In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [107]
“So the Doctor is not mad about flowers, like you?” Mme Swann asked Mme Cottard.
“Oh, well, you know, my husband is a sage; he practises moderation in all things. Wait, though, he does have one passion.”
Her eye aflame with malice, joy, curiosity, “And what is that, pray?” inquired Mme Bontemps.
Artlessly Mme Cottard replied: “Reading.” “Oh, that’s a very restful passion in a husband!” cried Mme Bontemps, suppressing a diabolical laugh.
“When the Doctor gets a book in his hands, you know!”
“Well, that needn’t alarm you much . . .”
“But it does, for his eyesight. I must go now and look after him, Odette, and I shall come back at the very first opportunity and knock at your door. Talking of eyesight, have you heard that the new house Mme Verdurin has just bought is to be lighted by electricity? I didn’t get that from my own little secret service, you know, but from quite a different source; it was the electrician himself, Mildé, who told me. You see, I quote my authorities! Even the bedrooms, he says, are to have electric lamps with shades which will filter the light. It’s obviously a charming luxury for those who can afford it. But it seems that our contemporaries must absolutely have the newest thing if it’s the only one of its kind in the world. Just fancy, the sister-in-law of a friend of mine has had the telephone installed in her house! She can order things from tradesmen without having to go out! I confess that I’ve indulged in the most bare-faced intrigues to get permission to go there one day, just to speak into the instrument. It’s very tempting, but rather in a friend’s house than at home. I don’t think I should like to have the telephone in my establishment. Once the first excitement is over, it must be a real headache. Now, Odette, I must be off; you’re not to keep Mme Bontemps any longer, she’s looking after me. I must absolutely tear myself away: a nice way you’re making me behave—I shall be getting home after my husband!”
And for myself also it was time to return home, before I had tasted those wintry delights of which the chrysanthemums had seemed to me to be the brilliant envelope. These pleasures had not appeared, and yet Mme Swann did not look as though she expected anything more. She allowed the servants to carry away the tea-things, as who should say “Time, please, gentlemen!” And finally she said to me: “Really, must you go? Well then, good-bye!” I felt that I might have stayed there without encountering those unknown pleasures, and that my sadness was not the only cause of my having to forgo them. Were they to be found, then, situated not upon that beaten track of hours which leads one always so rapidly to the moment of departure, but rather upon some unknown by-road along which I ought to have digressed? At least the object of my visit had been attained; Gilberte would know that I had come to her parents’ house when she was not at home, and that I had, as Mme Cottard had incessantly assured me, “made a complete conquest, first shot, of Mme Verdurin” (whom, she added, she had never seen “make so much” of anyone: “You and she must be soulmates”). She would know that I had spoken of her as was fitting, with affection, but that I had not that incapacity for living without our seeing one another which I believed to be at the root of the boredom that she had shown at our last meetings. I had told Mme Swann that I could not be with Gilberte any more. I had said this as though I had finally decided not to see her again. And the letter which I was going to send Gilberte would be framed on those lines. Only to myself, to fortify my courage, I proposed no more than a final, concentrated effort, lasting a few days only. I said to myself: “This is the last time that I shall refuse an invitation to meet her; I