real hilarity and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb show which signified without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way that she was laughing until she cried at the least witticism aimed by any of the circle against a boar or against a former member of the circle who was now relegated to the limbo of boars and to the utter despair of mr verduran who had always made out that he was just as easily amused as his wife but who since his laughter was the real thing was out of breath in a moment and so was overtaken and vanquished by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity she would utter a shrill cry shut tight her little bird-like eyes which were beginning to be clouded over by a cataract and quickly as though she had only just time to avoid some in decent sight or to parry a mortal blow burying her face in her hands which completely engulfed it and prevented her from seeing anything at all she would appear to be struggling to suppress to eradicate a laugh which were she to give way to it must inevitably leave her inanimate so stupefied with the gaiety of the faithful drunken with comradeship scandal and a separation madame verduran perched on her high seat like a cage bird whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine would sit aloft and sob with fellow feeling meanwhile mr verduran after first asking swan's permission to light his pipe no ceremony here you understand where all pals went and begged the young musician to sit down at the piano leave him alone don't bother him he hasn't come here to be tormented cried madame verduran i won't have him tormented but why on earth should it bother him rejoin mr verduran i'm sure mr swan has never heard the sonata in f sharp which we discovered he is going to play us the piano forte arrangement no no no not my sonata she screamed i don't want to be made to cry until i get a cold in the head and neuralgia all down my face like last time thanks very much i don't intend to repeat that performance you are all very kind and considerate it is easy to see that none of you will have to stay in bed for a week this little scene which was reenacted as often as the young pianist sat down to play never failed to delight the audience as though each of them were witnessing it for the first time as a proof of the seductive originality of the mistress as she was styled and of the acute sensitiveness of her musical ear those nearest to her would attract the attention of the rest who were smoking or playing cards at the other end of the room by their cries of here here which as in parliamentary debates showed that something worth listening to was being said and next day they would commiserate with those who had been prevented from coming that evening and would assure them that the little scene had never been so amusingly done well all right then said mr verduran he can play just the andante just the andante how you do go on cried his wife as if it weren't just the andante that breaks every bone in my body the master is really too priceless just as though in the ninth he said we need only have the finale or just the overture of the meister singer the doctor however urged madame verduran to let the pianist play and not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the distressing effects that music always had upon her for he recognized the existence of certain neurasthenic states but from his habit common to many doctors of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription as soon as it appeared to jeopardize what seemed to him far more important the success of some social gathering at which he was present and of which his patient whom he had urged for once to forget her dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor you won't be ill this time you'll find he told her seeking at the same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze and if you are ill we will cure you will you really madame verduran spoke as though with so great a favor and store for her there was nothing for it but to capitulate perhaps to by dent of saying that she was going to be ill she had worked herself into a state in which she forgot occasionally that it was all only a little scene and regarded things quite sincerely from an invalid's point of view for it may often be remarked that invalids grow weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend always on their own prudence in avoiding them in light to let themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most enjoy although they are always ill after doing it provided only that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority which without putting them to the least in convenience can and will by uttering a word or by administering a tabloid set them once again upon their feet odette had gone to sit on a tapestry covered sofa near the piano saying to madame verduran i have my own little corner have a die and madame verduran seeing swan by himself upon a chair made him get up you're not at all comfortable there go along and sit by odette you can make room for mr swan there can't you odette what charming bovet said swan stopping to admire the sofa before he sat down on it and wishing to be polite i am glad you appreciate my sofa replied madame verduran and i warn you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well abandon the idea at once they never made any more like it and these little chairs too are perfect marvels you can look at them in a moment the emblems in each of the bronze moldings correspond to the subject of the tapestry on the chair you know you combine amusement with instruction when you look at them i can promise you a delightful time i assure you just look at the little border around the edges here look the little vine on a red background in this one the bear and the grapes isn't it well drawn what do you say i think they knew a thing or two about design doesn't it make your mouth water this vine my husband makes out that i am not fond of fruit because i eat less than he does but not a bit of it i am greedier than any of you but i have no need to fill my mouth with them when i can feed on them with my eyes what are you all laughing at now pray ask the doctor he will tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge some people go to the fountain blue for cures i take my own little bovet cure here but miss your swan you mustn't run away without feeling the little bronze moldings on the backs isn't it an exquisite surface no no not with your whole hand like that feel them properly if madame verdera is going to start playing about her bronzes said the painter we shan't get any music tonight be quiet you wretch and yet we poor women she went on our forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this there is no flesh in the world as soft as these none when mesur verduran did me the honor of being madly jealous come you might at least be polite don't say that you never have been jealous but my dear i have said absolutely nothing look here doctor i call you as a witness did i utter a word swan had begun out of politeness to finger the bronzes and did not like to stop come along you can caress them later now it is you that are going to be caressed caressed in the ear you'll like that i think here's the young gentleman who will take charge of that after the pianist had played swan felt and showed more interest in him than in any of the other guests for the following reason the year before at an evening party he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin at first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted and it had been a source of keen pleasure when below the narrow ribbon of the violin part delicate unyielding substantial and governing the whole he had suddenly perceived where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound the mass of the piano part multi-form coherent level and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea silvered and charmed with a minor key by the moonlight but at a given moment without being able to distinguish any clear outline or to give a name to what was pleasing him suddenly enraptured he had tried to collect to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony he knew not which that had just been played and had opened and expanded his soul just as the fragrance of certain roses wafted upon the moist air of evening has the power of dilating our nostrils perhaps it was owing to his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so confused an impression one of those that are notwithstanding our only purely musical impressions limited in their extent entirely original and irreducible into any other kind an impression of this order vanishing in an instant is so to speak an impression seen a materia presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out before our eyes over surfaces greater or smaller according to their pitch and volume to trace arabesque designs to give us the sensation of breath or tenuity stability or caprice but the notes themselves have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion under those which the following or even simultaneous notes have already begun to awaken in us and this indefinite perception would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the motifs which now and then emerge barely discernible to plunge again and disappear and to drown recognized only by the particular kind of pleasure which they instill impossible to describe to recollect to name ineffable if our memory like a laborer who toils at the laying down of firm foundations beneath the tumult of the waves did not by fashioning for us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases enable us to compare and to contrast them with those that follow and so hardly had the delicious sensation which swan had experienced died away before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript summary it is true and provisional but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while the plane continued so effectively that when the same impression suddenly returned it was no longer uncapturable he was able to picture to himself its extent its symmetrical arrangement its notation the strength of its expression he had before him that definite object which was no longer pure music but rather design architecture thought and which allowed the actual music to be recalled this time he had distinguished quite clearly a phrase which emerged for a few moments from the waves of sound it had at once held out to him an invitation to partake of intimate pleasures of whose existence before hearing it he had never dreamed into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could initiate him and he had been filled with love for it as with a new and strange desire with a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here there everywhere towards a state of happiness noble unintelligible yet clearly indicated and then suddenly having reached a certain point from which he was prepared to follow it after pausing for a moment abruptly it changed its direction and in a fresh movement more rapid multi-form melancholy incessant sweet it bore him off with it towards a vista of joys unknown then it vanished he hoped with a passionate longing that he might find it again a third time and reappear it did though without speaking to him more clearly bringing him indeed a pleasure less profound but when he was once more at home he needed it he was like a man into whose life a woman whom he has seen for a moment passing by has brought a new form of beauty which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves already although he knows nothing of her not even her name indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed in the first few months to be bringing into swan's life the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation he had so long since ceased to direct his course towards any ideal goal and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral satisfactions that he had come to believe though without ever formally stating his belief even to himself that he would remain all his life in that condition which death alone could alter more than this since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals he had ceased to believe in although he could not have expressly denied the reality he had grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance just as he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have done better by not going into society knowing very well that if he had accepted an invitation he must put in an appearance and that afterwards if he did not actually call he must at least leave cards upon his hostess so in his conversation he took care never to express with any warmth a personal opinion about a thing but instead would supply facts and details which had a value of a sort in themselves and excused him from showing how much he really knew he would be extremely precise about the recipe for a dish the dates of a painter's birth and death and the titles of his works sometimes in spite of himself he would let himself go so far as to utter a criticism of a work of art or of someone's interpretation of life but then he would cloak his words in a tone of irony as though he did not altogether associate himself with what he was saying but now like a confirmed invalid whom all of a sudden a change of air and surroundings or a new course of treatment or as sometimes happens an organic change in himself spontaneous and unaccountable seems to have so far recovered from his malady that he begins to envisage the possibility hitherto beyond all hope of starting to lead and better late than never a wholly different life swan found in himself in the memory of the phrase that he had heard in certain other sonatas which he had made people play over to him to see whether he might not perhaps discover his phrase among them the presence of one of those invisible realities in which he had ceased to believe but to which as though the music had had upon the moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative influence he was conscious once again of a desire almost indeed of the power to consecrate his life but never having managed to find out whose work it was that he had heard played that evening he had been unable to procure a copy and finally had forgotten the quest he had indeed in the course of the next few days encountered several of the people who had been at the party with him and had questioned them but most of them had either arrived after or left before the piece was played some had indeed been in the house but had gone into another room to talk and those who had stayed to listen had no clearer impression than the rest as for his hosts they knew that it was a recently published work which the musicians whom they had engaged for the evening had asked to be allowed to play but as these last were now on tour somewhere slan could learn nothing further he had of course a number of musical friends but vividly as he could recall the exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little phrase had given him and could see still before his eyes the forms that it had traced in outline he was quite incapable of humming over to them the air and so at last he ceased to think of it but tonight at madame verdorans scarcely had the little pianists begun to play when suddenly after a high note held on through two whole bars swan saw it approaching stealing forth from underneath that resonance which was prolonged and stretched out over it like a curtain of sound to veil the mystery of its birth and recognized secret whispering articulate the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved and it was so peculiarly itself it had so personal a charm which nothing else could have replaced that swan felt as though he had met in a friend's drawing room a woman whom he had seen and admired once in the street and had despaired of ever seeing her again finally the phrase withdrew and vanished pointing directing diligent among the wandering currents of its fragrance leaving upon swan's features a reflection of its smile but now at last he could ask the name of his fair unknown and was told that it was the andante movement of vantayuz sonata for the piano and violin he held it safe could have it again to himself at home and as often as he would could study its language and acquire its secret and so when the pianist had finished swan crossed the room and thanked him with a vivacity which delighted madame verdoran isn't he charming she asked swan doesn't he just understand it his sonata the little wretch you never dreamed did you that a piano could be made to express all that upon my word there's everything in it except the piano i'm caught out every time i hear it i think i'm listening to an orchestra though it's better really than an orchestra more complete the young pianist bent over her as he answered smiling and underlining each of his words as though he were making an epigram you are most generous to me and while madame verdoran was saying to her husband run and fetch him a glass of orangeade it's well earned swan began to tell odette how he had fallen in love with that little phrase when their hostess who was a little way off called out well it looks to me as though someone was saying nice things to you odette she replied yes very nice and he found her simplicity delightful then he asked for some information about his vante what else he had done and at what period in his life he had composed the sonata what meaning the little phrase could have had for him that was what swan wanted most to know but none of these people who profess to admire this musician when swan had said that the sonata was really charming madame verdoran had exclaimed i quite believe it charming indeed but you don't dare to confess that you don't know vantui sonata you have no right not to know it and the painter had gone on with ah yes it is a very fine piece of work isn't it not of course if you want something obvious something popular but i mean to say it makes a very great impression on us artists none of them seemed ever to have asked himself these questions for none of them was able to reply even to one or two particular remarks made by swan on his particular phrase do you know that's a funny thing i had never noticed it i may as well tell you that i don't much care about peering at things through a microscope and pricking myself on pinpoints of difference no we don't waste time splitting hairs in this house why not well it's not a habit of ours that's all madame verdoran replied while dr cotar gazed at her with open mouthed admiration and yearned to be able to follow her as she skipped lightly from one stepping stone to another of her stock of ready-made phrases both he however and madame cotar with a kind of common sense which is shared by many people of humble origin would always take care not to express an opinion or to pretend to admire a piece of music which they would confess to each other once they were safely at home they had no more understood than they could understand the art of master bish in as much as the public cannot recognize the charm the beauty even the outlines of nature save in the stereotype impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions so mature and madame cotar typical in this respect of the public were incapable of finding either and venturi sanata or in bish's portraits what constituted harmony for them in music or beauty in painting it appeared to them when the pianist played his sanata as though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were accustomed and that the painter simply flung the colors haphazard upon his canvas when on one of these they were able to distinguish a human form they always found it coarsened and vulgarized that is to say lacking all the elegance of the school of painting through whose spectacles they themselves were in the habit of seeing the people real living people who passed them in the streets and devoid of truth as don mr bish had not known how the human shoulder was constructed or that a woman's hair was not ordinarily purple and yet when the faithful were scattered out of earshot the doctor felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed and so while madame verdura was adding a final word of commendation on venturi sanata like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water so as to learn but chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on yes indeed he's what they call a musician the primo cartello he exclaimed with a sudden determination swan discovered no more than that the recent publication of venturi sanata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of musicians but that it was still unknown to the general public i know someone quite well called venturi said swan thinking of the old music master at combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters perhaps that's the man oh no swan burst out laughing if you had ever seen him for a moment you wouldn't put the question then to put the question is to solve the problem the doctor suggested but it may well be some relative swan went on that would be bad enough but after all there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have a cousin who is a silly old fool and if that should be so i swear there's no known or unknown form of torture i wouldn't undergo to get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sanata starting with the torture of the old fool's company which would be ghastly the painter understood that venturi was seriously ill at the moment and that dr potin despaired of his life what cried madame verduran do people still call in potin ah madad verduran kotar simpered you forget that you are speaking of one of my colleagues i should say one of my masters the painter had heard somewhere that venturi was threatened with the loss of his reason and he insisted that signs of this could be detected in certain passages in the sanata this remark did not strike swan as ridiculous rather it puzzled him for since a purely musical work contains none of those logical sequences the interruption or confusion of which in spoken or written language is a proof of insanity so insanity diagnosed in a sanata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as the insanity of a dog or a horse although instances may be observed of these don't speak to me about your masters you know ten times as much as he does madame verduran answered dr kotar in the tone of a woman who has the courage of her convictions and is quite ready to stand up to anyone who disagrees with her anyhow you don't kill your patients but madame he is in the academy the doctor smiled with bitter irony if a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the princes of science it is far more smart to be able to say yes i have poten oh indeed more smart is it said madame verduran so there are fashions nowadays in illness are there i didn't know that oh you do make me laugh she screamed suddenly burying her face in her hands and here was i poor thing talking quite seriously and never seeing that you were pulling my leg as for mr verduran finding it rather a strain to start laughing again over so small a matter he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke from his pipe while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope to keep pace with his wife and her atalanta flights across the field of mirth do you know we like your friend so very much said madame verduran later when odette was bidding her good night he is so unaffected quite charming if they're all like that the friends you want to bring here by all means bring them mr verduran remarked that swan had failed all the same to appreciate the pianists aunt i dare say he felt a little strange poor man suggested madame verduran you can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first time he comes like qatar who has been one of our little clan now for years the first time doesn't count it's just for looking round and finding out things odette he understands all right he's to join us tomorrow at the chateau lay perhaps you might call for him and bring him no he doesn't want that oh very well just as you like provided he doesn't fail us at the last moment greatly to madame verduran's surprise he never failed them he would go to meet them no matter where at restaurants outside paris not that they went there much at first for the season had not yet begun and more frequently at the play in which madame verduran delighted one evening when they were dining at home he heard her complain that she had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting at doors and standing in crowds and say how useful it would be to them at first nights and gala performances at the opera and what a nuisance it had been not having one on the day of gambetta's funeral swan never spoke of his distinguished friends but only of such as might be regarded as detrimental whom therefore he thought it's snobbish and in not very good taste to conceal while he frequented the faux-bear Saint-Germain he had come to include in the latter class all his friends in the official world of the Third Republic and so broken without thinking i'll see to that all right you shall have it in time for the Donetsch of revival i shall be lunching with the prefect of police tomorrow as it happens at the lsse what's that the lsse dr cotar roared in a voice of thunder yes at mr gravey's replied swan feeling a little awkward at the effect which his announcement had produced are you often taken like that the painter asked cotar with mock seriousness as a rule once an explanation had been given cotar would say ah good good that's all right then after which he would show not the least trace of emotion but this time swan's last words instead of the usual calming effect had that of heating instantly to boiling point his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself was actually sitting at table a man who had no official position no honors or distinction of any sort was on visiting terms with the head of the state what's that you say mr gravey do you know mr gravey he demanded of swan in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the palace when a stranger has come up and asked to see the president of the republic until guessing from his words and manner what as the newspapers say it is a case of he assures the poor lunatic that he will be admitted at once and points the way to the reception ward of the police infirmary i know him slightly we have some friends in common swan dared not add that one of those friends was the prince of wales anyhow he is very free with his invitations and i assure you his lunch and parties are not the least bit amusing they're very simple affairs too you know never more than eight at table he went on trying desperately to cut out everything that seemed to show off his relations with the president in a light too dazzling for the doctor's eyes whereupon katar at once conforming in his mind to the literal interpretation of what swan was saying decided that invitations from mr griffey were very little sought after were sent out in fact into the highways and hedgerows and from that moment he never seemed at all surprised to hear that swan or anyone else was always at the lsa he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to lunch and parties which he himself admitted were a bore ah good good that's quite all right then he said in the tone of a customs official who had been suspicious up to now but after hearing your explanations stamps your passport lets you proceed on your journey without troubling to examine your luggage i can well believe that you don't find them amusing those parties indeed it's very good of you to go to them said madame verdera who regarded the president of the republic only as a bore to be especially dreaded since he had at his disposal means of seduction and even of compulsion which if employed to captivate her faithful might easily make them fail it seems he's as deaf as a post and eats with his fingers upon my word then it can't be much fun for you going there a note of pity sounded in the doctor's voice and then struck by the number only eight at table are these luncheons what you would describe as intimate he inquired briskly not so much out of idle curiosity as in his linguistic zeal but so great and glorious a figure was the president of the french republic in the eyes of dr cotar that neither the modesty of swan nor the spite of madame verdera could ever wholly efface that first impression and he never sat down to dinner with the verdera without asking anxiously do you think we shall see mature swan this evening he is a personal friend of mature gribees i suppose that means he's what you'd call a gentleman he even went to the length of offering swan a card of invitation to the dental exhibition this will let you in and anyone you take with you he explained but dogs are not admitted i'm just warning you you understand because some friends of mine went there once who hadn't been told and there was the devil to pay as for mature verdera he did not fail to observe the distressing effect upon his wife of the discovery that swan had influential friends of whom he had never spoken if no arrangement had been made to go anywhere it was at the verdera that swan would find the little nucleus assembled but he never appeared there except in the evenings and would hardly ever accept their invitations to dinner in spite of odets and treaties i could dine with you alone somewhere if you'd rather she suggested but what about madame verdera oh that's simple i need only say that my dress wasn't ready or that my cab came late there is always some excuse how charming of you but swan said to himself that if he could make odette feel by consenting to meet her only after dinner that there were other pleasures which he preferred to that of her company then the desire that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of satiety besides as he infinitely preferred to odette's style of beauty that of a little working girl has fresh and plump as a rose with whom he happened to be simultaneously in love he preferred to spend the first part of the evening with her knowing that he was sure to see odette later on for the same reason he would never allow odette to call for him at his house to take him on to the verdera's the little girl used to wait not far from his door at a street corner ramy his coachman knew where to stop she would jump in beside him and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew up at the verdera he would enter the drawing room and there while madame verdera pointing to the roses which he had sent her that morning said i am furious with you and sent him to the place kept for him by the side of odette the pianist would play for them for their two selves and for no one else that little phrase by mantuy which was so to speak the national anthem of their love he began always with a sustained tremolo from the violin part which for several bars was unaccompanied and filled all the foreground until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside and just as in those interiors by peter de hoche where the subject is set back a long way through the narrow framework of a half opened door infinitely remote in color quite different velvety with the radiance of some intervening light the little phrase appeared dancing pastoral interpolated episodic belonging to another world it passed with simple and immortal movements scattering on every side the bounties of its grace smiling ineffably still but swan thought that he could now discern in it some disenchantment it seemed to be aware how vain how hollow was the happiness to which it showed the way in its airy grace there was indeed something definitely achieved and complete in itself like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an outburst of vain regret but little did that matter to him he looked upon the sonata less in its own light as what it might express had in fact expressed to a certain musician ignorant that any swan or odette anywhere in the world existed when he composed it and would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries to come then as a pledge a token of his love which made even the verdurah and their little pianist think of odette and at the same time of himself which bound her to him by a lasting tie and at that point he had whimsically and treated by odette abandoned the idea of getting some professional to play over to him the whole sonata of which he still knew no more than this one passage why do you want the rest she had asked him our little bit that's all we need he went farther agonized by the reflection at the moment when it passed by him so near and yet so infinitely remote that while it was addressed to their ears it knew them not he would regret almost that it had a meaning of its own an intrinsic and unalterable beauty foreign to themselves just as in the jewels given to us or even in the letters written to us by a woman with whom we are in love we find fault with the water of a stone or with the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a lass unparalleled end of section 16 read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto California for Librebox