Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

“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 alone with her.”

“I am sure she can,” Swann hastened 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 M. Verdurin, “now, this will surprise you; she writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something, M. Swann?”

“I should count myself most fortunate …” Swann 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heard it said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a solemn word used seriously, as the word ‘fortunate’ had been used just now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being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 vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.

“What are all those good people laughing at over there? There’s no sign of brooding melancholy down in your corner,” shouted Mme. Verdurin. “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.

Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood, 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 saying is, at the really good antique furniture which she had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the presents 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 ‘bore,’ or against a former member of the circle who was now relegated to the limbo of ‘bores’—and to the utter despair of M. Verdurin, 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 indecent 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 asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, 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 M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann’s permission to light his pipe (“No ceremony here, you understand; we’re 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 Mme. Verdurin. “I won’t have him tormented.”

“But why on earth should it bother him?” rejoined M. Verdurin. “I’m sure M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he is going to play us the pianoforte 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 re-enacted 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 ‘Hear, hear!’ which, as in Parliamentary debates, shewed 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 M. Verdurin, “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 Meistersinger .”

The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play, not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised 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 jeopardise, what seemed to him far more important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present, and of which the 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?” Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate. Perhaps, too, by dint 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, and like to let themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most enjoy doing, 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 inconvenience, can and will, by uttering a word or by administering a tabloid, set them once again upon their feet.