In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [187]
And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have been a propitious atmosphere for his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature always absent, regretted, imagined, when the feeling that he had for her was no longer the same mysterious turmoil that was wrought in him by the phrase from the sonata, but affection and gratitude, when normal relations that would put an end to his melancholy madness were established between them—then, no doubt, the actions of Odette’s daily life would appear to him as being of little intrinsic interest—as he had several times already felt that they might be, on the day, for instance, when he had read through its envelope her letter to Forcheville. Examining his complaint with as much scientific detachment as if he had inoculated himself with it in order to study its effects, he told himself that, when he was cured of it, what Odette might or might not do would be a matter of indifference to him. But the truth was that in the depths of his morbid condition he feared death itself no more than such a recovery, which would in fact amount to the death of all that he now was.
After these quiet evenings, Swann’s suspicions would be temporarily lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning would order the finest jewels to be sent to her, because her kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had need of some such outlet.
But at other times, his anguish would again take hold of him; he would imagine that Odette was Forcheville’s mistress, and that when they had both sat watching him from the depths of the Verdurins’ landau in the Bois on the evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited, while he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face which even his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then turned away, solitary and crushed, she must have glanced at Forcheville, as she drew his attention to him, saying “Look how furious he is!” with the same expression, sparkling, malicious, sidelong and sly, as on the evening when Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins’.
At such times Swann detested her. “But I’ve been a fool, too,” he would argue. “I’m paying for other men’s pleasures with my money. All the same, she’d better take care, and not push her luck, because I might very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we’d better knock off supplementary favours for the time being. To think that only yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth for the season, I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those nice little castles the King of Bavaria has in the neighbourhood for the two of us. However, she didn’t seem particularly keen; she hasn’t said yes or no yet. Let’s hope she’ll refuse. Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a whole fortnight with a woman who takes about as much interest in music as a tone-deaf newt—that would be fun!” And his hatred, like his love, needing to manifest itself in action, he took pleasure in urging his evil imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the perfidies of which he accused Odette, he detested her still more, and would be able, if it turned out—as he tried to convince himself—that she was indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her, and of venting his mounting rage on her. Thus he went so far as to suppose that he was about to receive a letter from her in which she would ask him for money to take the castle near Bayreuth,